Woman’s Rights
Updated 2024-04-08
2024-03-12 We Need Feminism Without Condescension to Respond With Clarity to the Gaza Genocide I looked up the definition of “condescending” for this, just to see if it would provide anything I didn’t already know. What we immediately assume the word to mean if we have heard it before is something like patronizing, or talking down to people. But what is also included in the definition of condescension is “disdain.” Disdain is the feeling that someone is unworthy of your respect.
We know how mainstream Western feminists talk about Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim women. Examples include insisting, either directly or indirectly, that war and occupation will help them somehow or that their oppressors treat women better than they do. “Feminists” like Tammy Duckworth or Nancy Pelosi will always agree that Israel treats women great, as if Palestinian women who are murdered and abused at the hands of Israel don’t exist at all. The subtext of this being that Palestinian women couldn’t possibly know what’s good for them. That’s disdain. That’s not feminism.
Having a perspective on feminism that rejects condescension allows us to avoid the same pitfalls so many people didn’t when the U.S. was talking about invading Afghanistan under the guise of “liberating women.”
When The New York Times came out with a story about mass rape on October 7, we were able to ask, “Where is your evidence?” And we were right to ask those questions, right? And we should be asking a lot of questions when the intent of the story was to galvanize feminists in the West to support the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. They didn’t need evidence. They just needed Western women to consent to dropping bombs on Palestinian women to exact revenge for something that they completely made up. It demanded we value Israeli women over Palestinian women because that’s what they do.
Feminism that is free of condescension allows us to act with clarity in these moments. It allows us to act with humility. It allows us to be in genuine solidarity with women all over the world and not just in our hyper-specific contexts https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/feminism-without-condescension-gaza
2024-03-02 ‘Israel’ killing 63 Palestinian women a day, half being mothers: UN According to a press release by UN Women, the Israeli occupation has killed more than 9,000 women in the besieged Strip. On the 148th day of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported 10 massacres against families in the region. The tragic toll includes 92 martyrs and 156 injuries in 24 hours only. Compounding the devastation, some victims are still trapped under rubble and on roads, with the Israeli occupation hindering the arrival of ambulance and civil defense teams.
The Israeli aggression has so far killed a total of 30,320 Palestinians and resulted in 71,533 injuries since October 7. https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/-israel–killing-63-palestinian-women-a-day–half-being-moth
2023-12-10 ‘Horrifying Precedent’: Penn President Resigns Amid Right-Wing Campus Speech Uproar “She was coerced into resigning for defending her students’ right to political free speech,” said one critic. Professors at the University of Pennsylvania on Saturday were joined by rights advocates in condemning the attacks that forced university president Liz Magill to resign days after she testified before the U.S. Congress.
Magill had angered lawmakers from both parties by refusing to say students should be punished for hypothetically “calling for the genocide of Jews.” Magill announced her resignation Saturday after the university lost a $100 million donation from hedge fund manager Ross Stevens, a Penn alum, due to last Tuesday’s hearing at the House Education and Workforce Committee. Committee members did not point to examples of students actually calling for genocide.
Magill’s testimony represented Penn’s official rules governing free speech, which state that “universities can invest their efforts and resources in educating their members and in creating spaces and contexts for productive dialogue, but they cannot legitimately punish members—students, staff, and faculty—who choose not to participate in those, or who profess bigoted and other hateful views.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/penn-president-resigns
2023-12-07 Media OBSESSES Over Alleged R*pe of Israeli Women, IGNORES Sex*al Violence Against Palestinians Mouin Rabbani joins Katie to discuss the medias cover up of sexual violence targeted at Palestinians conducted by Israelis.
