Renee Rabinowitz Wins Case Over Ultra-Orthodox Demand That She Be Moved On El Al

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Renee Rabinowitz Wins Case Over Ultra-Orthodox Demand That She Be Moved On El Al

The most obvious erosion of women's rights in Israel centers around issues of religion and gender in public spaces. Now 83-year-old Renee Rabinowitz has won a critical court ruling, suing the strictly Orthodox male passenger who demanded that she be moved from her El Al aisle business-class seat when he boarded Flight 028 bound for Tel Aviv from Newark in December 2015. Strictly Orthodox Jewish men believe they are contaminated and tempted in the close proximity of women who are not their wives. 

Ms. Rabinowitz, who lived through traumatic days of the Nazis in Europe, moved reluctantly. But she landed in Israel determined to take action. This week a Jerusalem court ruled that gender segregation and the movement of passengers to accommodate gender discrimination was illegal on El Al. 

Hillary Clinton's Plan To Take On ISIS | Watch Nov. 19 Council of Foreign Relations Speech

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Hillary Clinton's Plan To Take On ISIS | Watch Nov. 19 Council of Foreign Relations Speech

For friends trying to understand fundamentally what's going on with ISIS, VOX shares an overview of the history of ISIS: a 15-20 minute read that is highly informative.  AOC calls out three key paragraphs that are relevant to our understanding of the world and content strategy.

9 Questions about ISIS You Were Too Embarrassed To Ask VOX

The Apocalypse

ISIS's first obsession, though, is not the caliphate but the apocalypse. The group's leaders, by every indication, earnestly believe that their role is to help usher in the final days and the end of the world. McCants explained, in his interview with Williams, how this belief developed into ISIS's focus on building a state:

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Rape of Women

ISIS also promotes what the New York Times's Rukmini Callimachi called a "theology of rape": a vast infrastructure of sexual violence and slavery, with ISIS encouraging rape as not just a tool of war but a matter of daily life in the caliphate. Yes, this is its own awful recruiting tool, but it's even more than that: It's a way for both the group and its individual members to demonstrate power by associating sexual violence with victory.

Original Caliphates Centered on Religious Expression

For jihadists, the caliphates are the height of Islam's glory, the banner of a sort of Islamic nationalism. Framing your jihadist movement as the rebirth or continuation of the caliphate is a way of asserting the idea that all Muslims should be joined in one state, that they should be ruled by Islam (or more specifically, the jihadists' version of Islam), and that all other Islamic authorities and states are apostates.
The jihadists also promote the idea that because the caliphates existed a long time ago and were politically organized around Islam, they must have therefore been ultra-conservative theocracies. But that is quite simply false: At their height, the caliphates were centers of artistic expression and scientific development.


In Solidarity A Million People Or More Reject Radical Islam In Paris

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Biggest Paris Gathering Ever

Estimates of the crowds in Paris today range from the high hundreds of thousands to three million. There is no way to count this many people, but it seems the number of free-speech supporters from around the world in Paris today will settle in around one million. A long list of European heads of government joined French Prime Minister Francois Hollande to march arms and arm as a strong message of international solidarity.

Protestors waved flags in support of the dead cartoonists and other staff at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the victims of the Marais supermarket seizure, and the dead policewoman on the job for two weeks. Others promoted their own identities as Muslim, Jewish and a host of nationalities — but always with a message of solidarity around pens and pencils and the rights of free speech and public expression. 

Supporting Free Expression In Solidarity With Paris

Two AOC favorites — street activist JR (source of eyeglass banner below) and Queen Rania of Jordan — were in attendance, and we will deal with them in separate articles. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was joined by French President Francois Hollande in a visit to a Parisian synagogue

Left to right in the photo above: Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Union President Donald Tusk, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Jordan’s Queen Rania, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and other guests.


 

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Self-Moderation & Democratic Principles Under Assault In Paris & Around the World

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On this sad Friday in January, we share news that Saudi blogger Raif Badawi received the first 50 lashes of his 1000 lashes scheduled over the next 20 weeks. The world is rallying on Badawi’s behalf, but there is no evidence that we will be successful on Badawi’s behalf. Please sign the petition in our article.

Sad Day in Paris

This moment the terrorists behind the Charlie Hebdo have hostages in a small printing factory near Charles de Gaulle airport. However, a new hostage takeover by their associates at a Jewish grocery store near Porte de Vincennes. Of course, we are all concerned about these events.

Anne of Carversville: Telling Women’s Stories From Fashion to Flogging

Anne of Carversville has a long history of writing about the conflict of civilizations colliding and the fundamentalists at work in each of them. We are as concerned about the spread of Christian fundamentalism in America as Islamic fundamentalism in Paris.

My own editorial position is not one of being anti-Islamic. I am anti-fundamentalist because adherents of those principles do not believe in free societies. British radical Muslim cleric and lecturer on sharia law Anjem Choudary has written an open letter, published by USA Today, in which he says:

“Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires.”

