Feminism in the Context of the Genocide in Gaza: A Call to Change Perspectives

I. The Basis for Reframing Feminist Questions

In response to the ongoing Israeli occupation and settlement practices, Palestinian resistance breached the racist barriers and walls, launching a ground assault on the Gaza border on October 7, 2023. The “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation struck a fatal blow to the myth of Israel’s security, military, and intelligence superiority. In rapid retaliation, and with support from the United States and many Western countries, the occupation committed horrific crimes against civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip since 2006, relying on methods of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. The war machine primarily targeted women and children, demolishing hospitals and residential areas, aiming to dismantle families, terrorize men, humiliate them, and ultimately force submission. More than that, the occupation consciously sought to eliminate as many mothers as possible—mothers as bearers, caregivers, and memory keepers. This indicates that the Israeli war machine aimed to assassinate wombs and caregivers, killing fetuses, and obliterating everything related to nurturing, protection, and care, effectively trying to cut off Palestinian lineage to prevent the birth of resistors. It aimed specifically at women as entities and symbols of life.

All this unfolded before the eyes and ears of the world. It was striking to witness the inability of international organizations, human rights groups, and international conventions to protect women, or even provide them with aid. It was as if the military machine exterminated not only people and buildings but also all awareness, training, and empowerment campaigns for women. These organizations merely contented themselves with partial and disjointed reports, focusing on victim counts; one of their statistics indicated that two mothers in Gaza are martyred every hour, with the number of martyr mothers reaching six thousand, while 19,000 children were orphaned, and 4,700 women and children are reported missing. Furthermore, six out of ten pregnant women are suffering from health complications.

This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding what has happened and continues to happen. Such events have shaken international standards, documents, and treaties, resulting in a significant loss of credibility. The so-called supporting democratic nations allied with the Zionist occupation seemed confused and resorted to more evasion, while morally conscious individuals began to question those in decision-making positions. Concepts became disrupted and measures inverted. In this context, serious questions arise for us as researchers and academics regarding our contributions to entrenching hegemony, the shortcomings in our approaches toward women, the extent to which we have been swept away by prevailing ideological currents, and whether the war against Gaza will grant us a renewed opportunity to carve out new concepts and ideas derived from our reality, pain, blood, and the suffering of our women and children, as well as the sacrifices of our youth. Yet finding answers to these unsettling questions necessitates an engagement with the symbolism of the female experience amidst genocide, particularly in relation to the postcolonial neoliberal context, along with the various transformations that have profoundly affected human life, for the purpose of diagnosing the ailments resulting from hegemony—both overt and subtle—and its direct and indirect manifestations in Arab feminist circles.

The Symbolism of the Female Experience Amidst Genocide

As a researcher seeking to understand women’s actions, the following female scene emerged:

• Women besieged and starved, moving from one place to another to escape bombardment and destruction; women searching for their children’s bodies beneath the rubble; women giving birth under extreme duress; women as medics, caregivers, steadfast to the land, in solidarity, patient, calling upon the Creator, reciting “Hasbunallahu wa ni’mal wakeel” (God is sufficient for us and He is the best disposer of affairs)…
• Women subjected to captivity, humiliation, rape, and all forms of torture and intimidation—a new breed of women who broke the barrier of fear and transcended the trauma of sexual violence, which has historically been the occupation’s vile tool for displacing families in fear for their daughters and women.
• Influential creative women who entered the world of symbolism with their eyes set on dismantling the occupier’s false and misleading propaganda. As the occupier had insidious intentions against them, they soon found opportunities to arrest them, justifying it with flimsy excuses. This was evident in the case of artist and neurologist Dalal Abu Amna, who sought to revive memory and resist the occupier through her songs on programs associated with “Arab Television,” focusing on Palestinian heritage. She was arrested by Israeli authorities after she published the phrase “Only God prevails” on her Facebook page, labeling it as support and incitement for terrorism. Similarly, young Ahed Tamimi was detained on the same charges after being arrested in 2017 and serving eight months for slapping two Israeli soldiers in front of her family home in Nabi Saleh in occupied West Bank, demanding they leave the area. University professor Nadira Shalhoub was also detained for using the term colonial occupation to describe the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and for identifying herself as a Palestinian feminist.
• In diaspora, particularly in the United States and other Western countries supporting Israel, Palestinian women have energetically led protests and demonstrations, including models and entertainers whom feminists have previously underestimated (e.g., Hadiya and Mia Khalifa). Their response was intimidation and punishment, employing extortion under the guise of “anti-Semitism.” For instance, the University of Southern California rescinded a graduation ceremony for outstanding student Asna Tabssim after she was criticized by pro-Israel Jewish groups because of her pro-Palestine posts. Similarly, Columbia University expelled the daughter of parliamentarian Ilhan Omar for participating in a solidarity protest with Palestine. Western, Jewish, and African women expressed solidarity, demonstrating to stop the war and cease genocide, chanting for a free Palestine, only to be threatened with expulsion, loss of scholarships, and accountability under public safety laws.