Mouin Rabbani (/ mouinrabbani ) is a researcher and analyst specializing in the contemporary Middle East. He has previously served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Head of Middle East with Crisis Management Initiative/Martti Ahtisaari Centre, and Senior Middle East Analyst and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. He is Senior Fellow with the Institute for Palestine Studies, Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, Contributing Editor of Middle East Report, Associate Fellow of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Policy Advisor to Al-Shabaka – The Palestinian Policy Network. He is also a member of the UN Mediation Roster. Rabbani has published, presented, and commented widely on Middle East issues, including for most major global media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcvk4r2rvlk
2023-12-07 Israeli activists say world has ignored Oct. 7 sexual violence against women A United Nations commission is investigating potential war crimes on both sides of the Israel-Hamas war. But the UN agency dedicated to gender equality has been sharply criticized for waiting until this month to express alarm over sexual violence perpetrated during the October 7 Hamas attacks. Special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen reports. A warning: The accounts in this story are disturbing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDg15fUws3E
2023-12-06 Israel Attacks UN Women But Refuses Investigation Into Sexual Violence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH0U8RJVXlU
2023-11-30 WATCH: UN Security Council Debates Catastrophe in Gaza Russia’s ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya (2:08:35), blasted Western double standards for calling for two meetings a month on Ukraine and zero on Palestine. “Perhaps the fate of the Palestinian population is much less interesting for you from a domestic political perspective,” he said. Nebenzya criticized Western “hypocrites and unprincipled opportunists” who express concern for women’s rights while ignoring the fate of Gaza’s women.
Foreign ministers from several Council nations took part in the meeting Wednesday, in which some countries decried the massacres, while others defended Israel. No solution to the war was found. See video of a joint statement by the foreign ministers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Palestine, Indonesia, Türkiye, the UAE and Egypt. https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/30/watch-un-security-council-debates-catastrophe-in-gaza/
2023-10-26 It’s Feminist to Demand a Ceasefire in Israel–Palestine THREE DAYS BEFORE Hamas committed the bloodiest attack on Israeli civilians in that country’s history, four days before the Israel Defense Forces responded with the most devastating collective punishment of Palestinian civilians in a long history of collective punishment, Palestinian and Israeli feminists gathered to demand peace.
On October 4, hundreds of them, dressed in white and turquoise, in hijabs and sun hats, met at the wall between West Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank (many Palestinian women missed the event because they could not get authorization to cross). Under a canopy of white umbrellas, they walked to the Tolerance Monument in Jerusalem for a rally, then rode to the Dead Sea. On the beach around a symbolic negotiating table, alongside diplomats and other public figures, they read a “mothers’ call” for a nonviolent resolution to the conflict.
Written jointly by the Israeli organization Women Wage Peace and the Palestinian Women of the Sun, the declaration Opens in a new tab begins: “We, Palestinian and Israeli mothers, are determined to stop the vicious cycle of bloodshed and to change the reality of the difficult conflict between both nations, for the benefit of our children.” Or, as Huda Abu Arqoub, director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace, put it: “We want our kids to be alive rather than dead.” https://theintercept.com/2023/10/26/israel-palestine-feminism-ceasefire/
2023-09-23 Gatekeepers of democracy: The 3 women who are the Israeli gov’t’s biggest enemies By chance (or not), the government’s three biggest enemies, the gatekeepers of democracy and public services, happen to be women.
This year, Rosh Hashanah came at the end of one of the most challenging years in Israel’s history. The country is facing difficulties that run the full gamut of society: the economy, high cost of living, security, terrorism, and internal strife. Above all, this year has been marked by internal conflicts that have led to division among the Israeli people, tearing the country apart from within. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sixth government, the most religious and extremist government in Israel’s history, promised stability and tranquility. And yet during the nine months of its existence, its leaders have not stopped to lay down their swords for even one moment.
From the judicial reform to the budget allocations for settlers and haredim and the daily attacks by coalition MKs on the gatekeepers – the Supreme Court and senior IDF and security establishment leaders – the Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir-Smotrich government has left no stone unturned in its comprehensive attack on anyone who does not toe the line. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-760078
2023-09-12 The untold story of the abuse of Palestinian women in Hebron The humiliation of Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers in the occupied city of Al Khalil (Hebron) on July 10 was not the first such episode. Sadly, it will not be the last. Indeed, the stripping of five women in front of their children, parading them naked around their family home and then stealing their jewelry by an Israeli military unit, was not a random act. It deserves deep reflection.
