[News] Confronting apartheid has everything to do with feminism

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://mondoweiss.net/2017/03/confronting-apartheid-everything/


  Confronting apartheid has everything to do with feminism

Rabab Abdulhadi, Suzanne Adely, Angela Davis & Selma James - March 21, 2017

Attacking the International Women’s Strike on March 8, supporters of 
Israel argued that the decolonization of Palestine has no place in 
feminism and further asked if there is a place for Zionists in the 
feminist movement. 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/opinion/does-feminism-have-room-for-zionists.html?_r=0> 
We turn the question around and ask if the occupation of Palestine, the 
bombings of Gaza, the apartheid that applies two separate and unequal 
systems to Israel’s relationship to Palestinians–can be compatible with 
feminism? While Israel’s apologists were posing such questions, the 
Israeli army, as reported by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights 
<http://pchrgaza.org/en/?p=8889>, was busy shutting down two events in 
Jerusalem <http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.776098> marking 
International Women’s Day.

Had Zionists who call themselves feminists understood the International 
Women’s Strike (IWS) as reflective of an indivisible sense of justice, 
they would have readily realized that the IWS call cannot tolerate 
racism. An inclusive feminism has rightfully rejected the Zionist 
justification of Israel’s violation of the rights of millions of 
Palestinian women and girls, both refugees and those living under 
barbaric occupation and siege.

Historically, some women, including the richest and most prominent, have 
identified themselves with a feminism that ignores race and class, and 
thus ignores most women, who are directly impacted by poverty, racism, 
war and occupation, and environmental devastation in the industrial and 
non-industrial world. Such feminists celebrate the women who have broken 
the glass ceiling and moved into the 1%. For them, feminism means the 
right of women to be equal to men in managing capitalism with its 
exploitation, occupation, racism and underlying it all, sexism.

At its root, feminism is a movement demanding liberation for women. The 
struggle for women’s rights under the banner of feminism cannot 
meaningfully exist without addressing and working to eliminate 
oppression rooted in racism, colonialism and capitalism. This is the 
case for women in many countries who support the feminism of the 99%. In 
other words, grassroots women are not merely the backdrop but the 
central concern of their movement. Accordingly, the platform of the 
International Women’s Strike lifted up many of the most crucial issues 
undermining women’s survival around the world: an end to gender 
violence, reproductive justice for all, labor rights, social programs, 
and an end to environmental degradation—in short, an anti-racist and 
anti-imperialist agenda.

In this new climate, what is happening to Palestinian women is not a 
detail but a vital question. As a result, Rasmea Odeh 
<http://justice4rasmea.org/>was one of the women invited to be part of 
the leadership of the U.S. strike.

Rasmea Odeh is a Chicago-based Palestinian community leader who has 
diligently and persistently fought for the empowerment of Arab immigrant 
women by providing leadership development and English language services, 
as well as alleviating the isolation experienced by newly arrived 
immigrant families.

Ms. Odeh was subjected to torture and sexual assault for resisting 
colonization and occupation. Her life story embodies the experience of 
all women who have survived racist state violence. The false accusations 
against Ms. Odeh, repeated by self-identified Zionists are malicious and 
intended to criminalize Ms. Odeh and her supporters. This has the effect 
of legitimizing the use of torture against political prisoners as a 
means to coerce information to justify their imprisonment.

What has happened to Ms. Odeh at the hands of Israel is replicated all 
over the globe by repressive and imperialist governments. The feminism 
of the 99% which is now emerging rejects this persecution and torture, 
wherever it takes place.

Zionist feminism is an oxymoron. It may have had a shared legacy with 
white-women-only feminism but it does not reflect the conviction of 
today’s activists who refuse to stand by the notion of justice for some 
of us while denying justice to others. We reject Zionism and Zionist 
feminism. A growing number of women are recognizing that the feminism 
that does not confront capitalism, racism, and colonialism will not lead 
to liberation, just as there is no liberation possible without 
confronting sexism. Any way forward must overcome the voices of 
selective feminism that defend systems of oppression and try to silence 
our voices.

/*Rabab Abdulhadi *is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies/Race and 
Resistance Studies and the Senior Scholar of the Arab and Muslim 
Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative, at the College of Ethnic Studies, 
San Francisco State University. She is the co-editor of the 
award-winning anthology, Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, 
Violence and Belonging and her work has appeared in dozens of journals 
on gender and justice (Syracuse University Press) and co-founder and 
editorial board member of the Islamophobia Studies Journal. Abdulhadi is 
co-chair of Feminists for Justice in Palestine, the interest group that 
initiated and organized that NWSA campaign for BDS in 2015./

/*Suzanne Adely* is a global labor human rights lawyer and activist. She 
is a member of the International Women’s Strike (IWS) U.S. Planning 
Committee, co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild International 
Committee, bureau member of the International Association of Democratic 
Lawyers and an organizer with the US Palestine Community Network and the 
Palestine Right to Return Coalition. /

/*Angela Davis* emerged as a prominent activist in the 1960s as a leader 
of the Communist Party /USA,/and had close relations with the Black 
Panther Party. She co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization 
working to abolish the prison-industrial complex and was a professor 
(now retired) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in its 
History of Consciousness Department and a former director of the 
university’s Feminist Studies department./

/*Selma James *is an activist, political thinker, and writer. She is the 
founder of the International Wages for Housework Campaign and helped 
launch the Global Women’s Strike. She is the author of numerous 
publications, including, most recently, Sex, /Race/and Class — The 
Perspective of Winning: A Selection of Writings 1952-2011. While married 
to and involved in political work with the late C.L.R. James, Selma 
wrote her seminal 1952 essay, “A Woman’s Place.” /

-- 
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