Palestine and the Hypocrisy of Western Feminism

Colonial Narratives and Palestinian Heroines

Genocidal Justifications and Strong Women Tropes

The West has frequently used the excuse or cover of “Women’s liberation” to cloak its colonial aspirations and violence towards people in the Global South. Bush, in 2002, used this as a further legitimizing factor in the US’s illegal military campaign in Iraq, referring to the Middle East as lacking in “women’s rights” – as if US forces would blast into Iraq like Superman, and liberate all women from some perceived oppression - as opposed to the actual reality: bombing them and leaving them to face the destruction and havoc wrought by war, a condition in which women suffer the most.

This disingenuity of leveraging women’s rights as a genocidal justification is echoed today in the rhetoric around Israel-Palestine. The many absurd propagandist social media clips that tout Israeli women as being emblematic of Western female emancipation because they combine girl power and military fatigues, balance rifles with prams in their everyday civilian life, at best, appeals to teenage Lara Croft fantasy visions of what strong women should look like. (Israel is good at cheap, catchy jingoistic surface imagery – not so good at supporting this with deeper, meaningful structures).

In reality, strong women are not synonymous with machoism and guns. Strong women use the many aspects of their minds and personalities to stand for the truth and protect others in a dignified way: from the Palestinian nurse who was filmed shielding her patients in the midst of heavy Israeli shelling, to the countless female journalists such as Bisan Odwa and others who risked their lives every day to document a genocide; the Palestinian women running households whilst their men are in and out of Israeli prisons being tortured and brutalized, having to fulfil the role of women in conditions that most women of the West could barely imagine.

Some Feminisms are “More Equal than Others”

In fact, it is white women who have benefited historically from the subjugation of women of colour within the colonial empires including that of slavery; and continue to do so. And it is frequently the case that the material privileges of wealth and status enjoyed by Western women are brought very much at the expense of the cheap labour of exploited women of the Global South, whether this is fast fashion, “ethnic” clothes (the irony) or diamonds.

For example, the majority female workers within Botswana’s diamond industry experience ongoing severe health problems due to their lack of protection when handling corrosive chemicals used to treat diamonds; those very diamonds coveted by the wealthy, and traditionally advertised in the West as the ultimate symbol of true love – the larger the better, never mind the exploitation that went into its making.

Feminism is essentially a Western liberal secular construct, and very much about prioritizing the privileges of the few over the rights of the many. Oversized divorce settlements, oversized entitlement and a compulsive need to belittle men at every opportunity in order to exert female dominance has absolutely no bearing upon my own experiences or priorities.

The preserve of mostly white middle-class women, it marginalises the experiences of coloured women, and in superficially “nodding” to them ends up doing more harm than good, by professing to speak for all women while speaking only for those that fit the dominant colonial narrative.

To be clear, this is not a criticism of white women, but of the power structures that privilege one category of women over another, and the alignment with which, determines to what degree a particular group of womens voices are actually heard. It illustrates that all feminisms are equal - but some are “more equal than others”.

The dominant feminism, in placing itself such that it attempts to define the concerns of all groups of women, actually works to stifle the voices of subaltern women, and by professing to know what is best for them, prevents them from articulating their issues in context of their own cultural framework, with their own unique voices.

Western Feminism’s Misconceptions

The implicit assumption that “female oppression” is defined by the West rather than by women themselves, feeds into the traditional imperialist white saviour complex, and its assumption that ripping off the hijab is emancipatory for all women and is what they want, even if they don’t know it, is deeply patronizing.

Western female ideals of “freedom” are not necessarily coveted at all by Middle Eastern or culturally Muslim women, they are too busy working out their own framework for combating the universal issue of patriarchy and male dominance. Indeed, the very term “feminism” is an import of the West, and as such, not appropriate to women’s needs and identities within alternative cultures.

The utilization of feminist narratives to justify violence in other, “backward” parts of the world, and the way that this disingenuous trope is then magnified within the mainstream media – whose deeply biased propaganda machine has been pitifully exposed in recent months – has resurfaced in numerous social media clips.

In the way it has trickled down to the most ignorant members of our society, reminds me of a clip that went viral last year, of a half-drunk British woman yelling abuse over a very patient Muslim woman, about how she “supported the women of Iran”, but who appeared as if she might have difficulty pointing out Iran on a map – even when sober.

