Not every ugly act toward a woman is misogynistic. What Avi Gabbay did to Tzipi Livni didn't "harm all women in Israel." We're talking about politics, not patriarchy.
Livni is an experienced politician. Her career comprises many dozens of political moves, some of them not very respectable. She's passed through four political parties, more than any other politician on the scene. When the Winograd Commission submitted its report on the Second Lebanon War, she was foreign minister and even then, the prime minister at the time, Ehud Olmert, accused her of undermining him.
She abandoned the Kadima party once she lost the primary elections to Shaul Mofaz. She left the party in massive debt and almost single-handedly dismantled the platform that had given her a realistic shot at the premiership. She engaged in tough, uncompromising negotiations with Isaac Herzog, motivated more by politics than principles. She also explored ways to replace Gabbay; we can assume she would have tried.
And all this is fine. A person who wants to be part of the political system has to be, first and foremost, a politician. All the nice words about a different type of politics don't pass muster in crunch time. Politics is a profession that sharpens the mind but spoils the soul. Livni has played this game better than most.
What's her secret? On the battered and bruised Left, anyone who (still) uses the magic words "diplomatic agreement" automatically gets three mandates, and if they add the word "peace," that number jumps to five. We're so tired and hungry and waiting for new tidings that we're willing to settle for a statement about the importance of the Supreme Court.
If we examine her political career a little deeper, we see that she was an uninfluential lawmaker and a minister in the Netanyahu government in charge of nonexistent peace negotiations. During her time in Kadima, when Mofaz was talking about party unity and his diplomatic plans, she was the one snickering on the side as the media handled her with kid gloves.
Yes, the manner in which Gabbay said goodbye wasn't particularly elegant. On the contrary, it was a crass political maneuver that should and could have been tempered. But to paint his conduct as misogyny is going way too far. It's just politics; no more, no less.
There aren't enough women in the political arena but those who do step inside need to understand the rules of the game. Presenting relatively commonplace political acts as misogyny weakens women as politicians and us as women.
Tzipi Livni, you were the target of a political hit job because you're a political force, not because you're a woman.