Palestinians rightly understood the event, investigated at length by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, in a report published on September 5, as an intentional Israeli policy.
The B’Tselem investigation was damning. “Dozens of masked soldiers, with dogs” raided the ‘Ajlouni family in southern Hebron, B’Tselem said. They “handcuffed three family members”, including a minor, “separated men from women and children, and began an extensive search of them and their home”. The humiliating episode was yet to follow, as “masked female soldiers” threatened a mother with a dog and forced her to strip completely naked in front of her children. The degrading treatment was repeated against four other women, as they were forced to move, naked, from room to room. Other soldiers, meanwhile, were busy stealing the family’s jewelry, according to the report.
Corporate Western media ignored the investigation, although it enthusiastically reported on the retaliatory attacks on Israeli occupation soldiers by Palestinian youth in Jericho and Jerusalem, providing little or no context to what they perceived to be “Palestinian terrorism”. But the Hebron women and the ‘Ajlouni family are the actual victims of terrorism, Israeli terrorism.
Though the Hebron incident is a repeat of numerous violations of Palestinian rights and dignity spanning many years, there is still much we can learn from it. Humiliating Palestinians is an actual Israeli policy and cannot be attributed to “a few bad apples” in an otherwise “most moral army in the world”.
This assertion can easily be demonstrated by a quick comparison of the behavior of Zionist militias during the Nakba (1947-48) to later episodes, and, eventually, to the recent events in Hebron. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s “Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” provides illuminating, although difficult-to-read passages on the rape of Palestinian women during those horrific years. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported last year that sensitive references were purposely removed from unclassified Israeli military documents concerning the events that led to the Nakba. https://jordantimes.com/opinion/ramzy-baroud/untold-story-abuse-palestinian-women-hebron
2023-01-03 The IDF has a problem with female soldiers – opinion We are already heading in a dangerous direction with female representation in this new government. Will we allow this to happen in the IDF as well?
Over the last couple of weeks, Israeli women have taken to social media to voice their anger and frustration over the recent letter from senior religious Zionist rabbis discussing the issue of sexual harassment in the Israel Defense Forces. As some of us may know, Israeli women serve two mandatory years in the IDF. The army makes exemptions for medical and mental health reasons or if the person comes from a sector of the country that isn’t required to do mandatory services. The army also gives women special exemptions if they are married or pregnant and for religious purposes. Yet, a growing voice in Israeli religious society is pushing for women to opt out of the army and instead choose National Service.
It seems the IDF has an internal problem that it needs to address. A report from 2021 says that a third of Israeli female soldiers experience sexual harassment during their mandatory service. A State Comptroller’s Report found that less than half of the Israeli female soldiers who experienced harassment filed a complaint. Of those, 44% said their complaints were not handled properly, and 26% stated that their complaints were not handled at all. Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual in what are considered “male-dominated” environments. https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-726466
2021-09-23 US-born ex-MK Marcia Freedman, a pioneer of Israeli women’s rights, dies at 83 The only openly lesbian lawmaker in Israeli history, activist helped found Israeli feminist movement, discussed domestic violence in 1970s to male colleagues’ ridicule.
Marcia Freedman, an Israeli lawmaker who was a pioneer of LGBTQ and women’s rights in the 1970s and initiated the first women’s shelter in the country, died on Tuesday at the age of 83. The United States-born left-winger was also an early champion of the two-state solution, advocating recognition of an independent Palestinian state. She divorced her husband in her late 30s and came out as the first known gay Knesset member. To this day, she is the only openly lesbian woman to have served in the Israeli parliament. https://www.timesofisrael.com/former-mk-marcia-freedman-early-pioneer-of-womens-rights-in-israel-dies-at-83/
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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict
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