Academics and thinkers with critical approaches to capitalism faced intimidation and punishment through arrest, censorship, and job suspension, among other means that Western democracies claim to combat in the Global South. For example, the Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli was denied a prize that was to be awarded at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Philosopher Noël Macphail, author of Fear of Collapse: Psychoanalysis and Politics, from Emory University, was arrested for her solidarity with Palestine, possibly also due to her bold critiques of the political system. Prominent American academic Judy Dean was punished for her stance on Gaza; she was granted leave from her teaching position at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York after she wrote a paper titled Palestine Speaks to Everyone, describing the drones flying over the separation barrier between Israel and Gaza as “joyful.” This indicates that she employed a feminist lens to seek out the marginalized feelings of the oppressed who are occupied and expelled from their homeland.

• An invitation sent by a German university to American Jewish philosopher Nancy Fraser, who founded a critical feminist theory against capitalism, for a prestigious academic position was rescinded due to her signing an open letter published in November titled Philosophy for Palestine, which was co-authored by dozens of philosophy professors worldwide.
• Female journalists daring to cross the red lines established by their institutions against criticizing Israeli policies faced consequences. For instance, British broadcaster Sangeeta Maisiya vanished from LBC after a heated interview with Israeli government spokesman Avi Hayman regarding Iranian drone and missile attacks on Israel. Also, British anchor Bill Donati has been missing from Sky News since January after her interview with Israel’s former UN ambassador Danny Danon, during which she questioned whether his call for voluntary immigration from Gaza and urging nations to receive Palestinians was akin to what Jews experienced in Europe during the Holocaust. This implies that these female journalists paid the price for crossing established red lines.
• Conversely, the treatment of university presidents bore no relation to democracy and its ideals. Presidents celebrated by feminists for breaking the glass ceiling and reaching decision-making positions found themselves subjected to demeaning interrogations. Those who distinguished themselves with their responses, framing students’ comments under the umbrella of free expression faced termination or resignation, as happened with Harvard President Claudine Gay, who categorized campus protests against Israel within the scope of free speech. Meanwhile, Ni’mat Shafiq, President of Columbia University, who called the police to disperse student protests supportive of Palestine, resulting in the arrest of over 100 students, internalized and reproduced capitalist male norms, cloaking them in feminine guise to preserve her position. By succumbing to the directives of larger interests, she believed she was safeguarding her role, without realizing she might be later scapegoated; it is no coincidence that every news about Ni’mat Shafiq recounts her origins, implying a racist subtext that tyranny is part of her Eastern and Arab composition (Ni’mat Shafiq, of Egyptian descent, sacrificed academic freedom, quelling protests).
• Amal Alamuddin, the Lebanese-English lawyer and wife of George Clooney, whom Western media champion as “one of the fiercest defenders of human rights,” remained silent during the ongoing brutal Israeli assault on Gaza and southern Lebanon (her homeland), despite having condemned the Russian army in its aggression against Ukraine, stating in April 2023 that “Ukraine today is a slaughterhouse in the heart of Europe.” This lawyer, who participated in various cases and was firmly against the “tyrants of the earth,” did not stand in the International Court of Justice to denounce Benjamin Netanyahu, even if only implicitly. In this context, Ahmad Al-Daqqa bitterly remarks: “Our daughter is preoccupied with something else, or Hollywood’s anti-Semitic propaganda is deafening her ears to the cries of children and mothers under the Zionist war machine. Our daughter mimics Western human rights and watches the death of ‘human animals’ in silence.” She was one of the experts consulted by the International Criminal Court when the prosecutor requested the judges to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Yoav Galant, Yahya Sinwar, and other resistance leaders on charges of committing war crimes in Gaza. Notably, the Columbia graduate has recently appeared demanding the equal treatment of the perpetrator and the victim. Amal, who aligned with the spirit of the West, was prominently featured in the media as the defender of the vulnerable, makes equivalences between those who came from the ends of the earth to build settlements for “their people” over the bones, dreams, and memories of the rightful landowners.

