Gaza as Woman
Jan 11th, 2009 by admin
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The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to 854 and more than 3,350 injured as the Israeli offensive entered its third week.
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera: “We have been to many war zones, but the special thing is that the 1.5 Gaza population are completely locked in.
“The civilian population has no way to hide. The population density is so high you can not do attacks like this without knowing that you are attacking the civilians.” Link
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Human Rights Watch has called on Israel to stop using white phosphorus which it says has been used in military operations in the densely populated Gaza Strip.
The US-based group said that its researchers observed the use of the chemical, which can burn away human flesh to the bone, over Gaza City and Jabalya on Friday and Saturday.
“We went by Israeli artillery units that had white phosphorus rounds with the fuses in them,” Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera. Link
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Israelis protesting
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Gaza, boys with slingshots
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Gaza — The hat reads, “We give our souls to Gaza.”
I knew from my own urgent effort to try to understand racism — from the Nazis to the situation I lived in, hatred of black people in the United States, the existence of legal segregation in the South — that Israel was impossible: fundamentally wrong, organized to betray egalitarian aspirations — because it was built from the ground up on exclusion, necessarily stigmatizing those who were not Jews. Social equality was impossible unless only Jews lived there. With hostile neighbors and a racial paradigm for the state’s identity, Israel had to become either a fortress or a tomb. I didn’t think it made Jews safer. I did understand that it made Jews different: different from the pathetic creatures on the trains, the skeletons in the camps; different; indelibly different. It was a great relief — to me too — to be different from the Jews in the cattle cars. Different mattered. As long as it lasted, I would take it. And if
Israel ended up being a tomb, a tomb was better than unmarked mass graves for millions all over Europe — different and better. I made my peace with different; which meant I made my peace with the State of Israel. I would not have the blood of Jews on my hands. I wouldn’t help those who wanted Israel to be a place where more Jews died by saying what I thought about the implicit racism. It was shameful, really: distance me, Lord, from those pitiful Jews; make me new. But it was real and even I at ten, eleven, twelve needed it.
I was taught about feyadeen: Arabs who crossed the border into Israel to kill Jews. In the years after Hitler, this was monstrous. Only someone devoid of any humanity, any conscience, any sense of decency or justice could kill Jews. They didn’t live there; they came from somewhere else. They killed civilians by sneak attack; they didn’t care whom they killed just so they killed Jews.
I realized only as a middle-aged adult that I was raised to have prejudice against Arabs and that the prejudice wasn’t trivial. My parents were exceptionally conscious and conscientious about racism and religious bigotry — all the homegrown kinds — hatred of blacks or Catholics, for instance. … They took a social stance against racism, for civil rights, that put them in opposition to many neighbors and members of our family….My parents went out of their way to say “some Arabs,” to emphasize that there were good and bad people in every group; but in fact my education in the Jewish community made that caveat fairly meaningless. Arabs were primitive, uncivilized, violent. …Arabs hated and killed Jews. Really, I learned that Arabs were irredeemably evil. In all my travels through life, which were extensive, I never knew any Arabs; and ignorance is the best friend of prejudice.
In my mid-thirties I started reading books by Palestinians. These books made me understand that I was misinformed. I had had a fine enough position on the Palestinians — or perhaps I should say the “Palestinian question” — to convey the right ring of condescension, once I knew they existed, long after I was eleven. Maybe 20 years ago, I knew they existed. I knew they were being wronged. I was for a two-state solution. Over the years, I learned about the Israeli torture of Palestinian prisoners. I knew Jewish journalists who purposefully suppressed the information so as not to “hurt” the Jewish state. I knew the human rights of Palestinians were being violated. Like my daddy, on social issues, the policy questions, I was fine for my kind. These opinions put me into constant friction with the Jewish community, including my family, many friends, and many Jewish feminists. … I will not argue about the twisted history, who did what to whom when. I will not argue about Zionism except to say that it is apparent that I am not a Zionist and never was. The argument is the same one I had with my Hebrew school principal; my position is the same. Either we get a fair world or we keep getting killed. …
“I think Amerikan Jews cannot face the fact that this is one act — the one act — of imperialism, of conquest, that we support. We helped; we’re proud of it; here we stand. This is a contradiction of every idea we have about who we are and what being a Jew means.”
The land wasn’t empty as I was taught; oh yes, there are a few nomadic tribes but they don’t have homes in the normal sense, not like we do in New Jersey; there are just a few uneducated, primitive, dirty people there now who don’t even want a state. There were people and there were even trees– trees destroyed by Israeli soldiers. The Palestinians are right when they say the Jews regarded them as nothing. I was taught that they were nothing in the most literal sense. Taking the country and turning it into Israel, the Jewish state, was an imperialist act. Jews find any such statement incomprehensible. How could the near-dead, the near extinguished, a people who were ash have imperialized anything, anyone? Well, Israel is rare: Jews, nearly annihilated, took the land and forced a very hostile world to legitimize the theft. I think Amerikan Jews cannot face the fact that this is one act — the one act — of imperialism, of conquest, that we support. We helped; we’re proud of it; here we stand. This is a contradiction of every idea we have about who we are and what being a Jew means. It is also true. We took a country from the people who lived there; we the dispossessed finally did it to someone else. We said, they’re Arabs, let them go somewhere Arab. …
As for the Palestinians, I can only imagine the humiliation of losing to, being conquered by, the weakest, most despised, most castrated people on the face of the earth. This is a feminist point about manhood.
“As for the Palestinians, I can only imagine the humiliation of losing to, being conquered by, the weakest, most despised, most castrated people on the face of the earth. This is a feminist point about manhood.”
