Friday, July 12, 2024
The workshop was organized in the shadow of Israel’s relentless genocidal war against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, ongoing since October 7, 2023, and amid the worsening impact of this destructive war on Palestinians in their various locations. The event was dedicated to offering feminist, anti-colonial readings of the everyday situation of Palestinian women and their multiple means of resistance. The workshop discussed the violation of Palestinian bodies, the suffering of Palestinian prisoners, and addressed feminist voices from around the world expressing solidarity with Palestine and opposition to colonialism. It also examined those ‘feminist’ voices that are complicit with Zionism and with its genocidal war. The workshop consisted of an opening session and three panel sessions.
Afnan Agbariya, a political activist and member of Mada al-Carmel’s Board of Directors, opened the workshop, moderated its first session, and welcomed the participants on behalf of Mada al-Carmel. In her speech, she stated, “The ongoing Nakba is a reflection of the Zionist objectives of displacement and land seizure that is continuing even during the genocidal war on Gaza, and in the killing and displacement taking place in the West Bank and Jerusalem. These objectives are also being manifested in the systematic policy of eradicating the Palestinian capacity to sustain an organized political community, and of blocking the emergence of a representative political body for Palestinians in all their areas of residence.” She emphasized the importance of feminist knowledge production, which fights against oppression and struggles to construct a society based on the values of freedom, justice, and equality. She stressed that any feminist approach that does not engage in a struggle against colonialism is unsound.
Next spoke Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a member of Mada al-Carmel’s Board of Directors, and a critical feminist activist, lecturer and researcher. In her lecture, Shalhoub-Kevorkian opened her talk by asking, “Why do we not knock more loudly on the door of the tank, and how can we breathe when we are living through the horrors of genocide?” She pointed to the importance of questioning how to create an intellectual movement and a vernacularized body of feminist knowledge against the backdrop of a genocide that uses ‘fragmented flesh’ (ashlaa’) to dehumanize the Palestinians, contrasting it with Gazans, who defend the right to dignity in death. She stressed that a radical feminist approach requires one to address political, economic and social challenges, and thus to place the reality of genocide, and resistance to it, at its heart.
The first panel session was titled “Feminist voices and the war on the Gaza Strip”. In the first presentation, by political activist and researcher Dr. Yasmeen Daher (a Doctor of Philosophy), and Dr. Himmat Zoubi (an urban sociologist and Director of Research Projects at Mada al-Carmel), they proposed a feminist approach towards “Global solidarity with Palestine – Berlin as an example”. The two speakers, who drew on their experiences and observations of various political movements in Berlin, discussed the history and specificity of Germany vis-à-vis Palestine and the Palestinians, which gives context to the way we understand the current pro-Palestinian movement. They addressed a variety of Berlin-based political movements and the clear influence they wield, especially transnational movements. They then pointed to the powerful impact of the intersectional feminist perspective, which has risen to prominence in the student movement for Palestine in particular. They also touched on points of commonality and tension between the movement of the Palestinian community in Berlin and the global movement for Palestine in terms of intersectional feminist approaches. They concluded by raising a number of challenges to these political movements, including questions concerning sustainability after the genocide, and the complementarity versus competitiveness of the struggles of the various active groups. They also raised a number of challenges and obstacles associated with methods of networking among feminists around the world and Palestinians in Palestine, in both intellectual and practical terms.
Remonda Mansour, a feminist activist who holds a Master’s degree in criminology, and Dr. Areen Hawari, a researcher in gender studies (GSP) and Director of Mada al-Carmel, addressed “Feminist Complicity”. Mansour stated that it is only when the feminist approach is anti-colonial, opposes injustice and oppression, advocates for equality, freedom and social justice, and when it stands with women in their struggle for human dignity that is free of repression, and argues for liberation in both the private and public spheres, both in theory and practice, that we can call it a feminist perspective. However, this is not the case with Israeli/Zionist feminism, where feminist perspectives are unified and homogenous, and aligned with the colonial project in word and deed. As such, it is more than complicit. It operates in alliance with the occupation and with acts of repression and exclusion, and in organic harmony with the essence of Zionism and its slogan of “A land without a people for a people without a land”. Thus, feminism within this context acts as an agent of the Zionist project and colludes in its outcomes. She added that, after October 7, this women’s/feminist supported the genocidal war on Gaza, and stood alongside armament and militarization, denying the primary and fundamental concepts that distinguish women’s and feminist movements and their actions around the world.