Against this backdrop, one might wonder about the value of individuals from third-world countries ascending to high positions in Western nations. These questions, which have begun to occupy some minds, may find answers in a viral video of an academy member at an American university in the Caribbean stating: “It is not enough to be women; being Black is not credible in itself if we remain silent in the face of the genocide that oppressed peoples globally are experiencing, funded by the taxes we pay. High-ranking Black officials will not save us. Look at this Black woman who serves as an ambassador to the UN, raising her hand to vote against a ceasefire in Gaza.”

• An immoral bias from certain feminist organizations in America, calling for investigations into sexual assaults that Israeli women may have faced when captured by Hamas, while turning a blind eye to what is happening in Gaza. Zainab Asaf states: “Despite the lack of evidence or documentation so far, what about the Palestinian women bodies bleeding on the hospital floors? What about their hunger, displacement, and fear? And the shattered lives of their families under the world’s most devastating weapons? There is simply no place for us; this is how the world spins on the faces of White and colored women who do not resemble us, labeling themselves as ‘Muslim activists’ here in America, taking a stand only if it aligns with the existing status quo. They talk about empowering women and equality, echoing the words of Arab women as parrots, feminist ‘light’, loyally serving political correctness, and directing their arrows toward the wild Arab man. This intractable dilemma poses the question of liberation versus reform. Yet in times of war, we stand with men and confront injustice together.” All this indicates that the dominant hegemony machinery works in collaboration among political, media, and financial powers to fabricate journalistic investigations and cut funding for Arab feminist organizations that failed to vocally describe Hamas’s use of sexual violence. Colonial racism and superiority emerge clearly when juxtaposing an interview on UK Talk TV where broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer repeatedly attempted to push head of the Palestinian National Initiative Mustafa Barghouti to justify the crimes of the Israeli occupation. When he did not, she interrupted him, claiming time constraints, to which he replied he did not know what time she had in mind for that. Her response was indicative, “Let me finish my sentence, man; perhaps you are not used to a woman speaking.”

These scenes suggest an overt bias beyond mere flagrant partisanship, with a near-direct involvement in conflict, particularly on the part of the United States. A state of hysteria swept through Western media outlets and governments, leading to the suppression of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, threats to pursue supportive posts on social media legally, and even the cancellation of Palestinian intellectuals’ participation in scheduled cultural events, alongside fabricating fake news about “the brutality of the resistance” and circulating it at the highest levels. Those atrocities for which Western countries had historically issued denunciatory statements against Arab Third World or even major antagonistic regimes like Russia and China, are now committed in the name of “Israel.” Yet the paradox lies in the moral rhetoric they project to justify this bias, aligning their partisan positions with their “liberal enlightenment” ideology, which has been the foundation of their legitimacy in hegemony for two centuries.

The vocabulary that circulated during this period—genocide, cleansing, occupation, settlement, blockade, starvation, resistance, relief, protest, solidarity, punitive measures, eviction, prohibition, extortion, evasion, fabricated films, etc.—raises questions not only regarding what Western democracies have done and the role of international treaties but also what they have conveyed to us as researchers invested in women’s issues, irrespective of how we label ourselves—feminist, women’s, or gender studies. Since this genocide has exposed the intellectual impasse we have reached, everyone must revisit their approaches, reconstruct their representations, and re-establish the networks of their analysis. This calls for putting our ideas under scrutiny and diagnosing the ailments resulting from hegemony and subjugation.

