Israel's Eugenics Program
I was over at Three Legged Duck, Violetta's articulate blog, and she posted a link to a Haaretz article about genetic counselors in Israel.
It is immoral to practice a policy of applied eugenics. That this is culturally endemic, as Ms. Yael Hashiloni-Dolev posits, rather than officially state sponsored makes it more insidious, not less so; a custom has a better chance of becoming protected by the state than a policy that is state sponsored has of fostering enculturation of that policy.
Also aborting foeti based on penis size is no less tyrannical than matching breeding partners based on an Aryan ideal. It's chilling that Israel has genetic counselors at all, let alone that these counselors recommend abortions for cosmetic reasons.
Ethically, the idea that abortions should be performed for cosmetic reasons is founded in the idea that aesthetic ideals translate into inherent value. There's no difference between advocating the abortion of foeti that will develop into women with, say, small breasts or men with small penes and advocating the abortion of foeti that are brunette. Or will be duskier than their compatriots. Or will have large noses and prominent chins. Or any other aesthetic criteria.
If Israelis are going to abort foeti that will develop into women with small breasts, this value system asks, why not sterilise women who have small breasts now?
Ms. Hashiloni-Dolev later conflates the disfigured with the disabled - how long is it until someone makes a sufficiently articulate argument that primary and secondary sexual characteristics outside of a certain acceptable range qualify as disability? Or dark skin? Or a deviated nasal septum?
After all, if a small penis is considered sufficiently debilitating to consider an abortion, then it's sufficiently debilitating a "disorder" to justify state action on it's behalf now, to prevent its spread. Again, maybe sterilisation. Or maybe specific laws to prevent such men from breeding. Maybe we can put them in special camps, for the protection of the rest of the Jewish race.
Genetic counseling and applied eugenics is a slippery slope. If Israelis accept that aesthetics forms a basis for relative value and abort healthy pregnancies for cosmetic features, then the value judgements that this makes about people with the same cosmetic features is horrifying. It is tantamount to telling them they don't have a right to live.
Comments
My oldest sister is due in October (31st), she will be having a boy to be named Noah Hunter Nauman. I can only imagine what option she would take if she was told Noah would have a uncharacteristically small penis.
Why do I wonder; well, my sister doesn't believe in buying anything second rate, even her baby crib is from the Pottery Barn.
Reading this article frightened me; in a society that concentrates so much on cosmetics and exterior traits, I am afraid my sister would make the cosmetic decision as she has with her baby furniture selections.
Posted by: ange | August 2, 2004 4:40 PM
The irony of this article being about Israel is overwhelming. Their own personally instigated Holocaust.
Posted by: Maman | August 2, 2004 8:52 PM
Well, I'm not sure that's terribly ironic; I challenge the idea that 1938 Munich should act as an emotional referrent for 1948 Palestine.
Yes, six million people died at the hands of Hitler's Final Solution - but the Gypsies didn't get a homeland. The homosexuals didn't assasinate the head of state of some country and then bomb government buildings in a well-orchestrated terrorist campaign until the standing government capitulated.
I'm unconvinced that anti-Zionism conflates into anti-Semitism. Israel poses a serious threat to world stability by her simple existence. Furthermore, her existence is predicated upon a Messianic conceit.
I strongly doubt that, should the Likud succeed in its stated aim of driving all of the other people of Abraham from Samaria and Judea that they'll succeed in bringing about the Messiah (or, as some Christian sects believe, the Second Coming).
There's a number of complexities here that get glossed over in American media, but Israel is a rogue state.
I'm in favor of bringing the bootheel pretty sharply down on Israel, along the lines of: "Put the fence at the pre-1967 border and remove the settlements or we revoke all aid."
Posted by: Nathan Dornbrook | August 2, 2004 10:18 PM
You've glossed over a few complexities yourself, dearheart.
Posted by: Mara | August 3, 2004 6:47 AM
Mara, I challenge that statement. While there's a lot of history left out here, like Golda Meir's senseless terror against the Norwegians, Menachem Begin's assassination of the British governor, the Irgun and Stern gang, the Haganah and the provocations of the mufti, the central thesis stands.
Israel exists as a result of a Zionist movement that stretches back to Basle in 1897. Theodore Herzl et al. propogated a series of ideas which had and still have very little relation to reality.
These ideas are as follows:
1. "A land without a people for a people without a land." As if the 700,000 Palestinians who lived there didn't exist.
2. Israel is the Middle East's only "real" democracy. This is as true as saying that apartheid South Africa was a democracy.
3. "Security" is the justification behind the oppression of Palestinians, as if the Palestinian opposition sprung ex nihilo from the ground and suddenly justifies the existence of the world's fourth largets military.
4. Zionism and hence Israel is the moral response to the Holocaust.
I reject all four statements. Palestine was heavily populated, cultivated and had about 1,000 villages. It was hardly a land without a people.
Israel is an apartheid state where gentiles are disenfranchised and unwelcome.
Zionists employed tactics of terror and the tools of ethnic cleansing to create the modern state of Israel; the Palestinians have no hope of recompense or justice. A people without hope sits on deadly ground, as Sun Tzu would have said. Yes, the security of the existing Israeli state is secured by the Mossad et al., but the exercise of control over the subjugated, disenfranchised and robbed Palestinians is the principal activity of the Israeli Defense Force.
Finally, Zionism has nothing to do with the Holocaust. Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same thing.
Posted by: Nathan Dornbrook | August 3, 2004 8:14 AM
I didn't say it was.
But this is a rather large, complex issue and reducing it to a blog entry doesn't even come close to covering the ground needed to making an informed decision. I've lived here a year and there's no way I would say I am in a position to understand what is going on between these 2 groups of people. I hope it may be resolved peacefully. How it is resolved is, however, ultimately up to them.
Posted by: Mara | August 3, 2004 10:07 AM
Hey, Mara!
There's certainly a lot of history, and were one blog entry to cover it, it would be a long blog entry indeed.
I hope they do come to a resolution, and a peaceful one at that.
Israel is a client state of the U.S., whatever the solution is will have to be ratified by U.S. Because of the existing economic conditions in Israel, we have a unique point of leverage and could certainly use it to bring both sides to the bargaining table.
Here's a memoriam for Israel Shahak that does a better job of stating this case than I can.
Posted by: Nathan Dornbrook | August 3, 2004 11:40 AM