On the 5th February 2014 the forum for SFP facilitators convened in the Fred Segal Peace and Friendship Library for the second time. This time we listened to a lecture by Dr Raghda Elnabilsy on her research on racism and sexism within civic organizations. It is a research initiative of the “My Sister” women’s movement and the organization Arous Elbahar. The research consisted of a year-long process with four groups of women: Palestinian, Mizrahi, Russian speaking, and Ethiopian Jews. The groups met once every two weeks and discussed their experiences of the subject for the sake of the research.

Five themes arose from this social process: 1. Civic society reproduces the power relationships between those who hold knowledge and expertise, mostly Ashkenazi Jews, and everyone else. 2. There is a separation or division between parts of civic society on concepts of human rights and social justice, and stopping the occupation. 3. The patriarchy of racism: in all four groups the women mentioned forms of racism they experienced from the Ashkenazi Jews. 4. Leaders of civic organization are mostly middle class. 5. In all the four groups the women mentioned that, although they want to play an active part in civic organizations, they mostly found themselves being used as fig leaves by those organizations. After the lecture there was a discussion between the facilitators that took part in the meeting. The forum takes place once every two months, and each time a facilitator presents on material they have written.