…In Tel Aviv before my lecture, I talked with an Israeli soldier, maybe 19, part of the occupying Army in the West Bank. He was home for Sabbath. His mother, a feminist, generously opened her home to me. The mother and son were observant; the father was a secular liberal…Earlier, I had participated with about 400 women in a vigil in Jerusalem against the occupation. The father and son were outraged by the demonstration. The father argued that the demonstrations had nothing to do with feminism. The son argued that the occupation had nothing to do with feminism.
I asked the son about something that had been described to me. Israeli soldiers go into Palestinian villages and spread garbage, broken glass, rocks in the streets and make the women clean up the dangerous rubble bare-handed, without tools. I thought the son would deny it or say such a thing was an aberration. Instead he argued that it had nothing to do with feminism. In arguing, he revealed that this kind of aggression is common; he had clearly seen it or done it many times. His mother’s head sank; she didn’t look up again until the end. What it had to do with feminism, I said, was that it happened to women. He said that was only because Arab men were cowards, they ran and hid. The women, he said, were strong; they weren’t afraid, they stayed. What it had to do with feminism, I said, was that every woman’s life, for a feminist, had the same high value. Feminism meant that the Arab woman’s life was worth as much as his mother’s. Suppose the soldiers came here now, I said, and made your mother go out on the street, get down on her knees, and clean up broken glass with her bare hands.
“What it had to do with feminism, I said, was that every woman’s life, for a feminist, had the same high value. Feminism meant that the Arab woman’s life was worth as much as his mother’s.“
I said feminism also had to do with him; what kind of man he was or was becoming, what hurting other people would do to him; how callous or sadistic it would make him. He said, with perfect understanding: you mean, it will be easier to rape?
He said the Arabs deserved being shot; they were throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, I wasn’t there, I didn’t know, and what did it have to do with feminism anyway? I said that Orthodox men were throwing stones at women in Jerusalem because the women’s arms weren’t covered down to the wrist. He said it was ridiculous to compare the two. I said the only difference I could see was that the women didn’t carry rifles or have any right to shoot the men. He said it wasn’t the same. I asked him to tell me what the difference was. Wasn’t a stone a stone — for a woman too? Weren’t we flesh; didn’t we bleed; couldn’t we be killed by a stone? Were Israeli soldiers really more fragile than women with bare arms? Okay, he said, you do have the right to shoot them; but then you have to stand trial the same way we do if we kill Arabs. I said they didn’t have to stand trial. His mother raised her head to say there were rules, strict rules, for soldiers, really there were, and she wasn’t ashamed of her son. “We are not ashamed,” she said, imploring her husband, who said nothing, “We are not ashamed of him.”
“I said feminism also had to do with him; what kind of man he was or was becoming, what hurting other people would do to him; how callous or sadistic it would make him. He said, with perfect understanding: you mean, it will be easier to rape?”
…The post-conference was chaired by Nabila Espanioli, a Palestinian woman who spoke Hebrew, English, and Arabic. Palestinian women came out of the audience to give first-person testimony about what the occupation was doing to them. They spoke especially about the brutality of the Israeli soldiers. They talked about being humiliated, forcibly detained, being trespassed, being threatened. … For Palestinian women, the occupation is a police state and the Israeli secret police are a constant danger; there is no “safe space.” I already knew that I had Palestinian blood on my hands. What I found out in Israel is that it isn’t any easier to wash off than Jewish blood — and that it is also female.
– Andrea Dworkin in Life and Death — Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War Against Women, in Israel: Whose Country Is It Anyway? first published in Ms Magazine, 1990
Andrea Dworkin as a young woman
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Some of my other posts about Israel and Palestine:
Songs for Gaza
Gaza — December 27, 2008
Appeal for Emergency Aid to Gaza
Gaza — the People Speak
We Overcame Our Fear
Four Years Ago Today — Remembering Rachel Corrie
Bat Shalom — Israeli Women Call for Peace
Earth to Everybody: Israel Killing Civilians Including Children
Israeli Voices on the Siege of Gaza: But What Would You Do?
This is so good, Heart, how you place all the photos–from the terrorized and wounded women and children of Gaza, to the terrorized Jews, to the final picture of Andrea Dworkin. I’ve cried over such images often in the past few days, but today it was that last picture that brought tears to my eyes. Because when I saw her young, smiling face, I knew how she’d spend the rest of her life being relentlessly savaged for being the truth-teller. I think there was enough hate for her to murder her too. And it’s the same mindset that’s doing it all.
Patriarchal religions are genocidal–all of them. It seems so pointless to me to hear people in the media pontificating on how Jews are better than Muslims, or Christians are better than Jews, when the bottom line is always the same and always goes back to those same devastating images of destroyed women and children. We’re watching the patriarchs battle each other over our dead bodies, as usual. As long as humanity is measured by “manhood,” this is going to go on.
Honestly, I’m so devastated by these pictures that I can hardly bear to comment. Because of my government’s support for these actions, I have blood on my hands too, the blood of women, even though I don’t want it. For that, I will never forgive the men who are running this nation. I will never forgive them. I will never again make the mistake of believing they could be my allies. There’s a death’s head behind their smiling, prosperous masks.
{{{ anuna }}}, Thank you for saying so eloquently that which is in my heart.
i just want to cry…….
thank you for posting this, Heart.
Smiling prosperous masks is a very good way of looking at these guys.
[...] Gaza as Woman (tags: feminism photography gaza) [...]
These kinds of photos always make me teary and breathless… but what really made me CRY cry was the 5th photo. Despite the fact that all of the children sitting there are traumatized, one little girl is trying to console another; she’s in the process of standing up so that she can reach to comfortingly pat the other little girl’s back. That just…it makes me cry and cry.
These poor children, who don’t understand, who can’t understand, to whom politics are meaningless…they are just there…getting hurt and killed, watching their loved ones and other children get hurt and killed, and none of it makes sense and there’s nothing they can do and it’s the most wrong thing in the entire world.
I really really wish I could go pick up as many children as my arms could carry, strap babies on my front and my back, and fly away with them.
