Interesting. When religious neighborhoods, or haredi people, request visitors to the area dress modestly, not dress inappropriately, respect the way of life of the locals, or any such style of asking/telling people to not wear miniskirts, tank tops, and the like, the world goes up in arms how backwards they are, how they want to control everyone, how oppressive they are of women, etc.

Yet, the left wing organizations who organize the protests with Arabs against the IDF are calling on participants to not wear tank tops when they come out to protest, and not only does nobody care, but Haaretz is even very supportive of it, and analyzes why and how and if, rather than just condemn them for telling women how to, or not to, dress.

Organizers were quick to point out that the request was made by Palestinian women who take part in the demonstrations and do not feel comfortable with their bare-shouldered partners.

Those opposed noted that any request for modesty in dress is in itself problematic, an oppressive tool stemming from the idea that women are temptresses and men those who are tempted.

There are more arguments, all of them good ones. They mentioned of course the problem of the standing of women in Palestinian society.

Here is another impossible juncture of nationalism and gender, feminism and colonialism: Jews with good intentions want to help disenfranchised Palestinians, but, alas, the society they want to aid does not match up to their liberalism, and they try to change that society. One hears echoes of Indian feminist philosopher Gayatri Spivak's statement about "white men trying to save brown women from brown men," made in connection to Indian women trapped between Indian patriarchy and British colonialism.

Aside from this, the question is raised: Who says that wearing tank tops is a feminist matter?

If one is talking about secular Jewish Israeli society, the problem is not one of coercing women to cover their bodies, but the opposite: the commercialization of female nudity, which may be seen on nearly every public billboard and influences grown men and women, and young people.

True, the issue is not really the tank tops, but the freedom to dress as you like. Here the well-known comparison may be reversed: The political is personal.Everyone must be accountable to themselves; those who feel that limitations on dress damage their freedom of self-expression can refrain from coming to Sheikh Jarrah. Whoever can abide by the request will act accordingly.

To my mind, respect for the culture of people who fight alongside you does no harm to feminism. In any case, one thing is clear: It is important to reject every attempt to ask women to wait for the realization of this seemingly tiny matter of feminism until all the national problems have been solved, as has been the Israeli custom for years. In practice, the opposite is the case: If the feminist struggle is advanced, there is a bigger chance that wars and national problems will move closer to solutions.

To Haaretz, and the rest of the left-wingers in the country, any issue raised by the arabs is fine, whereas the same issue raised by the religious is just plain backwards and oppressive.