II. The Ailments of Hegemony

In the Context of Arabic Feminist Discourse

To diagnose the ailments resulting from hegemony, I will continue what I have begun concerning the challenges facing the formation of an Arab feminist discourse. Although the term “discourse” may seem outdated, not fitting with digital transformations or the “liberatory” climate of postmodernity, the summary of my findings at the time indicated that the Arab feminist discourse suffers from several intertwined challenges, the most notable of which include: the dilemma of the conflation or distinction between Arab feminism and Western feminism; the struggle to engage in epistemological work; the dilemma of linking epistemology with politics; the dualities (authenticity/modernity, private/public, natural/cultural, theoretical/applied, social/national, etc.); the interaction with digital generations; and the challenges of foreign funding and intellectual dependency.

These challenges opened avenues for me to recognize the urgent need to break free from the one-sided approaches to which we have confined ourselves, often echoing the flashy rhetoric of capitalist colonizers in the advanced West regarding various issues: gender equality, sexual identities, social justice, governance, transparency, glass ceilings, oppression culture, and activist narratives. Furthermore, these efforts also diversified and fragmented rights to the point that they became internally contradictory. We became entrapped in the binary thinking endorsed by male capitalist ideologies that have dominated the world, categorizing groups based on their proximity or distance from Western lifestyles, thus homogenizing them in a way that left no space for convergence. Colonialism violently penetrated all facets of life—culture, values, and resources—leading to the obliteration of the “other” and consequently denying any humane quality attributed to them. The label “human animals” was not used carelessly; it signals the depraved language that underpins genocide. Possibly, a glance at how feminist movements in our countries interacted with Western feminist currents that uphold capitalist structures reveals clarities about contemporary manifestations of hegemony.

Interaction with Feminist Currents Supporting Capitalist Structure

As Western nations sought to impose a singular feminist framework in our lands, most feminist activists adopted a racist Orientalist ideology that worked hard to associate every grievance faced by women with Islam and Arab culture. Consequently, it was clear that their interaction with feminist movements framed within the capitalist system inadvertently promoted hegemony, and rarely did they engage with Western feminist movements that critique the capitalist system and oppose colonial hegemony. This was compounded by academicians focusing on quantitative research and wielding numbers that often evade discussion and obscure the inquiry into meaning. Feminist movements began to celebrate women who overcame the glass ceiling, reaching positions of power without questioning the value of their ascent if they were to adopt male practices.

Thus, we found that some feminist approaches were welcomed within a specific context and conditions, while others were ignored by the patriarchal capitalist system due to its ideologies, academy frameworks, and material incentives. For instance, there has been little resonance in our societies for the proposals of feminist ethics that sought to refine traditional morals, reshape them, and reconsider their devaluation of women’s lived moral experiences. Questions arose about whether there exists a single virtue for both genders or unequal virtues in which men and women differ based on gendered factors. A debate ensued over whether the differences in ethics between the genders emerge from social manipulation or biological determinism, and discussions on prioritizing care justice emerged. Some demanded that women integrate their lofty ethics into public spaces, just as they inhabit private spheres. Meanwhile, some argued that women needed economic equality with men before they could bring forth a human moral virtue. Conversely, some feminist thinkers asserted that women’s experiences in bolstering male egos and healing their wounds ultimately weaken them, affirming that “emotional labor” performed by women in specific professional services disconnects them from their feelings and emotions, arguing that genuine caregiving cannot happen under conditions dictated by male control and female subservience, emphasizing the necessity for women to possess full equality with men so they can offer care without fearing the exploitation of their nurturing work. Others found in the relationship between maternal figures and children an excellent model for human relations generally. Conversely, others traced the roots of caregiving ethics to the dependency relationships among humans that should direct public policies towards human equality.