Instead, I am just sitting here crying into my lunch. I donated money to Medical Aid for Palestine, but not nearly as much as I wish I could, considering I’ll be jobless in two weeks…
I just hate feeling so helpless.
I’m embarrassed to admit, I don’t even have a good understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict; I haven’t yet taken the time to fully educate myself on what exactly is going on. But at the same time, I don’t CARE what “reasons” ANYONE gives for destroying homes and killing children and their mothers. There ARE no reasons or excuses or justifications, ever.
These photos are great for the fact that the strike me deeply in my heart. This morning when I was walking to an appointment I heard church bells. Now I am not a fan of the “church” but to each their own. Anyway, I heard the bells and I thought the church was ringing them for Gaza. Yes, and the cold northern Michigan winds blue wind on my face and I thought my eyes were watering because of the wind. No, it was because of Gaza. My heart and soul go out to all of the people there. This is only a reminder to me of the genocide and annihilation that took place here on Turtle Island with the Native people here. I am saddened by this. I feel as humans we keep perpetuating the same cycles with our open wounds, hurting and repeatably wounding each other. How do we heal? What are the answers? What are the solutions?
Eeni B Bella, such a simple observation but so profoundly true! These children have no idea why what is happening is happening, they just know when the airplanes come, they have to get down, cover their ears, cover their heads, they just know the bombs come, the gunfire, their friends, family are killed or terribly injured, their homes are destroyed. In a far less horrible and less immediate way this is what the world is like for all children. They are all born into a world where people are randomly hurt in every conceivable way for reasons that make no sense, where adults they are taught to trust and must depend on hurt and kill people and they are still supposed to trust those adults and still they have to depend on them. It is madness, like a horrible nightmare– if only it were not real.
Cecilia, I hear you. The church bells ring at 5 p.m. some nights in Seattle — I’ve never figured out why they ring some nights and not others — but they always speak to me too when I hear them. Local Arab organizations took out a full page ad in the Seattle paper tonight asking for help to end the seige of Gaza. I was happy to see the signatories included not only Muslim and Arab organizations but the Episcopal Diocese of Western Washington, Women in Black, an organization created in honor of Rachel Corrie, Fellowship of Reconciliation, regular people, standing for what is right. But there was also a rally at the local synagogue in support of Israel and it drew 1,500 people. Who knows what will happen. How incredibly frustrating that the voices of peace, reconciliation and reason are not the voices of the powerful, the decision makers.
I think Hamas should stop launching rockets at Israel. They never stop. Also, they don’t seem interested in a two state solution, just “driving Israel into the sea.” Sure, Israel has a lot more fire power than Hamas and can do a lot more damage and it’s wrong. If Israel responded with just as much force as Hamas, there would just be these two sides launching rockets at each other all the time. Neither constant rocket launching nor full scale attack is the answer, but the Arab side has to COOPERATE in a peace process that does not involve “driving Israel into the sea.”
Could be, Branjor, but that is way too easy for anyone of us to say. I’ve been a nonresister most of my life (I’m not anymore) and even I don’t know that I could just sit passively by and wait until the warmaking stopped of its own accord. I would want to fight back.
I don’t want these comments to be about what Hamas should do or what Israel should do. I want it to be about the subordinating of a nation, a people, and the ways this compares with the subordinating of women, the ways that this is how, in fact, women as a subordinated class are made to be that.
Should the Amazons just have stopped fighting because they were outnumbered? Should they have given up on whatever oaths they may have taken to defend their own honor and the honor of their people against conquest or invasion or genocide? I really don’t think you’d say they should have.
What would Israel have to do to lose the unwavering “support” of staunch Israel hardliners? What would men have to do to lose general support for their behavior?
It is a curious myth that Arabs have sabotaged the peace process. Jewish peace activists say it is the Israeli government that will not accept a two-state solution, imposing conditions that Palestinians would be out of their minds to accept. Arab leaders, including Hamas, have many times stated their willingness to accept the 1967 borders. Israel deems this impractical, just as it deems current calls for a ceasefire impractical. Israel has total control of Palestine and intends to keep it, so any resistance is deemed intolerable terrorism. Only domination by military force is practical, so Israeli leaders think it is practical to create so much misery that the will of Palestinians to resist will break. As might be expected, that strategy is backfiring.
“What would men have to do to lose general support for their behavior?” Very good question Laur.
What if the women of Palestine were given the option of being airlifted out of that region? What if women were given new options in other parts of the world, just leave the men, leave their fighting and say “it’s over for us, we’re not going along with this insanity!”
Then maybe the whole place could be cleaned out, and the entire temple mount and all the shrines could be completely leveled, and that would get rid of the relics, get rid of the monuments, get rid of the patriarchal symbols of all three male religions in the area just bulldozed over. What would happen to the men, if all the women and children left, and women said we will never form families with Palestinian or Israeli men… we’re sick of both sides.
I wrote a reply which somehow went “poof” so I will not try to recreate it here. Just want to say that the Amazons were a proud female people under self rule. Hamas, elected to the majority of seats in the Palestinian legislature, is a militant male supremacist Islamist organization. It makes me sick to hear such a nation compared to the Amazons. I don’t know if Palestinian women were allowed to vote or not.
That said, I am not a “hard line Israel supporter.” I really don’t care one way or the other. If anything, I have tended to be more sympathetic towards Palestinians over the years. It just strikes me now that that may have been a rather one sided view and concepts like “Gaza as Woman” and comparisons to the Amazons make me sick. The Palestinian society is as male supremacist as Israel, maybe more, they’re just weaker, so more like “woman” I suppose, but whatever.
Anyway, I’m sure this view will be ripped apart, but go ahead, because I don’t feel that strongly about it either way anyway.
It makes me sick to hear such a nation compared to the Amazons.
