Professor Bernard Lewis, the pre-eminent orientalist and historian, argues that the three factors which could be most helpful in transforming the Middle East are Turkey, Israel, and women. In his book on the Middle East he explains that Turkey always distinguished itself from others in the region, Israel was always boycotted and women were always repressed.

A report published last month (in April) by a justice ministry team investigating the exclusion of women in Israel, as well as the publicized struggle of "the Women of the Wall" for the right to don Jewish prayer shawls [tallit] by the Western Wall, reminded me that in his various writings and public pronouncements, Lewis contends that of the three potential sources of change, women are the most crucial to the region. He believes that if only they were allowed to do so, women could play a central role in moving the Middle East into a new era of material development, scientific progress and political-social liberation. On the other hand, as long as the Muslim states prevent half their population from realizing and implementing their potential, they can never hope to catch up with the developed world, he says.

Lewis has not dealt with the place of women in Israel and the extent to which they are able to fulfill their potential, the extent of their representation at focal points of decision making and their political-social liberation. The important orientalist is, no doubt, bound by the perception that Israel is a beacon of light unto nations in the male chauvinist darkness of the Muslim Middle East. To be more precise — a beacon of light to women of the region. In fact, compared with Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Gaza Strip, Israel is a paradise for women. The majority enjoys completely equal rights and access to employment, higher education, cultural institutions, etc. Nonetheless, one would have expected that in a country that boasts of being “the only democracy in the Middle East,” that prides itself on the number of Nobel laureates (including one woman) it spawned, and which is a member of the OECD, the status of women would be comparable to that of the most developed nations in the West. But that is not the case.

The new report, adopted by Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, illustrates how far we are from those countries. The report points to a huge gap between Israel’s leadership in the areas of science, culture and technology, and its attitude toward half its population. The men and women who wrote the report point to the exclusion of women in the public sphere as “undermining the basic tenets of the democratic rule in Israel, which recognize the value of all human beings, whoever they may be.”