It is worth noting that the gender approach gained prominence in our countries, having been welcomed in liberal capitalist societies, in contrast to the care-focused approach that was marginalized therein; consequently, we found it receiving no echoes in our contexts due to various reasons, including that the gender approach tends to place the burden of gender discrimination and division on culture, society, and norms, perceived as monolithic, universal, and immutable, sidelining economics, markets, and politics. Moreover, some found that this approach cultivates individualism and clouded identity and behavior, representing a factor of social stagnation and chaos, subsequently embodying a characteristic of the dominant ideology. In recent times, the gender approach has begun substituting local cultural essentialism with an essentialism of the alternative, as Saad Purdah finds, blending critical theory with a post-colonial discourse. Judith Butler found that indigenous societies were previously non-compliant in gender terms until Western colonialism imposed heterosexual conformity, thus converting Butler and her professional domain into “indigenous patriarchs.” Thus we observe that not only does the local security-capitalist authority use post-colonial and anti-imperialist discourse to legitimize its tyranny, but alternative and non-dominant powers also master such utilization.

The care approach, which critiques the economic system that erases the social context, establishes a kind of dialectic between the private and the public, the global and the local, justice and care. In this way, it represents a factor of social harmony and connectedness, posing a risk to the dominant ideology. Caring policies direct thought toward care ethics, exchange, and precautionary measures, focusing attention on the nearby and local, as we can only care for those within our reach. Therefore, this theory inherently contradicts the dominant ideology founded on eliminating borders, enforcing globalization, dismantling social gains, and jeopardizing the less affluent. Furthermore, we have not observed any impactful interpretations of the meanings that Axel Honneth’s notions of freedom and independence present, alongside the importance he placed on relational and social contexts in which individuals develop. Nancy Fraser indicates that the gender division between social reproduction and economic production represented the foundational institutional basis for women’s subordination in capitalist societies, casting them into a crisis of caregiving. This parallels how capitalist societies have treated nature as an endless reservoir from which they can extract at will. When society withdraws public support for social reproduction and mobilizes primary service providers for lengthy and grueling hours of labor, it has depleted the capacities on which it relies. This contemporary form of capitalist funding systematically consumes our capabilities to maintain social ties, akin to a tiger gnawing on its tail, resulting in a caregiving and environmental crisis. Fraser expresses concern over the troubling alignment of liberal feminism with capitalism, as it confers a sense of liberation upon an unyielding exploitation system. Fraser offers a radically different vision for feminism in her critique of capitalism, illustrating that gender justice is central to any struggle for an equitable society.

Thus, feminist economics has worked to analyze the interactive relationships between gender and economics, incorporating into its analysis sectors of the production circle that remain unregulated by the market and lack monetary compensation. It examined logic underpinning the duality of traditional concepts, such as economic/social, productive/reproductive (in terms of regeneration), male/female, free/paid, as well as public/private. It also studied the terms patriarchy and capitalism as interlinked forms of hegemony. These various approaches instilled a rich intellectual atmosphere, as they shaped numerous concepts, identified interconnections, scrutinized a multitude of meanings, and worked to connect the local and global, the public and private. Importantly, they critiqued economic systems that neglected social policies and analyzed the relationship between caring ethics and democracy, as Joan Tronto, in her study of the nature of care ethics, observes that care and democracy do not appear to coincide well; care demands positive discrimination in favor of vulnerable and needy groups, while democracy regards people as equals, thus marginalizing care from the political realm.

In this way, feminist thought prompts us to reflect within a globalized context and local environments fraught with perils, particularly highlighting feminist approaches that have been previously marginalized but are resurfacing anew as a necessity to respond to rising health, living, and social crises amid the burgeoning neoliberalism, accelerated technological and communicative developments, doctrines that uphold a singular market economy model, the absence of alternatives, the rise of individualism, the decline of union and party labor, changing operational mechanisms, and the legal frameworks governing them. All these lead to an emphasis on outcomes, obscuring accountability. This has resulted in heightened racism and hostility toward migrants, blaming individuals for their conditions and problems, which engenders feelings of guilt, rendering them subjects of condemnation. These symptoms and others place the world, including democratic nations, before political, social, and economic challenges impacting the foundations of democracy, creating a state of uncertainty because of rapid transformations accompanying the export of risks across borders, resulting in deeper inequalities due to the connection between social protection systems and economic systems. Consequently, social protection systems in developing countries are questioned within the context of crises linked to privatization as part of structural adjustment programs, where financial and economic shocks have led to the dismantling of the care state and the fracturing of unions. Proposed reforms sought to dismantle solidarity mechanisms, replacing them with individual insurance forms. Additionally, women and girls have faced structural inequalities and daily risks at the core of their life cycles.