No need to be sick, Branjor, since that was not the comparison I was making. I was comparing subordination with subordination, and the processes and mechanisms of subordination of women (by men) with the processes and mechanisms of subordinating indigenous people groups like the Palestinians via egregious, horrific, genocidal, femicidal amounts of white male heterosupremacist power, i.e., the same power that has subordinated us as women.
The Palestinian society is as male supremacist as Israel, maybe more, they’re just weaker, so more like “woman” I suppose, but whatever.
We are watching the active subordinating via crushing of a people group in real time as the siege of Gaza plays out. Palestine is being forced into weakness. It is being crushed. Not just by Israel, because Israel couldn’t do it alone, by Israel backed by the United States, to wit, white male power. Just as women have been forced into weakness, then derided as “weak” by men for millennia.
That was my point.
Women are not born to be, or deserving to be, subordinated or crushed. That’s what male power has done to us. The process of subordination is the same whether it is women battered in marriage, battered by electoral politics, battered by the church/patriarchal institutions, or whether it is indigenous people groups battered by super powers, whether it is the poor, battered by the rich, whether it is lesbians and gay men, battered by heterosupremacy, whether it is black people battered by white people. The issue is subordination and the processes of subordination and why they are a living hell. And if we *do not address subordination wherever we see it*, if, as radical feminists, we fail to make knowledge and theory out of everything we are witnessing and experiencing as people groups are crushed and destroyed by those who have the power to do it, then we really will have absolutely nothing to offer to a watching world.
Watch what you say about this. Commenting that you really don’t care about this situation is really not something I want to approve during this time of basically genocide for the Palestinians. I’ve approved it once, and will not approve anything similar again.
It makes me sick to hear such a nation compared to the Amazons.
One more thing. Branjor, do you really think there are no Amazons in Palestine? I think there are and have blogged about them.
ASWAT, Palestinian Gay Women
I mean, goddess help us. We’ve got lesbians here in San Francisco being gang raped in broad daylight. What do you think is going to happen to Palestinian lesbians during a time of genocide?
I really like Satsuma’s idea of the airlift.
How can we organize it?
Following is a really good history and analysis of the situation in Palestine, written by Sonia Karkar. It was written before the siege of Gaza but The Australian didn’t publish it until January 3.
Link
I think Branjor is just being honest. This conflict is not about women, it’s about men getting out of control and wanting to be he-men patriarchs everywhere they go. Women’s energy gets used up when “Gaza” is a news item — that is a blow by blow account of male violence in group form. Women deal with two forms of male violence: when it gets out of control in group fanatic form, and when individual men batter wives and children or when individual men rape and underpay women or prostitute them.
In wars between men, women pay. Clearly, women as a group need to be doing something radically different in Gaza and worldwide to change this male-centric dynamic. I believe Branjor just thinks it the same old male supremacy one way or the other. Men can treat other men “like women” — Israeli male supremacy bearing down on the weaker male supremacy of the Palestinians. But it is always male dominance of women’s lands and potential lands. Men believe they own and control women’s bodies in addition to their obsession with temple mounts, sacred texts and ridiculous male centric religious beliefs.
We have to figure a way for women to leave en mass at least once in 21st century herstory, at least once in my lifetime I’d like to see women rise up and walk out and mean it. This idea should be put out there. Palestinian women, you don’t have to put up with Israeli oppressors or you own male relatives dominating and controlling you. Can hetero women really do this?
I can’t really go there with you, Satsuma. Women are being killed, as you say, women are paying. So it seems wrong to me to worry that our energy — those of us who are not currently being specifically targeted for genocide — is being used up talking about why or doing whatever we can to stand in solidarity with the women who are paying. What was the line of that poem, “And they, because they were not the ones dead, turned to their affairs.”
It’s true that women did not start any of the wars women end up paying for. But I think it’s also true that until we connect the dots between warmaking and all acts of dominance and brutality in whatever form which are designed to subordinate, we won’t be able to make good strategy for our own liberation as women. We’ll also have trouble mobilizing anyone, especially the women in the wars we don’t want to waste our energy thinking too much about!
I’m not looking to see Palestinian women, lesbian or het, walk out en masse because it would be a death sentence for them to do so. I do think all of us have to feel what they feel, to the degree that we are able, or we’ll forever be brushing their situations off as not our issue, and that attitude has caused us no end of difficulty as radical feminists. It is our issue. The plight of women, wherever they are being harmed and abused, is a radical feminist issue.
I’d love to see Canadian women walk out of Canada en masse, although I really have to wonder where in the Goddess’s name we’d be able to go.
The airlift would have to be to another planet.
I have felt, and continue to feel, the demolition of females and femaleness all over the planet, constantly, have felt it since I was preverbal. Every time male violence flares in the particular format of war, there is a visibly focused demographic (localized) of females being maimed, murdered, and otherwise victimized.
My question as a feminist is: how does it help us to particularize this that or the other killing field, knowing what we already know? And everybody on the planet knows that war is male. I’m not saying, “let’s pretend this or that killing field isn’t happening, or say that it doesn’t matter”.
No killing field is *more* or *less* of a feminist issue than is any other. In that sense, every killing field can also be construed as “woman” - the universal loser, the universal
victim.
If I say that I don’t care which side of a conflict of warring males wins, it means that I am aware that I cannot go on forever and ever investing myself in conflicts between male groups.
I don’t understand Israel rejecting out of hand a two state solution. After all, even without a Palestinian state, Israel is still bordered by all Arab states. The entire Middle East outside of Israel is Arab (except Iran and Iran is also their enemy). They would have to take over all of the Middle East not to be directly bordered by Arab lands. I am sure they realize this and know that that is unrealistic, so their rejection of any autonomy for Palestine does not make sense. Thus I’m not sure I really believe it. On the other hand, if Israel alone were eliminated, that would leave the entire ME Arab (except for Iran, they are Aryan) and mostly Muslim.
