The Family Lobby (The Familists) is an Israeli lobby group dedicated to saving and rejuvenating the Israeli family unit. The normal nuclear family unit is under threat in Israel, just as it is throughout the western world. A bellicose social movement spewing promises of equality, freedom, peace and justice has rent society apart, pitting millions of women against millions of men, promoting all possible alternatives to the nuclear family as 'advanced' and 'enlightened' while presenting the normal, traditional family as a bastion of patriarchal abuse, a "comfortable concentration camp" in the infamous words of militant feminist high priestess Betty Friedan.
כנס בכנסת 15.2.2011
Our activists and supporters include both women and men. We support the brand of feminism which Christina Hoff Sommers calls 'equity feminism', as opposed to 'gender feminism.'
The consequences of gender-feminist ascendancy are devastating: children growing up without their fathers' love and care (the vast majority of single-parent households are headed by women) are at far greater risk of becoming maladjusted, angry, depressed, even criminally active adults; of experiencing unwanted teenage pregnancy; of using drugs, and of being victimized by abusers and predators. A growing class of divorced mothers and their children lives in poverty, turning to the government for aid it cannot give them. Young men and women fear each other and refuse to marry or have children together. Those who do marry and have children often divorce a very short time later, when their children are still babies.
The family crisis creates a drain on Israel's economy and a burden upon its social services. It is accompanied by a masculinity crisis, because men and maleness are under constant and systematic attack: the Israeli man – the new, proud, fighting Jew that the Zionists fought so hard to create, the soldier and leader who was, until this generation, Israeli society's hero – that man is now largely a focus of public derision, far more widely depicted in the media as a potentially violent sexual predator than as a potential war hero.
Table: Divorce rates in Israel compared to new marriages (from an article by Dr. Moshe Yanovsky in Nekuda magazine)
Through the use of falsified statistics and other nefarious propaganda techniques, Israel itself is presented to the rest of the world as a backward theocracy in which men control women, trade and exploit them with impunity – when in fact, it is undoubtedly the unelected women's organizations that have power over the male and female population here. Most of the leading "women's organizations" are funded by the New Israel Fund and espouse a militant anti-nationalist and anti-security line, which dovetails neatly with the anti-masculine one.
Tactics of personal and professional terror are used by the anti-family cadres in the media, academia, political, justice and law enforcement systems to silence any would-be critics. Debate is stifled, and only the militant feminist "party line" is allowed into the mainstream media and academic forums.
Family courts tear children away from their beloved fathers on a daily basis, and don't think twice about it. Women know they are immune from prosecution and use false accusations of domestic violence to distance theiur husbands and ex-husbands from their homes and children, and the judges and policemen play along faithfully.
Judaism's ancient laws have not been discarded, just subverted: men's obligations have been made even more binding than they were in Talmudic times, while women are absolved of all of their responsibilities towards the family. Men still have to pay their wives alimony and bear the full brunt of child support, even if their wives work and earn more than they do. Men are routinely made to pay 50%, 80%, even 150% of what they earn for child support, and thrown into jail for repeated stints if they fail to. Men's welfare, unemployment and disability benefits as well as pensions are routinely garnished in full for payment of child support and alimony.
In a society in which many of the finest young men chose military service as a full or part time vocation, the weakened status of the soldier means less of the highly qualified men opt for a military career. This, in turn, brings about a weakening of the military.
What is Familism?
Familism is a belief that the father-mother-children nuclear family is the basic building block of society and that society has a vested interest in making the family unit work: that is, having as many people as possible date, marry, and have children, and having them stay together, at least reasonably happily, for as long as possible.
Familism is the belief that society and its social institutions should be proactive in helping people resolve differences and get over marital crises. We believe that more than half of the divorces taking place in Israel today could have been averted, if a pro-conflict ideology hadn't permeated academia, the family courts, the media and the welfare system.
As familists, we are influenced by the spirit of Jewish Law or Halacha, which sanctifies the family unit and recognizes society's obligation to support married couples during a crisis and act towards reconciliation, or shlom bayit. We see divorce in much the same way a responsible surgeon sees a dangerous operation: as something to be undertaken only when there is no other choice. We think the no-fault approach to divorce that took hold in the West in the 1970s needs to be re-examined, because the road from 'no fault' to 'no fairness' and 'no morality' is a short one.
As familists, we recognize the fact that an abusive family member of either sex can turn the lives of the family's other members into nightmares. We understand that sometimes divorce is inevitable. We believe that domestic abuse needs to be treated with the array of tools available to the social and legal systems, and that this matter must occupy a permanently high place in our society's priorities. All this does not contradict our basic belief in the intact family as something society has an interest in preserving.
As familists, we would like to see the Knesset repeal divorce-promoting legislation like the "Single Parent Families Act". We do not believe financial incentives should be automatically granted to a mother just because she divorced her husband. We need to find a way to assist divorced mothers who put their best years into child raising and the expense of their career, especially if the divorce was no fault of their own, but we also need to prevent situations in which divorcing a man becomes an accepted fast track to making easy money, and courts can be counted upon to wrest inflated child support payments from low-income fathers, even if this entails driving them into penury.
As familists we do not think "a woman's place is in the kitchen" and we are fully aware of the important role feminism has played in shattering negative stereotypes about women. As people who value family life and child raising as life's deepest goal and satisfaction, we obviously have nothing against dads who choose to stay home with their children. But for the very same reasons, society must not mock women who choose to stay at home. Women should have the right to choose the role of housewife/mom as their main vocation – for a short time or a lifetime – without being negatively branded for it. Women must not allow themselves to be enslaved by the militant feminists who claim to free them. They should be freed to think for themselves.
Goals
The Family Lobby's current goal is to educate the Israeli public about the true statistics regarding domestic abuse and to free Israel's media from the iron grip of the anti-family, anti-male, anti-child cadres.
We want the Knesset to have a Committee for the Family that would replace the Committee for Advancement of Women and the Children's Rights Committee (which are currently controlled by militant feminists). In the 17th Knesset we lobbied successfully for the creation of a subcommittee of inquiry into the family crisis, that summoned police officers, academicians and welfare officers. The committee was stonewalled and eventually killed by the militant feminist establishment. However, we have come back with even greater force in the 18th Knesset and recently received extensive press coverage.
We are a nonprofit volunteer group, and lack the necessary resources to mount a professional lobby effort. We would greatly appreciate any help we can get. If you would like to contribute to our efforts in any way, please write us at familism@gmail.com .
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