WOMEN AS VICTIMS OF WAR: THE BRITISH CONQUEST (1917) AND THE BLIGHT OF PROSTITUTION IN THE HOLY CITY

Abstract

This passage was published in a manifesto in Hebrew and Yiddish disseminated in Jerusalem in November 1918 by the Municipal Committee of the Ashkenazi Community. According to the memoirs of Moshe Blau and the biography of Yosef Haim Zonnenfeld, both of them leaders of the Jerusalem ultraorthodox community, this manifesto was promulgated at a demonstration that took place in the ultraorthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim in protest this fabrication2namely, the charge of prostitutionand against the Zionist leader who defames the daughters of Jerusalem.3 The tactic of the Ashkenazi Municipal Committee4 seems to have been based on the premise that denying a reality will obliterate it. In other words, in the opinion of the Committee prostitution did not exist in Jerusalem; the women's bodies were not exploited, and their cry went unheard. The female body, which is both the subject and the object of prostitution, was blotted out as though it had never existed. In this denial there is a sort of reproduction of Catherine Mackinnon's definition: Prostitution is a social institution which grants men personality, but denies it to women.5 There was nothing new about the phenomenon of prostitution in the Holy City,6 yet its scope after the British army's entry into the city in December 1917 was exceptional, evoking considerable attention and anxiety.7 Over 26,000 British soldiers were stationed in Jerusalem after the city's conquest.8