As to the Palestinians being an indigenous people, yes, the UN created the state of Israel in 1948, uprooting Palestinians from lands they had lived in for centuries. But from what I gathered from comments to the Chesler Chronicles, Jews lived on those lands in yet earlier times and were uprooted from their ancestral homeland by Arabs. So just who is “indigenous” and who isn’t seems to be open to interpretation.
Thanks, Satsuma.
Here is my response as to why we should particularize.
If we do not particularize in each instance what is happening to women, then the world doesn’t see it. Really, that’s all I should say. I should leave it at that. I should say if we don’t particularize then brutalities against women and the way men’s wars destroy women are erased. But, I’ll say more.
Yes, we know about all of this, as radical feminists, and yes, it is exhausting and infuriating and many times we have to draw back and protect ourselves and conserve our energy. That’s us. That’s radical feminists.
But the rest of the world? Do you (rhetorical “you”) think anybody is even seeing photos like those I’ve posted here? Heck no. They are seeing the Gaza version of Star Wars. They are seeing buildings blown up and bridges blown up and bombs exploding and armed gunmen all dressed in uniforms and tanks and guns and buildings blown up here and there. Are we being shown in the mainstream media what happens to girls and women and children and animals in war? For the most part, no, we are not. And that makes it EASY for women’s agony, and the whole earth’s agony, at the hands of men to be erased. It becomes just another “war.” It’s just a “war between men.” It isn’t femicide. It isn’t the destruction of the lives of female persons. Because the voice of women in particular is the voice that must be silenced in all of this strutting and posturing and madness that is male heterosupremacist warmaking.
It took me literally HOURS of searching to find the photographs I found, and then they were on just a blogspot blog, and I didn’t find many even then. By far the photos I found were of all the stuff I listed up there or it was photoshopped and turned into anti-Muslim or anti-Arab or anti-Semitic propaganda.
But here is what I know. If I were a Palestinian woman, I would hope to high heavens that some woman out there was finding these photos and publishing them on her blog so the world could see. Because I would know that if she didn’t, nobody else would, not honestly. And if I came across radical feminists complaining about it — well, I would not think radical feminists had much to say to me that was of value.
On this blog, I find the women and I publish their stories any way I can. I find them. If there is one sentence about them, I go looking for the rest of the story. Because I know that by and large the rest of the world, again, will never find it, and if they do, they will not report it honestly. They’ll turn it into fodder for their own propaganda machines.
Really, posts like this are not for radical feminists. If you’re burned out — I get that way too, all the time — then it isn’t for you. Posts like this are meant to be a witness to the cry of woman victims of men’s warmaking. Feminism, to me, is about giving women a voice when they have no voice, when they are silenced, their realities erased. That’s what this post, and posts like it, intend to do.
No killing field is *more* or *less* of a feminist issue than is any other.
That’s true. I think, though, that the places in the world where women are being killed right now today are always a feminist issue.
I think, too, that the explanation of the importance of this reporting is contained in that rather lengthy excerpt from Andrea Dworkin in my original post. It’s all there, and in particular what’s there is the way that a people that has been reduced to an “ash”, as Andrea described post-WWII Jews, can nevertheless, within a few decades, pursue conquest of a people that is even more an “ash” if it is possible, than they themselves.
All of this has implications for us as women. It has implications for our strategy, for our theory, for our goals as activists.
It’s interesting, Phyllis Chesler was there with Andrea Dworkin at the conference Dworkin refers to in her essay I excerpted. They both spoke. Chesler is here to say what she has to say about this conflict, from the perspective of a Zionist. Andrea Dworkin is not here. But I am, and I think what she had to say is valuable.
As to who is the “real” indigenous tribe, here’s the deal. If you read in the Old Testament, as Christians call it, you will read stories about a God who instructed a tribal people to commit genocide– to kill not only all the inhabitants of various lands, but all the livestock too, leaving nothing alive. The Sinead O’Connor songs I posted a while back are pure scripture referring to the split between Judah (Palestine) and Jerusalem (Israel). The OT God was all about conquest, all about some chosen and others infidels, all about “taking” the “land,” whether the land was the earth or slaves or the bodies of women or animals. The stories are about 6,000 years old and are still playing out today right now. So, yes, who are the “real” indigenous people. How far back will we go.
For now, what we know is that with the backing of white, western, rich superpowers, the Palestinians are being targeted for genocide. That’s not something I, as a radical feminist, can or will ignore.
Thanks, Heart. I agree. And you have always blogged about *all* those places.
It’s the MSM that picks and chooses which killing fields it chooses to report on.
I’ve long, long ago given up hope that anything that any woman reports will have any effect on the relentless crescendo of male violence and female-hatred on this planet. But we feminists can, hopefully, take some solace from each others’ presnce.
Wow!!! I just read this:
Hamas agrees to Gaza truce, Israel reply awaited: official
The link: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hamas-agrees-to-gaza-truce/2009/01/15/1231608829049.html
Well,
Link
Bolivia and Venezuela have cut diplomatic ties with Israel
Two buildings housing international journalists in Gaza have also been bombed by Israeli forces.
Where is Barack Obama? Oh, I forgot, there is only one President at a time. Will he so much as scold Israel for any of this, or will he continue to excuse Israel by citing its right to defend itself? Perhaps Israeli leaders can claim this is all justified and deny there is a humanitarian crisis with a straight face because, to their minds, Hamas is responsible. To my mind, that is blaming the victim. How different is this from a man abusing a woman, blaming her for provoking him?
With all the onlookers saying, “Well, why didn’t she leave?” Like Andrea Dworkin said, “Why didn’t they go somewhere Arab?”
If I were President, guaranteed, I would not be waiting until January 22 to make some statement about this, neither would I allow the focus to be on inaugural festivities at this particular moment in history. Men and their endless theater, their endless pomp and circumstance, snools all.
