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href="http://mondoweiss.net/2017/03/confronting-apartheid-everything/">http://mondoweiss.net/2017/03/confronting-apartheid-everything/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Confronting apartheid has everything to do
with feminism</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Rabab Abdulhadi,
Suzanne Adely, Angela Davis & Selma James - March 21, 2017</div>
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<p class="sizeable">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 <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/opinion/does-feminism-have-room-for-zionists.html?_r=0"
class="sizeable">if there is a place for Zionists in
the feminist movement.</a> 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 <a
href="http://pchrgaza.org/en/?p=8889" class="sizeable">the
Palestinian Center for Human Rights</a>, was busy <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.776098"
class="sizeable">shutting down two events in Jerusalem</a>
marking International Women’s Day.</p>
<p class="sizeable">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.</p>
<p class="sizeable">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.</p>
<p class="sizeable">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.</p>
<p class="sizeable">In this new climate, what is happening
to Palestinian women is not a detail but a vital
question. As a result, <a
href="http://justice4rasmea.org/" class="sizeable">Rasmea
Odeh </a>was one of the women invited to be part of
the leadership of the U.S. strike.</p>
<p class="sizeable">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.</p>
<p class="sizeable">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.</p>
<p class="sizeable">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.</p>
<p class="sizeable">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.</p>
<p class="sizeable"><em><strong>Rabab Abdulhadi </strong>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.</em></p>
<p class="sizeable"><em><strong>Suzanne Adely</strong> 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. </em></p>
<p class="sizeable"><em><strong>Angela Davis</strong> emerged
as a prominent activist in the 1960s as a leader of
the Communist Party </em>USA,<em> 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.</em></p>
<p class="sizeable"><em><strong>Selma James </strong>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, </em>Race<em> 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.” </em></p>
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