This interplay has reflected upon academic and research domains, as most research overlooked the contexts in which concepts were produced, failing to interrogate them or link epistemological approaches with political and economic ones. It did not pause to reflect on the meanings of social and political philosophy or the concepts of identity, individual freedom, parity, equality, difference, and acceptance. Alongside an admiration for some titles without scrutinizing their meanings and conditions for realization—independence, individualism, freedom—some have recently flirted with promoting sexual identity freedoms while glorifying individualism. In this respect, feminist philosopher Genevieve Fraisse points out that the world has forgotten to think collectivity in establishing the political. Thus, hegemony magnified during the advanced modernity phase, intertwined with technological and communicative transformations that transcended temporal and spatial boundaries, rendering diverse economic, political, anthropological, cultural, and social repercussions.

III. The Phase of Advanced Modernity and Tools of Maintaining Hegemony

In the neoliberal phase, many conceptual shifts occurred, where most of us stood in a state of shock and confusion, clinging to nothing, devoid of certainty and awaiting everything, ostensibly independent yet lacking power, liberated yet without will, as expressed by Gilles Lipovetsky. These manifested in several transformations, including:

1. Transformations in Over-modernity and the “Second Individualistic Revolution”

It is beneficial to observe the transformations that occurred in contemporary Western societies after entering the phase of “over-modernity” before adopting any feminist direction. It is also useful to track the changes that affected a range of important topics including democracy, seduction, apathy, narcissism, the second individual revolution, dominance of humor, new feminism, and the replaceable violence replacing savage violence. The new logic governing this phase is personalism, suggesting a new form of societal organization and managing individual behaviors. As Lipovetsky sees it, this personalism refers to two opposing elements: one negative indicating the splintering experience of disciplinary socialization, and the other positive indicating a flexible society based on media stimulation of needs, sex, and the sanctification of the natural combined with a sense of humor. The ramifications of this process have manifested through heightened self-centeredness, indifference to public interests, individualism prevailing over universality, and psychologization overshadowing ideology, rendering the current phase, in Lipovetsky’s view, a “second individual revolution.” This engendered a disconnection of individuals from meaning, polluting their relation to various vital sectors, rendering education a desecrated field stripped of its essence and neutralized in its role for constructing consciousness, and resulting in evident apathy in the political domain, evidenced by abstention rates from voting and the decline of stringent ideological awareness in favor of scattered curiosities, heavily influenced by media. Thus, relativity and fluidity of knowledge became significant tributaries of individualism, fostering rebellion against every religion or doctrine, leading individuals to focus solely on themselves and separate from societies they no longer perceive as holding rights or ties to them.

2. Manipulation of Terms and Methods for Their Use

Many instances involve the manipulation of terms; for instance, previously considered a response to inequality, social justice in the new neoliberal lexicon has erased any reference to equitable distribution of wealth, income, and resources. Justice has come to resemble its opposite, as noted by Nancy Fraser, becoming equated with the right to difference, often used in contexts relating to feminism, anti-racism, and sexual rights. Social justice has also garnered new meanings, such as this mixed EU definition: “strengthening Parliament, protecting human rights, encouraging social dialogue, promoting drug prevention and treatment, empowering women, and advocating for youth.” Likewise, large-scale corruption in neoliberalism was utilized to cover over other economic and social issues, such as exploitation. The term advocacy has replaced solidarity, while activist has supplanted fighter.