If I were a new president, I would not give up my big party in Washington, Heart. Feminism has a tendency to want sacrifice and suffering and sometimes doesn’t recognize the basic human need to have a big party. I certainly would be dancing in the streets has Hillary Clinton won, and I wouldn’t let the stupid Israelis or Hamas rain on it. We certainly didn’t give up having big and great parties just because we were in the middle of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco in the late 80s. You need celebrations more sometimes when things get bad in my opinion. Not one to defend men very often, I wouldn’t call the Obama parties in Washington a ship of snools
Loved the usage of the Mary Daly word by the way.
Yeah, I’m all for parties (I threw a whopper when I won my lawsuit, flew all of my supporters to the middle of the country for a weekend shindig!). But I’m not feeling it right now, momentous as the moment is and I’ve written about that before, how momentous I believe this moment really is. It seems to me to be a time to be circumspect.
By the way, a lesbian and gay band is going to be marching in the inaugural parade for the first time in history! With the Clintons a band was there but on the sidelines. That is also historic!
I’ll find the link later, or someone can google it and post it in a comment.
I am excited in many, many ways and don’t begrudge the party in a certain sense, want to enjoy it myself. Still, I feel the way I feel.
Snools.
Heart,
I have just read:
———————————————–
Israel to halt Gaza offensive at 0000 GMT: Olmert
Israel will halt its offensive in Gaza at 0000 GMT on Sunday but troops will remain there for the time being and will respond to Hamas fire, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Saturday.
“At 2:00 in the morning we will stop fire but we will continue to be deployed in Gaza and its surroundings,” he said.
“If our enemies decide to strike back and want to carry on then the Israeli army will consider itself free to respond with force.”
Olmert had earlier said that Israel had achieved all its goals in the massive three-week-long offensive — the largest Israeli assault ever launched on the impoverished territory of 1.5 million Palestinians.
More than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed since the war began on December 27, including more than 400 children. Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed in the same period.
©2009 AFP
Source: http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=mideast&item=090117211328.bc3aokdg.php
Thanks, Mary. xo
Thank god the killing has stopped, but please god, get the Israeli soldiers the hell out of there. What a nightmare. I’ll go read.
I don’t understand Israel rejecting out of hand a two state solution.
It isn’t. Bill Clinton insisted on a two-state solution and it’s been pretty clear for a long time that that’s where this is headed, that that’s the only solution. This is what Clinton said before he left office, during negotiations with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat re: the two-state solution:
Addressing the people of Israel before a largely Jewish audience, Clinton said “you have hardly had one day of peace and quiet since your state was created.”
He said “your dream of a homeland has come true,” but when the Jewish people returned home beginning a century ago, they found “it was not vacant. You discovered that your land was also their land, the homeland of two peoples.”
And, Clinton went on, “the hard reality is that there is no choice but for you to divide this land into two states for two people.”
“Whether it happens today or after more bloodshed, it will happen,” he said.
Which is why I have hope with Hillary as Secretary of State: I firmly believe that she shares Bill’s commitment to peace through a two-state solution and sees it as part of hers and Bill’s shared legacy. I think this is one of the goals that really became more clear to her as she campaigned in 2008 and I think it’s one of the big reasons she took the Secretary of State job and demanded such a great deal of authority to pick her own team.
But with the election of Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, has the destruction of Israel as one of its goals, and continues to launch rockets into Israel, and with Israel’s and the U.S.’s refusal to recognize Hamas as the legitimate elected government, the situation became even more complicated. Both the U.S. and Israel would rather have Fatah running the show, which is what the blockades and sanctions against Gaza and the West Bank are about. The invasion is just another part of that, which is part of why there is no condemnation from the U.S. of Israel’s actions.
Here’s a link to a Frontline synopsis of talks between Israel and Palestinians from the 1993 Oslo accords through Clinton leaving office in 2001. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oslo/negotiations/
Israel offered a two-state solution in 2000:
Prime Minister Ehud Barak urged Clinton to convene this summit. Barak wanted to push for a permanent agreement — skipping interim redeployments called for in the Wye agreement — and envisioned a two-state solution that would end the conflict.
Issues never before discussed at senior levels between Israelis and Palestinians — Jerusalem, statehood, boundaries, refugees — were put on the table. Barak and Clinton suggested a path-breaking plan permitting a Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem. But the Palestinians criticized Barak for coming to Camp David with a proposal for dividing the West Bank they had already rejected. And,in their eyes, the Clinton/Barak plan would have left the new Palestinian state with significant loss of water and good land, almost split by Israeli annexation running east from Jerusalem, and with Israel getting roughly 9 percent of the West Bank. However, U.S. and Israeli officials contend that throughout the summit, the Palestinians rejected Israeli proposals while offering no proposal of their own. Publicly, both Clinton and Barak blamed Arafat for the failure to reach an agreement on a two-state solution.
Despite the setback, however, Arafat and Barak approved a new series of secret meetings between the negotiators over the following months.
After that, PM Barak was defeated by Sharon and the progress from Oslo forward seems to have been lost. But I think the change in thinking from Oslo has taken root: even Bush strongly supports a two-state solution even while his right-wing base supports a biblical Israel (i.e. all Israel, no Palestine). Of course Bush isn’t Clinton and the shape of those commitments is very different, I think.
Thanks for that history and those links, Emma. I do have hopes for Hillary Clinton’s work in the Middle East.
