Palestine, "Israeli" Atrocities and the Betrayal of Western Feminism

Self-obsession, Silent Complicity and a Sisterhood That Never Was

Palestinian Testimonies of Abuse

This past week has seen devastating testimonies from released Palestinian prisoners. Of the dead bodies of Palestinians released by “Israel” we have seen bodies returned with numbers instead of names, making them difficult to identify, as well as multiple signs of brutality and torture with some still wearing handcuffs and blindfolds.¹

The gang rape of a Palestinian by guards at the Sde Teiman detention centre, the footage showing guards using shields to hide the abuse from the cameras, left the victim with severe injuries and unable to walk.

The whistle blower who called attention to this was hastily removed from her post and sentenced, while the rapists were welcomed, feted and celebrated on “Israeli” national television, echoing previous incidents where “Israeli” citizens held violent riots campaigning for the right to rape Palestinian prisoners.

Recently an “Israeli” bill proposing the death penalty for anyone the “Israeli” parliament deems a “terrorist” has been pushed through and will likely be soon implemented.

Let us remember that these “prisoners” are really hostages – they are ordinary citizens kidnapped off the street, at checkpoints and from their homes at whim and kept usually without trial – although we can only imagine what “trial” of a Palestinian looks like in this rabid society fermenting with hate and paranoia - and kept in detention centres where they are raped, tortured and degraded. At this point in time, there are estimated to be at least 450 children (of the approximately 9000 prisoners) held in these torture centres.

The testimonies recorded this week by the PCHR (Palestinian Centre for Human Rights) are so harrowing that I personally know many people who couldn’t read on. They can be read on this link and include specific case studies that go into detail of the atrocities.

Personally, I think that we owe it to the Palestinians held in these centres to read on and bear witness at second hand, to what depths human depravity can descend to, and what utterly horrific and soul shattering treatment is meted out to people when those like us – the majority with a voice - do not step out of our torpor and speak up for those being oppressed.

We owe it to the Palestinians to talk about this with others, to circulate this knowledge and to never stop talking about it until Palestinians can be free and sovereign on their own land and have the rights that we do. Whether that is the right to live in their own homes without being arrested and tortured; to have access to food, water, healthcare, education, all the rights that their occupiers, the “Israeli”s, happily enjoy mere miles away; even just to have the right to breathe the air and walk the streets without fear of death, arrest, torture, degradation, rape.

The Disgrace of Western “Feminism”

By now, I find the notion of Western Feminism to be not just a crude and disingenuous joke, but a sham, a mere label that not only is devoid of any real human meaning but is actually an emblem of and shield for privilege and entitlement. Therefore, it is no surprise that the women who shout from the rooftops when it suits them, about women in Middle Eastern or Muslim countries having limited rights, are notoriously silent when it is their own men, or men aligned with Western systems of imperialism, doling out the abuse.

The fact remains today more than ever, that white Western women of status are usually the gatekeepers of imperial privilege who use “feminism” selectively to further their own agendas of shoring up yet more privilege and foregrounding their own wants and desires rather than even considering the very real needs of the women in those parts of the world colonised by their own imperial structures.

Feminism in the West has traditionally been for the women who can afford to highlight the “oppressions” that they believe they face, and it is my experience that Western feminists frequently extend their benevolent hand to you from their elevated position of patronage when it is easy for them to do so and can be done in superficial ways, without contradicting their own affiliations however dishonest, or undermining their own privileges.

Western feminism has often revealed itself to be shallow, self-congratulatory and even prone to frequent male bashing in its agenda to elevate its own wants and luxuries; celebrating a woman in a senior role whether she has ethics or not, whether she is a decent person or not, just because she is a woman is inimical to me, as is the greed for ever more material reward or double standards around gender roles.

The male bashing is particularly prominent when it is directed at men of colour; here, the confluence of imperial privilege, racism and sexism rears its poisonous head in full force. Western feminism can then be seen for what it truly is: a weapon that simultaneously signifies its title holders superiority while often being used to level accusations and diminish the rights of those who are in polarity to white feminists – that is, men of colour.

