Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation

Scapegoat is the ninth nonfiction book by Jewish-American radical feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin. It was published in 2000 by Free Press. In it, Dworkin compares the oppression of women with the persecution of Jews, arguing that both groups have been made scapegoats, and examines the sexual politics of Jewish identity and antisemitism.

Its central thesis calls for establishing a women's homeland as a response to the oppression of women, just as the Zionist movement established a state for Jews. Dworkin argues that the modern state of Israel arose from the historical persecution of the Jewish people, but was also driven by the felt need of Jewish Israeli men to prove their masculinity in response to that past victimization. According to the author, this produced a militaristic and patriarchal society in Israel that subjugated Jewish women, Arab Israelis, and Palestinians.

The book was highly controversial. Kirkus Reviews dismissed it as a "deplorable piece of man-hating propaganda," while Sophie Lewis, writing in Spectre, saw it as the despairing culmination of Dworkin's thought and criticized its sweeping historical analogies and its political vision as fascistic.