What gets largely left out of these discussions in the mainstream media is consideration of rejectionists, meaning those within both Israel and Palestine who reject any two-state solution whatsoever. Naomi Klein wrote a really good editorial about this and I will try to find it and post the link. She says, and I know she’s right, that in no way are even these brutalities and this move in the direction of genocide against Palestine going to stop the rocket attacks against Israel. It isn’t going to happen. Because there are those in Palestine who, as others have said, don’t believe Israel should exist. At the same time, there are many in Israel who don’t believe Palestine should exist. Rejectionism is fueled in large part by religious ideologies that do not bend or yield much, if at all, to compromise and that virtually never surrender to aggression , violence or war. In fact, these latter tend to fuel the resolve to never give up at all.
One reason — not the biggest reason, but an important reason — the situation with Gaza and Palestine is of deep interest to me is, it illuminates the hopelessness and uselessness, in the end, of ratcheting up the level of violence in order to solve the problem of violence. Violence, warmaking, never really solve problems. They make problems and deepen problems over time. The best we can ever hope for in situations like this is a temporary coups de tat among men and nations. There will always be another round, guaranteed, as we see all over the world in similar situations, as with the Balkans, where hatreds, religious loyalties, resulting feuds and desires for vengeance go back centuries and centuries.
Klein says, and I hope she’s wrong, but don’t think she is, because of the nature of religious allegiances and alliances and ideologies, that the Siege of Gaza ultimately will lessen the achievability of a two-state solution (or any solution) as opposed to bringing a solution closer.
I’ll post the link.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/israel-palestine
I guess I should write a post about this.
I was at my mom and dad’s yesterday. We talked briefly about the situation in Gaza. The first thing my dad said (and I love my dad exceedingly much just ftr, should family be reading, which I know they do!), was, “I’m for Israel, of course.” And of course, my father, my mother, my family IS “for Israel.” They are devout, Bible-believing evangelicals and their understanding based on their reading of scripture is that the land belongs to Israel and Palestine is an interloper. Interestingly, the conversation was about one of my nephews, a very fine young man, also an evangelical, who went to school in Egypt and who has close friends who are Palestinians and who therefore is not “for Israel,” necessarily.
For those whose politics are informed by literalist religious beliefs, two state solutions are not solutions at all because they are believed to be in opposition to God’s will. There are many people who hold beliefs of this type, in Israel, in Palestine, in the U.S. and throughout the world. Bombing Gaza into oblivion changes nothing. More likely, it deepens the commitment among these people that “God’s will” be done.
Heart
This from the Toronto Star right now:
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/573139
Hamas agrees to week-long ceasefire TheStar.com -
January 18, 2009
Ibrahim Barzak
Amy Teibel
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
GAZA CITY–Militants in Hamas-ruled Gaza agreed Sunday to a week-long ceasefire with Israel, after three weeks of violence that Palestinian medics say has killed more than 1,000 people and turned Gaza’s streets into battlegrounds.
Sunday’s announcement came about 12 hours after Israel declared its own unilateral ceasefire.
Hamas’ Syrian-based deputy leader, speaking for the militant Palestinian factions, said on Syrian television that the ceasefire will give Israel time to withdraw and open all the border crossings to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
An Israeli security chief told Cabinet ministers the military operation “is not over” and that the next few days would be critical to determining whether it would be relaunched.
The military said no one was injured by more than a dozen militant rockets that struck southern Israel ahead of the announcement from deputy Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk on Syrian television.
“We the Palestinian resistance factions declare a ceasefire from our side in Gaza and we confirm our stance that the enemy’s troops must withdraw from Gaza within a week,” Abou Marzouk said.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev would not say what level of violence would provoke Israel to call off the ceasefire.
“Israel’s decision allows it to respond and renew fire at our enemies, the different terror organizations in the Gaza Strip, as long as they continue attacking,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the start of the weekly Cabinet session.
“This morning some of them continued their fire, provoking what we had warned of,” Olmert said. “This ceasefire is fragile and we must examine it minute by minute, hour by hour.”
In Gaza, people loaded vans and donkey carts with mattresses and began venturing back to their homes to see what was left standing after the punishing air and ground assault the tiny seaside territory endured.
Bulldozers began shoving aside rubble in Gaza City, the territory’s biggest population centre, to clear a path for cars while medical workers sifting through mounds of concrete said they discovered dozens of bodies in the debris.
Depending on how they feel about him, Heart, they might appreciate the Carter book (Palestine: Peace not Apartheid).
Noam Chomsky on Gaza, Jan. 21, 2009:
The entire article is huge but well worth reading.
Hillary Clinton clearly does not agree with the perspective of Noam Chomsky or other allegedly self-hating Jews. She said this about the recent massacre in Gaza:
I wonder who are these Muslims Obama thinks may take up his offer “to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest.” Presumably those Muslims who dislike Hamas? Is this not the same old policy, to isolate Hamas from “reasonable” Muslims?
http://www.charlierose.com/schedule/?date=2009/1/27
I happened upon Carter on Charlie Rose last night — apparently he has another book with a much more Christian-oriented title than the apartheid one (Peace in the Holy Land, or something like that). It was a really good interview, I thought. Video should be up sometime today.
Sorry to shill for him. I just find him so durn useful to talk some degree of sense to Christian people (at least, the kind who don’t think he’s evil). On some political topics — Israel is one — they won’t listen to a lot of other sources than conservative Christian media.
Hillary Clinton clearly does not agree with the perspective of Noam Chomsky.
All she said is that it’s President Obama’s policy, as it’s been the policy of every President, including Carter, to support Israel’s right to self defense. As Obama himself said: “They [Israel] will not stop being a strong ally of the United States. And I will continue to believe that Israel’s security is paramount.” So, whether Clinton agrees with Chomsky or not, isn’t really the issue. It’s what is U.S. policy toward Israel and what will it look like in an Obama adminstration?
Clinton’s statement, IMO, shows it won’t be much different than any previous U.S. policy toward the region. Is that on Clinton not agreeing with Chomsky? No. It’s on the President who makes the policy.
