[News] Ending Zionism is a feminist issue

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Ending Zionism is a feminist issue

Nada Elia <http://electronicintifada.net/people/nada-elia>
*http://electronicintifada.net/content/ending-zionism-feminist-issue/13631 
<http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada>*
24 July 2014

As Israel's assault <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gazaunderattack> 
on the besieged Palestinian population in Gaza 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza> approaches its third week, we 
continue to hear about the "disproportionate number" of women and 
children victims. This expression begs the question: what is a 
proportionate number of women and children killed in a genocide 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/genocide>?

As /Jadaliyya's/ Maya Mikdashi asks in her op-ed titled "Can Palestinian 
men be victims? 
<http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/18644/can-palestinian-men-be-victims-gendering-israels-w>", 
if a significant majority of the killed were adult men, would Israel's 
crimes be lesser?

A different analysis of gendered violence is necessary: one that 
recognizes that no "proportions" are acceptable because all deaths 
should be mourned, while providing the tools for a differential 
understanding of the manifestations of violence.


    Rape calls

The feminist network INCITE! Women and Trans People of Color Against 
Violence has always understood that state violence is both racialized 
and gendered.

Zionism <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/zionism> is a prime example 
of that; it is a racist ideology grounded in the privileging of one 
ethno-religious group over all others.

When a state views a population --- its dispossessed, disenfranchised 
and occupied indigenous population --- as a "demographic threat," that 
view is fundamentally both racist and gendered.

Racist population control relies specifically on violence against women. 
So it is not surprising that Mordechai Kedar, an Israeli military 
intelligence officer turned academic, would matter-of-factly suggest 
this week 
<http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/politics/israeli-sosaciety/8314-israeli-academic-raping-palestinian-women-for-deterrence> 
that "raping the wives and mothers of Palestinian combatants" would 
deter attacks by Hamas <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/hamas> militants.

Similarly, Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/ayelet-shaked> did not attempt to 
present the murder of Palestinian children and their mothers as 
unfortunate, disproportionate "collateral damage" --- she openly called 
for it 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmakers-call-genocide-palestinians-gets-thousands-facebook-likes> 
by asserting that Palestinian women must be killed too, because they 
give birth to "little snakes."

This comment reflects an Israeli infrastructure designed to sustain high 
rates of miscarriages by blocking basic resources such as water 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/water> and medical supplies, forcing 
women in labor to wait at military checkpoints 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/checkpoints> on their way to a 
hospital, and generally creating inhumane and unlivable conditions for 
Palestinians.

This latest murderous attack on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has not 
only taken the lives of hundreds of Palestinians, but it has also 
increased 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/12/israel-gaza-women_n_5581090.html> 
miscarriages, pre-term labor and stillbirths.

Ethiopian-Israeli women, most of them Jewish, have also been subject to 
mandatory contraceptive injections 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/did-israel-violate-genocide-convention-forcing-contraceptives-ethiopian-women> 
without their consent.

Ending Zionism is a feminist and a reproductive justice issue.


    Liberating women?

Of course, gendered violence as a tool for settler-colonialism is not a 
new strategy; settler-colonialism, patriarchy and official hypocrisy 
usually go hand in hand.

Nineteenth-century France <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/france> 
claimed to be liberating Algerian women even as it torched entire 
villages and towns. The proverbial colonial white man would have us 
believe that he was acting on the selfless impulse to save brown women 
from brown men, even as the colonial power he served impoverished entire 
countries.

Algerian women were certainly no better off as result of French 
colonialism; in fact, their circumstances deteriorated significantly.

The George W. Bush <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/george-w-bush-0> 
administration gave itself a pat on the back for supposedly liberating 
women in Afghanistan from the Taliban. Yet we see throughout history, 
and not just in Afghanistan 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/afghanistan>, Iran 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/iran>, Iraq 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/iraq>, Algeria or Palestine, that 
wars have never liberated women and gender nonconforming people of color.


    New brand of hypocrisy

Today, Israel has developed a new brand of this hypocrisy, as it claims 
that it is more civilized than the Palestinian people because it is 
supposedly a more "gay-friendly" country. This is pinkwashing 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/pinkwashing>, Israel's attempt to 
distract from its ongoing human rights violations by pointing to its 
supposedly better gay rights record.

But that record, once again, is racist.

Any Jewish citizen of Israel can and must serve in the Israeli 
occupation forces, but these are the murderous forces engaging in the 
genocide of the Palestinian people.

Does it make for a more moral army if some of its killer soldiers are 
openly gay? Stop to think of who the purveyor of the greater violence 
is. Who is denying Palestinian women, children, gays, lesbians, trans 
people and straight men their most basic rights --- freedom of movement, 
safety, shelter, food, a home, life? One has to acknowledge that the 
guilty party is "civilized" Israel, not Palestinian heteropatriarchy.

War --- militarism --- is a hyper-masculinist activity that glorifies 
and rewards all violence, including gendered violence, and a soldier 
trained in violence cannot put that violence aside when he or she gets home.

All of Israeli society is trained in violence. And violence is not a 
pair of combat boots one can leave at the door; violence becomes second 
nature (unless it was first nature, in which case it is further 
aggravated) and the entire community that engages in warfare is a more 
violent community --- not just at the war front.


    Joint struggle

This is what we are witnessing today, as we have observed it again and 
again every time Israel escalates its assault on the Palestinian people.

As for Palestinians, there are no battlefronts, no "war zones." All of 
historic Palestine is the battlefront as mobs of Israelis take to the 
streets in violent rampages 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-calls-palestinian-blood-ring-fever-pitch/13578>.

This realization has always been at the very core of INCITE's analysis. 
We understand that in situations of settler-colonialism, indigenous 
women, trans people and gender non-conforming people bear the brunt of a 
nexus of racism and sexism. We are engaging in a joint struggle, from 
India <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/india> to the Arab world to 
South West Asia, to Africa <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/africa> 
and the Americas, for the dignity and full sovereignty of indigenous people.

This is why INCITE! endorsed, in 2010, the Palestinian call for boycott, 
divestment and sanctions 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bds> against Israel and remains 
committed to the grassroots struggle against state-sponsored violence 
against the entire Palestinian people.

/Nada Elia served on the Steering Collective of INCITE! Women and Trans 
People of Color Against Violence when it endorsed boycott, divestment 
and sanctions against Israel and is currently serving on the organizing 
collective of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of 
Israel (USACBI)./

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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