As a useful instrument of white imperial privilege, it can be wielded to safeguard those institutionalized rights that apply to all white western people, men and women alike; it’s the iron fist in the velvet glove that puts a softer face on colonialism.

The feminism that I abhor, which is frequently a feature of North European and American cultures is closely tied in with cultural imperialism, dominance and even empire building; at any rate it not only sustains the power structures of inequity already in place, ones that favour Western cultures over those of the “global south” but reinforces and sustains them.

While this toxic brand of “feminism” is used to promote clothing brands and make up in the West, utilizing inane symbols like Barbie and dressing in pink, probably before dancing in the dreaded cowboy boots and having a party with pink Prosecco, women in the colonized countries of the global South who are regularly exposed to the bombs and weapons of their men, can afford no such luxury, while they try to just survive the abuses of this system.

Western feminism doesn’t give a damn about emancipation for all; ciphers like Malala are useful for its propaganda campaigns, wheeling her out as a Muslim girl who speaks out about the Taliban, and to whom they can, in typical high handed colonial fashion, mete out a Nobel prize to show how generous their liberal Western values are – but when it comes to the real stuff, the ugly stuff, the human rights abuses that are a direct outcome of Western imperial policy – then they all shut up.

Human Rights Abuses and Gang Rapes by “Israel” are No Business of Western Feminism

Of the recent accounts of severe torture and rape, that of the female victim was in particular detail. It was a detail that we have rarely seen, I suspect, because Palestinian society is quite traditional and conservative, (and therefore suggests that it is just one of many such incidents) a point that was explained beautifully by Alaa from Gaza and that I will elaborate on in a separate article on this subject.

Here she explains the conservatism of Palestinian society, often used as a weapon by the West: “These are not faults; they are the natural outcomes of a society shaped by faith, tradition, and nearly two decades of siege and isolation that turned inward to survive.”

The key colonial project of the West in the Middle East, one of the pivots upon which its privilege turns, has bred lunatics and animals; the “Israeli” Zionists, shielded and protected by the West, lauded by blonde American girls like genocide Barbie (Emily Austin the paid Zionist shill, here beautifully exposed by Anna Kasparian), the all American cheerleader of the gang rape of indigenous women, and defended by many a supposed Western feminist, commits systematic sexual abuse of the most heinous and degrading kind, in its network of torture centres.

Every female who bears witness to this account of gang rape and degradation committed repeatedly over days, on this Palestinian woman in an “Israeli” detention centre, should be appalled; just like every mother who has seen thousands of Palestinian children with amputations, burns and life changing injuries should have been shocked enough to talk about it (although I didn’t hold my breath on that one either).

But what we typically hear from these women is either silence – or complicit statements. “Hamas”, “War”, “It’s their fault, they started it” – and so on. The stupidest platitudes bleated from privileged positions that wish not to examine their conscience or go back a few decades to see that Palestinians have lived under oppression, occupation and siege for generations.

When I say that Western feminism is the gatekeeper of colonial privilege I mean this not only as a general system, but also on an individual level. The women whose sons and partners are committing these atrocities are happy to perpetuate the lies that prop up this system; they are willing to turn a blind eye to what is inhumane, in order to safeguard their racist oppressive yet superior status.

They are supported in spirit by all those Western feminists that crow about women’s rights when it suits their own agendas yet have zero interest or understanding of other women’s realities and cultures. Their cultural “understanding” consists of trivialities like saying the hijab is unfair, while failing to recognize either the will and identities of the women they think they are sympathising with, or to look more deeply at their own complicit structures.

The testimonies of the Palestinian “prisoners” have been buried beneath headlines of trivialities, they have been suppressed and hidden just like those of all the other Palestinians and their harrowing stories – but they are still out there, for anybody interested enough to read them. But I do not hold out much hope that the majority of women that I interact with in my everyday life, will have any particular motivation to do so – they’re probably too busy talking about the next instalment in those liberating Barbie movies.

1. This report by B’Tselem titled “Welcome to Hell” details the kind of treatment that Palestinians, held without charge, are subject to.