3. Rise of Discourses that Enforce Hegemony

In the era of advanced modernity, it is noteworthy that many discourses reinforcing hegemony through subtle means have circulated. For instance, Mahmoud Haidar observes that the “mirror internationalism” thesis furthers a historical consciousness of Western superiority through three domains: human rights, humanitarian intervention, and economy. Within the framework of the Western modern model, the legitimacy of human rights internationalism stems from the presumed universality of its foundational principle, asserting that Western reason since ancient Greek writings through successive modernities is the guiding light to the entire world. They also claim that Western civilization is the unique, distinguished, and exclusive source from which values defining the final stage of human evolution emanate. The translation of this principle has been materialized through a compound postulate: the belief in the universality of Western values and the absolute equivalence and identity between human rights and those values. Consequently, any critical opposition to the values of modernity and postmodernity is perceived as doubting the universality of human rights and individual freedoms. Thus, the relation with other peoples becomes part of a process of humanization, even when enacted with coercive force. The Western postmodernity has transformed the theory of humanitarian intervention into a salvatory thesis under the pretext of just wars. What is the war against the Palestinian people in Gaza today, and previously, in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a process that seeks to humanize the open wars of the West upon the world? This implies that only one narrative must be told, with dominating nations deciding and giving it a normative dimension, and any deviance from this normative narrative becomes a moral fault requiring condemnation and pursuit.

4. Disguising Political and Economic Questions in Cultural Attires

The collapse of the Soviet Union coincided with the demise of economic explanations and liberation doctrines, prompting Samuel Huntington to assert that the only potential model of the new era is culture. Fouad Traboulsi notes, albeit the unclear reasoning behind why culture must be the sole alternative, it has been elevated to an absolute global value. This new model serves as an explanation for life, social phenomena, and human behavior, rooted typically in fixed essence and identities based on religion and language. The paradox here is that what begins in culture morphs into geopolitical and strategic phenomena. For this reason, international reports have categorized the Arab homeland as lagging in development and suffering from cultural deficits, particularly regarding human rights, democracy, access to knowledge societies, and the empowerment of women. Within this narrative, the Arab world transforms into a singular block with a unified culture, leading to the homogenization of cultural progress into structural changes and neoliberal reforms. Traboulsi questions whether it clarifies Gramsci’s principle: political and economic questions become unsolvable when cloaked in cultural attire! When everything is viewed through a cultural lens, and terrorism is seen as a cultural-religious product? The solution is to encourage moderate Islam. Women’s empowerment is now sought by changing the “culture of women”; there’s no need to change men’s culture!

In this respect, As’ad Abu Khalil points out that racist Orientalist thought has led to ascribing every harm to women to Islam and Arab culture. Thus, narratives of sexual violence are wielded to shape public opinion and impact international perceptions of the conflict. In this way, revenge against sexual violence becomes a pretext to continue war and demonize resistance men. Additionally, gender has transitioned from a term into a multilateral project with cultural and social dimensions, with no free choice left; it has become mandatory, supported by the United Nations in Arab and Islamic countries through designated bodies and committees focused on assessing progress in transformations within educational and cultural institutions and legislative frameworks.

5. Imbuing Political Disputes with a Moral Dimension

Meanwhile, Maurice Ayik notes that liberalism in its recent decades has gravitated toward a moral-centric focus, imbuing political disputes with a moral charge that strips them of their political dimensions and the possibility of diverse opinions. For instance, liberals no longer suffice with merely defending sexual minorities to avoid discrimination or persecution due to sexual identity; it has become mandated that one accepts homosexuality as a natural occurrence and vocally affirms this; otherwise, they are deemed morally deficient. Here we face liberalism progressively moving toward a moral totality that violates the very essence of liberalism by contextualizing stances within a moral framework, positing alternative views as moral failures.

Conclusion

If we were to juxtapose the values of postmodernism as elucidated by Lipovetsky—individualism, narcissism, self-promotion, obsession with self—with the traditional values of Palestinian Gaza society—helping others, family solidarity and mutual aid, sharing sustenance, sacrificing for the homeland, patience, reliance on God, etc.—and query ourselves: How would the conditions of Palestinian women in Gaza have been if they embodied postmodern values, resentful towards their society and culture, loathing men and competing with them, no matter how? Would they have been able to sacrifice, endure, and withstand? Perhaps answering this question necessitates a deep exploration of the narratives of martyrs and suffering endured by Palestinian mothers, grandmothers, and girls. This would allow us to give, on one hand, meaning to what is termed traditional culture and our heritage, reconcile with our environment, engage in dialogue with one another, and practice self-criticism constructively. On the other hand, we could deconstruct the prevalent neoliberal postcolonial discourse, comprehending its backgrounds, dimensions, and aims.

