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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Ending Zionism is a feminist issue</h1>
<div class="field-author">
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/nada-elia"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Nada Elia</a> </div>
<div class="field-publisher">
<b><small><small><small><a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">http://electronicintifada.net/content/ending-zionism-feminist-issue/13631</a></small></small></small></b>
</div>
<div class="field-publication-date">
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-07-24T22:14:00+00:00">24
July 2014</span> </div>
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media-element file-full" style="width:618px;"><br>
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<p>As Israel’s <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gazaunderattack">assault</a>
on the besieged Palestinian population in <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza">Gaza</a>
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 <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/genocide">genocide</a>?</p>
<p>As <em>Jadaliyya’s</em> Maya Mikdashi asks in her op-ed titled
“<a
href="http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/18644/can-palestinian-men-be-victims-gendering-israels-w">Can
Palestinian men be victims?</a>”, if a significant majority of
the killed were adult men, would Israel’s crimes be lesser?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Rape calls</h2>
<p>The feminist network INCITE! Women and Trans People of Color
Against Violence has always understood that state violence is
both racialized and gendered.</p>
<p><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/zionism">Zionism</a>
is a prime example of that; it is a racist ideology grounded in
the privileging of one ethno-religious group over all others.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/politics/israeli-sosaciety/8314-israeli-academic-raping-palestinian-women-for-deterrence">suggest
this week</a> that “raping the wives and mothers of
Palestinian combatants” would deter attacks by <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/hamas">Hamas</a>
militants.</p>
<p>Similarly, Israeli lawmaker <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/ayelet-shaked">Ayelet
Shaked</a> did not attempt to present the murder of
Palestinian children and their mothers as unfortunate,
disproportionate “collateral damage” — <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmakers-call-genocide-palestinians-gets-thousands-facebook-likes">she
openly called for it</a> by asserting that Palestinian women
must be killed too, because they give birth to “little snakes.”</p>
<p>This comment reflects an Israeli infrastructure designed to
sustain high rates of miscarriages by blocking basic resources
such as <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/water">water</a>
and medical supplies, forcing women in labor to wait at <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/checkpoints">military
checkpoints</a> on their way to a hospital, and generally
creating inhumane and unlivable conditions for Palestinians.</p>
<p>This latest murderous attack on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip
has not only taken the lives of hundreds of Palestinians, but it
has <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/12/israel-gaza-women_n_5581090.html">also
increased</a> miscarriages, pre-term labor and stillbirths.</p>
<p>Ethiopian-Israeli women, most of them Jewish, <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/did-israel-violate-genocide-convention-forcing-contraceptives-ethiopian-women">have
also been subject to mandatory contraceptive injections</a>
without their consent.</p>
<p>Ending Zionism is a feminist and a reproductive justice issue.</p>
<h2>Liberating women?</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Nineteenth-century <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/france">France</a>
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.</p>
<p>Algerian women were certainly no better off as result of French
colonialism; in fact, their circumstances deteriorated
significantly.</p>
<p>The <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/george-w-bush-0">George
W. Bush</a> 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 <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>,
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/iran">Iran</a>, <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/iraq">Iraq</a>,
Algeria or Palestine, that wars have never liberated women and
gender nonconforming people of color.</p>
<h2>New brand of hypocrisy</h2>
<p>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
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/pinkwashing">pinkwashing</a>,
Israel’s attempt to distract from its ongoing human rights
violations by pointing to its supposedly better gay rights
record.</p>
<p>But that record, once again, is racist.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Joint struggle</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>As for Palestinians, there are no battlefronts, no “war zones.”
All of historic Palestine is the battlefront as <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-calls-palestinian-blood-ring-fever-pitch/13578">mobs
of Israelis take to the streets in violent rampages</a>.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/india">India</a> to
the Arab world to South West Asia, to <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/africa">Africa</a>
and the Americas, for the dignity and full sovereignty of
indigenous people.</p>
<p>This is why INCITE! endorsed, in 2010, the Palestinian call for
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bds">boycott,
divestment and sanctions</a> against Israel and remains
committed to the grassroots struggle against state-sponsored
violence against the entire Palestinian people.</p>
<p><em>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).</em></p>
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