Pro-Zionist Racist Narratives and Feminism

Many of us recall the ignominious clip of Julia Hartley Brewer’s vitriolic spewing towards the distinguished Palestinian politician and academic Dr Mustafa Barghouti, when she screeched at him “Maybe you are not used to women talking..!” in typical entitled Western pseudo-feministic fashion; and the Jordanian actress Saja Kilani’s elegant, pared and powerful response in spoken poetry; subdued in its intonation, presented with sparse understatement and hypnotically captivating, brimming with the power of generations of Middle Eastern women and their multitudinous achievements. No crowing about what they have done, just pure class:

“Our women taught themselves medicine and set up medical teams. They performed critical surgeries under apartheid regimes. And gave birth at checkpoints as soldiers looked in between…” The entire poem must be heard, as it resonates with the voices of the women that have been truly silenced, and uncelebrated by the West.

Julia Hartley-Brewer, in her climbing upon the Western morally bankrupt racist bandwagon of colonial superiority, repeating that by now broken record of assumed superior status, was doing her dutiful bit to support the dehumanization of and resultant institutionalized aggression towards, Palestinians – men as well as women. Automatically shouting “misogynist” towards a Muslim or Middle Eastern man because you don’t like what he is saying, is about the laziest and stupidest accusation let alone form of “journalism” possible.

She knew what she was doing with her accusations, even though they were intellectually flaccid and mentally weak, and in appealing mainly to the racist and ignorant - or maybe actually because of this - they served the Zionist propaganda machine very well.

If the standard for white women is equality with their male counterparts, who have always held privileged status in a global context, it is no wonder that white feminism does not level any ground for us, it just places white women at the top of a global hierarchy for women’s rights and privileges.

The calling out of the misuse of “feminism” to justify massacre and violence towards indigenous peoples is more relevant than ever in the context of what is happening in Palestine today, where the West, in its mindless and unprincipled support of Israel which it touts as “the only democracy in the Middle East”, attempts to portray the women of the Middle East as repressed and lacking in any rights within their portrayal of Palestine as a somehow backward religious regime.

The hypocrisy of foregrounding not only trivialities, but customs that do not concern one, such as women “having to cover their hair”, whilst supporting the wholesale slaughter of pregnant women, women and their babies and young children, of bombing hospitals, destroying schools and homes, and more recently the sexual violence that has been exposed as a key military strategy in Palestine, is staggering.

If the West cared so much for women’s rights, it would stop supporting brutal military campaigns in the Middle East and the Global South, where women are hit the hardest and suffer the most; it would cease to lie and cover up these injustices.

Middle Eastern Feminism and Palestinian Heroine’s

The reality is that Palestinian women – and men – have had to struggle for the smallest privileges, and that includes education. The more the apartheid state of Israel has attempted to relentlessly destroy any Palestinian talent, to kill off its future and all its tomorrows, Palestinians have shown a resilience like no other, and a determination to become as educated as possible.

The amount of highly intelligent, educated, cultured and articulate Palestinians in Gaza I have spoken to just by chance is abnormally high – even though Israel’s bloodiest genocidal campaign has attempted to target the brightest and best. I have spoken to Western activists involved in working in schools there, who have expressed how uniquely forward looking, and outward looking the education system in Palestine is.

Palestinian women (and also many Muslim women I know) who choose to cover their heads and dress modestly, are doctors, journalists, lecturers, therapists, media figures, activists, style icons. They are bold, strong and incredibly smart. As superwomen who have lived through the kind of conditions that do not allow for any form of complacency or laziness, they emphatically do not need rescuing by women who cannot even stand shoulder to shoulder with them. I am tired of low achieving Western women acting as if they have some kind of monopoly on female self-determination, and as if they are somehow superior just because they are inherently part of the Western imperialist machine.

Women of the Global South do not need any help from Western feminism; they do not need rescuing and they do not need faux sympathy or to be used as political pawns in the colonialist narratives of power play and the ruthless pursuit of economic gain. They do not require any kind of interference from women who know next to nothing, and care nothing for, their cultures. They have their own female icons. For me, today, I can truly say that my own personal female icons - are the everyday women of Palestine.