The Woman's Word: Our Duty in the Present Circumstances

The Woman's Word

In our political atmosphere there is a stench that stings the nostrils and grips the soul...

The old shelters are being repaired, and many others are being built in readiness for emergencies; the resources of passive and civil defense are astir; and the international news warns, day by day, of a worsening situation. Israel threatens, and Gamal Abdel Nasser returns the slap with two, neither timid nor faint-hearted; and with Syria lies the certain news — there, readiness is complete: forces are being whetted and mobilized to turn Israel's arrows back upon its own throat...

The finest thing they have is that national consciousness and enthusiasm which we merely feign — as though Israel's alleged attack at the opening of spring would do us no harm! As though the black danger did not concern us in the least!

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In Syria, a stone's throw from us, three thousand Palestinian women are demanding to be enlisted, to perform their patriotic duty in this grave hour...

And thousands of Syrian volunteers register their names every day at the centers of the Syrian Red Crescent, to train in first aid and in meeting emergencies — while we sleep on silk, waiting for the Jews to be at our gates before we rise, in a startled panic, and improvise plans to repel the aggression! As though the policy of improvisation had ever availed!

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I do not understand the wise policy behind this apathy and indifference on the part of the responsible men in Lebanon. Is it their conviction that this is merely a war of nerves, and therefore nothing to fear? Even if they are certain of that, there is no excuse for us to remain unarmed. We know well that only the strong man defies and lifts up his voice, while the weak man cowers and is humbled, and in the decisive battle he swallows defeat and shame!

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My sister woman: we do not ask you to volunteer in the army — though even that would not be too much for the homeland, the most sacred of our sanctities. We ask you rather to look about you with awareness and take heed of the encircling danger, and so to realize that a duty rests upon you which may be neither abandoned nor overlooked.

We said this word once before, and appealed to you to band together and study the matter; but you turned your ear from the call and gave it no attention. Today we lift our voice in a loud cry, in the hope that it may reach every ear, however dull its hearing and its awareness...

It is a shame, by God, that in performing our national and social duty we turn aside to secondary matters, when the disease is in the heart, and our whole being is threatened with upheaval and annihilation!

Your responsibility, my sister, goes beyond, at this critical stage, the narrow, superficial field in which you move, into the broad, deep field where problems are treated at their roots and plans are laid in advance for a single end: the defense of our home ground, and the repelling of force by force.

This, my sister, is the fitting opportunity for work — and for swift work. In your heart is an abundance of zeal, loyalty, and sacrifice: harness them all to perfect your personality and to reveal its essence. Write with your own hand, in the register of events, a shining deed whose letters are of fire and light — a deed for history, recorded to your credit with greatness and pride..