Other parts of Clinton’s interview, re: George Mitchell being appointed as a special envoy to the region:
“And to carry the message from the President, from myself, from our government that, you know, we’re going to be working on a series of short-term objectives with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but that we remain committed to the long-term objective of a comprehensive peace that provides security in the context of a two-state solution for the Palestinians.
***
We have, as I said, some short-term objectives such as a durable ceasefire, which as you know has receded somewhat today because of the offensive action against the IDF along the border.
But of course, we’re concerned about the humanitarian suffering. We’re concerned any time innocent civilians, Palestinian or Israeli, are attacked. That’s why we support Israel’s right to self-defense. The rocket barrages, which are getting closer and closer to populated areas, cannot go unanswered. And it’s, you know, regrettable that the Hamas leadership apparently believes that it is in their interest to provoke the right of self-defense instead of building a better future for the people of Gaza.
We are supporting the efforts by the Palestinian Authority under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad to try to support the humanitarian efforts. We will participate with our own contributions. The United States is currently the single largest contributor to Palestinian aid, and we will be adding even more because we believe that it’s important to help those who have been damaged and suffering.
But again, this is one of those situations that we’re going to await the report of our envoy. I mean, that’s why we chose Senator Mitchell. We have a lot of confidence in his knowledge of the area and his political ear, so you not only hear what people say but what the meaning behind the words might be. So we’re going to wait and let him report back to us about the way forward.”
Here’s the link: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/01/115450.htm
She also says some interesting things about US policy toward Pakistan and continued bombings there.
I’m not here to say that Clinton is a dove or something, but frankly she’s not any more hawkish than the administration she serves. And personalizing this to her, as if she’s the main or only person relevant to U.S. policy in the region, puts attention on the wrong person and makes this about her not about U.S. policy.
Carter was talking to Al Jazeera today, defending Hamas and saying they had to be included if there is to be a permanent peace. That sounds so obvious it should go without saying, but it apparently is not so obvious to Israeli or US politicians, determined to isolate those nasty terrorists.
I agree that “Hamas has got to be involved before peace can be concluded.” But, notice that Carter says nothing about the conditions under which Hamas should or might be included. He does talk about his hope that the new administration will act as a broker to bring Hamas and Fatah together:
“Carter said reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, the faction led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, had been ‘objected to and obstructed by the US and Israel’.
He hoped the new Obama administration would work to bring the Palestinian factions together.”
Reading the comments as a whole, I would hope that what Carter mean by bringing the factions together is to move Hamas to Fatah’s position on Israel’s right to exist, than moving Fatah closer to Hamas’s position.
Because how does one ask Israel to negotiate with an organization/government that is committed to Israel’s destruction? Obama’s administration, including Clinton, clearly thinks you can’t.
“US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has ruled out negotiations with the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas unless it drops its extremist stance, saying her position is ‘absolute’.
‘On Israel, you cannot negotiate with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognises Israel and agrees to abide by past agreements. That is just for me an absolute,’ Mrs Clinton told a Senate confirmation hearing.
‘That is the United States government’s position. That is the president-elect’s position,’ she said after a senator suggested it is ‘naive and illogical’ to pursue diplomacy with governments opposed to Israel.”
I think it’s a valid point, even considering Israel’s recent invasion of Gaza. Since Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel, negotiating for a two state solution certainly isn’t on the table. Bottom line: so long as Hamas will not recognize Israel, there’s nothing to negotiate. And, rather than isolating Hamas (at least rhetorically), the Obama administration is sending a clear message: this is what it will take for Hamas to get to the table.
They’re setting the pre-conditions for negotiation. And, until Hamas meets those preconditions, I personally see no point in working to include them in negotiations. Every other government in the region has reconciled itself to Israel’s existence and moving toward a two-state solution. Having to negotiate over Israel’s right, or not, to exist is a huge step backward and that issue doesn’t belong in any real negotiation. Even Carter sees reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas as a necessary precondition to Hamas being involved in peace negotiations, if I’m reading his comments correctly.
“Because how does one ask Israel to negotiate with an organization/government that is committed to Israel’s destruction? Obama’s administration, including Clinton, clearly thinks you can’t.”
*******
this is not a framing everyone accepts as relevant to negotiation.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0202/p09s02-coop.html
Because how does one ask Israel to negotiate with an organization/government that is committed to Israel’s destruction? Obama’s administration, including Clinton, clearly thinks you can’t.
I guess you ask it the same way you ask Palestine to negotiate with an organization/government that is committed to Palestine’s destruction, as it has amply demonstrated over the past month.
Honestly, before anybody else comments here, please read the Noam Chomsky article linked in 46.
There is another article I consider relevant, relatively short, by someone else denounced as a self-hating Jew, Jennifer Loewenstein, the Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I have been hesitant to mention this article because it is so angry and inflammatory, but considering recent developments, I have changed my mind. If Hamas Did Not Exist
Emma, if you really think I unfairly single out Hillary Clinton, try reading my response to the Presidential debates, The Peace Candidate is Anything But. I have been trying to restrain myself, to give Obama something of a honeymoon, but my patience is wearing thin really fast. I really do not see either Obama or Clinton as the problem; they are just the most prominent leaders of their party, which is as devoted to maintaining US power as the Republicans, though its approach is different. The root of all this is much deeper, and I see no change on that level on the horizon.
I don’t understand why the U.S. likes to state there should be “preconditions” met before sitting down and talking with someone. What is the point of that? How can any conflict get resolved if there is no discussion?
Fanatic Islam is using women as a baby-making machines and then kids as a shields for a battle and propaganda war with no sentiment. Woman and a child means nothing for fanatic clerics that plan for world-wide caliphate to rule the world. So, don’t be fooled - you all are either dead or slaves in these clerics mind.
Caliphate,
Have to say, I agree with you.
I’m missing the connection between Gaza and fanatic clerics, except that abuses of the former serve as a recruiting tool by the latter.