Soul Spirit Beauty

Being committed to the women of Sudan — to the 40,000 of them that are brutally lashed every year for inappropriate dress and without the world rallying of their behalf as we are for Saudi blogger Raif Badawi — I want to share extraordinary images of the beautiful Sudanese model Ataui Deng, originally from Sudan. (See more on flogging women in Sudan here.)

At this moment, it’s easy for me to explain what ‘fashion to flogging’ is all about at AOC. As Smart Sensuality women and men, we understand that images of Ataui are considered to be heresy in the world of Anjem Choudary.

We see only beauty and not disrespect of any kind in these photographs. And we share a collective belief in self-moderation and democracy — not the lash — as our guide for living and advancing humanity in the 21st century.            ~ Anne

Photographer Jamie Nelson & Model Ataui Deng Create Saturated Beauty Magnificence

Ataui Deng By Tibi Clenci In ‘Art About Heart - La Maison Rouge Paris’ For Exhibition September 2013

Lady Liberty Collides With Fundamentalist Hardliners In Paris

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Lady Liberty Collides With Fundamentalist Hardliners In Paris

Our thoughts are with the people of Paris today, the dead satirists who pushed the envelope of free speech and free expression will speak no more, although a request has gone global for media outlets to publish the anti-Islamic, Charlie Hebdo cartoons tomorrow.

Anne of Carversville will not be among them, as I am blacklasted in the Arab world already and my focus is women’s rights. If Islamists had launched a terrorist attack against the women of Paris for not wearing burquas, we would print anything needed against these brutes who kidnap little girls and decapitate aid workers on international TV.

Probably no single issue in France has done more to divide Muslims and non-Muslims than the burqa ban, a topic at the core of Anne of Carversville’s values and dialogue with women worldwide.  Read on for a look at AOC’s long history on the topic of banning burqas in France.

Eye | American Parenting As Religion | Elizabeth Holmes Billionaire | Kurdish Women Fighters Update

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Redtracker

Kurdish Fighter Ceylan Ozalp Said To Be Alive

I just checked in again on the incredibly brave women — about 1/3 of Kurdish forces — fighting ISIS in Syria. My heart dropped with reports that Ceylan Ozalp (wearing blk/wht checked hat), the woman who said ISIS shakes when confronted with women fighters, had committed suicide with her last bullet. SHE IS ALIVE and not in Kobane came reports just now from reliable sources. However, another young woman did commit suicide rather than be taken. Three Kurdish women fighters and seven men were beheaded by ISIS this week in Kobane. Please take a minute to honor the spirits of these brave people, and especially the Kurdish women fighters.

Previously: Kurdish Women Fighters In Syria Say ISIS Fears Women Soldiers So Much They Shake AOC Salon

Parenting As Religion

How American Parenting Is Killing American Marriage  QZ.com

Physician and researcher Danielle Teller and husband Astro Teller, head of Google X, recently published a book Sacred Cows: The Truth about Divorce and Marriage  focused on society’s “nonsensical but deeply ingrained beliefs surrounding marriage and divorce.”

 It seems only logical then, that the duo will next take on parenting. Calling American parenthood a ‘religion’, the Tellers refer to Ayelet Waldman’s 2005 essay in The New York Times, where she explained that she loves her husband more than her children.

The earth shook beneath Waldman’s feet as thousands of readers threatened to burn her at the stake.

Lab Grown Organ Transplants

The lab-grown penis: approaching a medical milestone The Guardian

Since 1992, Anthony Atala and his colleagues have worked on the premise that penises could be grown in a laboratory and then transplanted to humans. He believes that in the next five years, his first penis transplant will occur.

Penises aren’t the only focus of Atala and his team. In 2005 they implanted the first vagina — one of four. Eight years later, all four vaginas have normal structure and function. Earlier in 1999, Atala’s group completed their first laboratory-grown bladder transplant made from the patient’s own cells.

Simplifying the Blood Test

This Woman’s Revolutionary Idea Made Her A Billionaire — And Could Change Medicine Business Insider

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"Women of the Wall" Protest Exclusion from Praying at Jerusalem's Western Wall

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Supporters of a group of religious activists called Women of the Wall gathered at the holy site in Jerusalem for prayers on Friday. Conservative Jew Nofrat Frenkel, 28 and a fifth year medical student, was the first woman to be arrested last month on Nov. 18th, during prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Her crime was wrapping herself in a tallit or fringed prayer shawl, a ritual garment traditionally worn only by men.

The Women of the Wall, who meet for prayers at the Kotel at the start of every Hebrew month, are at the vanguard of a feminist struggle in Orthodox Judaism. via NYTimes

The group prayed in large numbers last Friday, the first day of the Hebrew month of Tevet. “We are pushing the envelope. History is made of moments like this,” said Nat Hoffman, chairwoman of Women of the Wall, which was founded in 1988.