"Take this hijab and shove it"
TV host Bill Maher slams hypocrisy in "gender apartheid" speech.
These are the intentionally provocative words Bill Maher uses to headline his monologue from his HBO Real Time show on May 31, on X (former Twitter). The American TV host critiques selective outrage among activists, especially anti-Israel / pro-Palestian activists, who declare themselves as “left-wing. Maher urges them to address gender apartheid and human rights abuses that he says are often overlooked by Western protests. To date, his post has been viewed 4 million times on X alone.
The Jerusalem Post picked up Maher’s monologue in an article with several quotes:
"For the last couple of years, women in Iran have been saying 'take this hijab and shove it' after a young woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested in 2022 for wearing her mandatory hijab incorrectly and subsequently died in police custody.”
"Hundreds of millions of women are treated worse than second-class citizens. When you mandate that one category of human beings don't even have the right to show their face, that's apartheid. And it goes on in a lot of countries."
"This is what should be the social justice issue of your time. How about: ‘From the river to the sea, every woman shall be free?’"
My personal favorite - not from the JP article but from Maher’s mouth:
“... all this happens - right under your nose ring".
A paradox similar to that observed by Bill Maher in regard to women's rights is noticable in the attitude of the “Queers for Palestine”. The activists seem to be oblivious or ignorant of the possible rejection to pure hostility they most likely would face if they ever set their feet on Gaza soil. In a video on TikTok, Palestinian men respond to the question of whether they want the support of Queers for Palestine with a clear “NO”. One of the men says that being gay is considered immoral.
In 2022, the case of 25 year Ahmad Abu Marhia stirred up both the Israeli and the Palestinian society. Ahmad was a gay Palestinian from Hebron. In early October, his body was found decapitated in the West Bank. His murder was captured on video and shared on social media. Israeli media quoted friends of the victim as saying he was kidnapped to the West Bank. LGBTQ groups say he had spent two years in Israel waiting on an asylum claim to flee abroad after receiving death threats from within his community because he was gay. 90 Palestinians who identify as LGBTQ lived as asylum seekers in Israel at that time, according to media reports. Homosexuality is rejected within the most socially and religiously conservative parts of both Palestinian and Israeli societies but gay people in Israel can freely lead their lives. This being said, an ultraorthodox Jewish man stabbed participants of the Pride Parade in Jerusalem both in 2005 and 2015, after serving 10 years in prison for the first attack.
Are the Queers for Palestine unaware of these events? And the many student activists on American university campuses covering their heads with black-and-white or red-and-white Kaffayas or wrapping their bodies in a Palestinian flag? This being asked doesn’t mean that people with a Kaffaya aren’t allowed to critize Israeli politics. Or advocate for Palestinian statehood. However what is to be made of that a student protester at New York University praised North Korea during a teach-in:
“North Korea… has actually never recognized the state of Israel, they have always upheld the right of Palestinian people to self determination and resistance. (…) has actively armed and trained the Palestinian resistance for decades (…). So while the US is here training IOF1 with Police, North Korea is training Palestinians."
The head of the Iranian internationally renowned Shiraz University meanwhile offered scholarships to students in the U.S. who have been expelled for taking part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. In the light of these events, Bill Maher hopefully aims to highlight with his provocative monologue the need of protesters to fully understand the implications of what they support. In his own words:
“If you're out protesting for a couple of hours wearing this [Kaffaya], you have to go all the way and spend an afternoon running errands wearing one of these”. While he says this the TV screen shows the picture of a woman wrapped from head to toe in a black abaya. Maher: “You cannot side with the people who ruthlessly oppress women without getting at least a taste of what you are supporting”.
And while we're on the subject of knowing what we're talking about: according to Wikipedia, the Kaffaya or Keffiyeh is a headscarf worn by men and women in the Arab world. It is worn to protect against the sun and also worn as a scarf. The Arabic term is derived from the name of the Iraqi city of Kufa. Due to the Middle East conflict, the scarf came to be an icon of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
IOF (Israeli Occupying Forces) is a term synonymously used for the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) by opponents of Israel’s Palestine policy.