Hawari argued that the mainstream feminist discourse in Israel is structurally connected to the colonial system and bound to its project and discourse. As an example, she presented an analysis of the feminist discourse and the discourse of freedoms adopted by those who took part in the protests against the so-called ‘judicial reform plan’. She stated that the war waged by the movement that espouses feminist discourse in Israel against the Netanyahu government and the extreme right wing was not directed against the government’s fascist laws or its racism against Palestinians, but rather against the government’s opposition to gender equality for Jewish women and to the rights of the Jewish LGBT community. The ‘feminist’ movement itself, channeled to serve the benefit of the tribe, revealed itself most clearly in the aftermath of October 7. ‘Feminist’ efforts were concentrated on supporting the army and advocating for the representation of women in wartime decision-making positions. Meanwhile, in defense of Israeli women, voices opposed to the war and to the genocide of Palestinian women, men and children were almost entirely absent from the feminist mainstream in Israel.
Professor Leila Farsakh, a researcher on political economy and Associate Professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, commented on the preceding presentations. She welcomed the term ashlaa’ (fragmented flesh) proposed by Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, as a conceptual term for contending with the reality of the genocide the Palestinian people are living through as a result of the Zionist assault on Gaza. She emphasized how this term allows for a central feminist emancipatory analysis of the attempt to gather up the fragmented flesh (ashlaa’), physically and politically, and thus to challenge the genocide and rise from the wreckage. The phrase ‘gathering up the fragmented flesh (ashlaa’) also helps us to understand the global students’ movement that Daher and Zoubi discussed in the context of Germany. The presentation on the connection between the Palestinians abroad and Palestinians in Palestine demonstrated the unity of the Palestinian people and cause, despite its geographical fragmentation and Western exclusion. This movement also revealed the depth of feminist understanding within student activism, despite the absence of a discourse explicitly adopting feminism, which in turn indicates the significance of the cumulative Palestinian feminist work carried out up to the present day.
The second panel session was titled, “Violation of Bodies: A feminist reading”, and was moderated by Dr. Areen Hawari. The first presentation, “From Abu Graib to Gaza: Torture from an intersectional feminist perspective”, was given by Dr. Isis Nusair, a lecturer in women and gender studies and international studies at Denison University. Nusair discussed how the essentialist, binary discourse of Orientalism and military hyper-masculinity is justified to facilitate and shape the gendered, racial and sexual torture of Palestinians in Gaza, linking it to the torture that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the actions of the Israeli army in Gaza in 2023-2024. She addressed the representation of the ‘enemy other’ within the official Israeli discourse, which echoed similar representations of Al-Qaeda in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Within this discourse, Palestinians are portrayed as ‘backwards’, ‘barbarians’ and ‘human animals’, and the war as a part of a battle between ‘light and darkness’, and between the ‘civilized and uncivilized’ worlds. Drawing on an analysis of testimonies given by Palestinian men and women, Nusair traced how these settler-colonial discourses and representations are interlaced with a desire to weaken and dehumanize the ‘enemy other’, referring to recurring acts of stripping Palestinian detainees as an embodiment of the colonial gaze that seeks to expose, penetrate and control them. She closed her presentation with an analysis of local and transnational modes of resisting the hegemonic regime and eradicating genocide.
The second lecture, entitled “The Sanctity of Bodies and Connotations of Clothing under the Bombardment of the Gaza Strip”, was presented by Dr. Hadeel Rizq al-Qazzaz, a feminist researcher from Gaza who resides in the West Bank. Rizq al-Qazzaz stated that, amid the genocidal war on Gaza, uses of clothing have appeared not as a means of exercising control over the bodies of women, but rather as a means of resistance against the daily violation of the sanctity of bodies and identity, and the complete inability to perform the acts of daily life, or to express one’s personality or national identity. At a time in which the last strongholds of safety and security are being destroyed, including homes and even tents, prayer dress – the official attire of the war – has emerged as a practical and economical form of expression, a political message, and an act of resistance to all preconceived ideas and judgments.
In a lecture on “The War on Gaza and the War on Gazans in Prisons: Torture and ill-treatment, the experience of a feminist lawyer”, Janan Abdu, a lawyer, researcher and feminist activist specializing in prisoners and torture, shared her experiences working with detainees from Gaza. She spoke of visiting them in military prisons, hearing the testimonies of freed detainees, and communicating with their families. Abdu provided an analysis of how the law and legal procedures function in the service of politics. They include the legal amendments that followed October 7, such as those relating to ‘illegal combatants’, which have entrenched and justified the violation of the rights of Palestinian detainees, their dehumanization and their portrayal as monsters that may be subjected to ill-treatment and torture. Further, they may be denied due process rights, including through the forced disappearance of detainees without the provision of information about their place of detention or other details, prevented from accessing lawyers, and completely cut off from the outside world. She discussed new procedures that further hinder lawyers’ visits to detainees, and the enormous psychological pressures that she has faced as a feminist lawyer in visiting Gazan prisoners held in military detention incommunicado and prevented from contacting their families. She affirmed the importance of these visits for legal and oversight purposes, as well as for documenting and exposing what is happening inside prisons, which strongly recalls what took place in Guantanamo and Abu Graib.
The third session addressed “Feminist Approaches to Crime and Political and Sexual Violence”. The session was moderated by Jowana Jbara, coordinator of Mada al-Carmel’s Graduate Students’ Support Program and a PhD candidate in gender studies at Tel Aviv University.
The first lecture in this session was entitled, “The Search for Refuge: An ethnographic reading of the experience of the LGBT community from the 1967 Occupied Territories with the bureaucracy of the Occupation”, and was delivered by Zeinab Hassan, a researcher and Master’s degree student in anthropology at Tel Aviv University. In her presentation, Hassan discussed the experiences of LGBT Palestinians from the West Bank who have sought refuge in the State of Israel after being subjected to threats and harassment from their families and others in their immediate environment due to their sexual and gender identity. She focused on the various levels of violence and the ways in which this violence is practiced against individuals through a detailed explanation of the bureaucratic process by which individuals may acquire a temporary and conditional residency permit in the State of Israel. She argued that this process is arbitrary and built on changing laws that have no fixed basis, and that it leaves individuals in a permanent state of waiting and instability, as they are dependent on the decisions and hidden agenda of the occupier. Therefore, this process is a form of bureaucratic violence, one that makes the individual a target for political, social, economic and sexual exploitation. She continued by addressing the different forms of violence to which members of this group are vulnerable, and which leave a large number of them victims of sexual exploitation. She concluded her talk by arguing that Palestinians in this situation find themselves stuck between the choice of staying with their families, which reject their sexual and gender identity, and being accommodated by their occupier under conditions and forms of violence that may not be fully apparent at first sight.
In a presentation on “The Silencing of Women’s Voices, Between Theory and the Practice”, Ranin Diab, a social activist and Master’s degree student in anthropology at the University of Haifa, spoke about the women’s movement in the town of Tamra. She explained that this movement was created and organized from the outcries of women and their need for a platform and space in which they can raise their voices aloud, voices that have been excluded from decision-making positions and traditional peace-making committees. Diab stressed that the silencing of women’s voices is a daily practice carried out against women in relation to their most basic needs. She compared field research carried out in Tamra on the issue of public transportation and the way in which women, and all those who use public transportation on a daily basis, are marginalized, to theories and work plans that are far removed from the needs on the ground, be they projects to tackle violence and crime, or those related to services such as public transportation.
The final presentation in the session, on “Sexual Assault during Conflicts and Wars”, was delivered by Nisreen Tabari, a political activist and Director of Kayan Feminist Organization. She argued that wars and conflicts provide a fertile environment for sexual crimes, adding that, within patriarchal societies, perpetrators employ the concept of ‘honor’ to undermine men’s sense of dignity, which exacerbates their fears, destroys their spirit and morale, and thus breaks their will and that of their society to resist. She further stated that, “The patriarchal social structure that dominates our Palestinian society constitutes the weak spot through which the adversary achieves his goals. It will continue to present an obstacle to the fulfilment of our struggles for political and social liberation unless we grasp the fact that there is no prospect for the liberation of our society and our country if we do not integrate and create cohesion between our national and feminist struggles.”
Isis Nusair then contributed a comment in which she highlighted the importance of the session in terms of the interactions that took place between younger and older generations of feminist researchers and activists, and of the benefit offered by the body of work accumulated over two generations, as well as the overlap between feminist theory and practice. She also noted the importance of the intersectional feminist approach, which analyzes every phenomenon through its interaction with social, economic, political and cultural structures. She emphasized the role played by institutions and the importance of mobilization, and of not treating any marginalized group – for example, the LGBT community – merely as an object of research or service recipients, but instead as active and powerful agents. At the end of her comment, she posed a set of questions, including: How do we speak about violence in the shadow of the genocide taking place in Gaza? How do we improve communication and community-building in the various Palestinian geographies? And how can we rethink the creation of liberated areas, i.e. spaces characterized by increased freedom, justice and dignity?
During the sessions, the participants underscored the importance of continuing the discussion in future workshops on the political situation and the genocidal war from a feminist perspective that integrates academic analysis with emancipatory thought and practice. The workshop organizers confirmed that Mada al Carmel’s Gender Studies Program is in contact with the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University in order to develop a joint program that will continue to tackle the issues raised in the workshop, as well as other critical issues relevant within our context.
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