The overseers of major monopolistic corporations and digital platforms, along with the capitals that manage them, have propagated the postmodern and end discourse to dismantle the hierarchical structures highlighted during the modern era—structures they now view as cumbersome barriers to their capital’s movement, obstructing projects in global hegemony by imposing their narrative and meanings intended to obscure exploitation and injustice in resource distribution. Their deep entrenchment in hegemony and option restriction has led to self-sabotaging planning, draining the content from their democracies, as they neglected social and class disparities, ravaged nature, and toyed with humanity. Thus, the resistance to occupation, epitomized in the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, has represented an existential threat not only to the occupying entity but also to the hegemonic and exploitative projects of capitalist nations. Given the rampant digitized tools imposed by monopolistic companies aiming for soft surveillance of the world, the images of carnage relayed by smartphones awaken the conscience of ordinary people, drawing attention to their status as citizens—a status that the capitalist machine sought to reduce to mere individualism, consumption, competition, disconnectedness from politics and the public sphere. Now, they witness firsthand the uprising of a new generation seeking its lost humanity and essence, which has been attempted to be stripped away under false pretexts (freedom, independence, horizontalism, interactivity, etc.). The ongoing historical massacre against a people expelled from their land and replacing them with another, alongside forcibly bending truths, has jolted global consciousness, perhaps creating the potential to eventually redirect the very powers that attempted to oppress through historical struggles.

From this standpoint, we wonder what will emerge from the previously drawn scene. Are there signs pointing to a counter-narrative? While we are mindful of the capitalist system’s capacity to produce mechanisms of self-correction, alongside its adeptness in reshaping public opinion through crafty and subtle techniques.

In this context, Lama Ghosh reminds us that postcolonial feminist theories elucidate the robust connection between mother and nation, indicating that the biological role assigned to women constitutes one of the central and vital roles conferred upon them in discourse and national struggle. Based on this, women’s bodies are systematically targeted as part of the mechanisms employed by colonial power to establish racial hegemony and the logic it wields for exterminating indigenous communities. Consequently, sexual violence has been utilized in colonial contexts against indigenous women’s bodies via rape, control over their reproductive capabilities, torture, and murder. Furthermore, Nadira Shalhoub-Kefoorikian highlights that the imbalance between Israeli external power and internal Palestinian strength redirects this power (Israeli) toward internally weakened groups—typically women. Therefore, her analysis suggests that violence against Palestinian women’s bodies and their sexuality is intensified in the hands of the Zionist state to bolster patriarchal local structures. The Israeli state has exploited the threat of sexual violence against Palestinian women and male-centric notions of sexuality and “honor” to recruit Palestinians as collaborators and deter organized resistance efforts. This implies that the occupier, from the outset, found in utilizing women fronts for its propaganda machine equivalent to weapons of mass destruction; Palestinian women are raped for the sake of displacement while others are killed in a quest for ethnic cleansing, with narratives fabricating films about Hamas’s rapes of Israeli female captives to garner public sympathy and incite anger towards the resistors while labeling them as terrorists.

This duplicitous nature compels us to question why sympathy for the case of Mahsa Amini was immense and systematic, while we failed to witness similar empathy for Gazan women. Is it because they are veiled or because þeir have given birth to resistors against the occupation? Or is it as Al-Dosari states, that imperial colonialism propagates its familiar narration, claiming that Palestinian women need “rescuing from Hamas,” classified as a terrorist group in the UK and other countries? Why haven’t feminist organizations raised their voices in defense of veiled women subjected to harassment and insults in democratic countries?

Despite the heavy cloud covering the world, we still perceive a different scene, especially since the welfare state, which women secured many rights under, has diminished, leading feminist currents to begin self-defining. Some have engaged with intersectional feminism, albeit sometimes bypassing context. Others have strived to highlight the intersection of gender-based violence, war, and political narratives within the Arab-Israeli conflict. Some are beginning to realize that the time has come to detach from the ruthless capitalism that regards the killing of women and children and the destruction of hospitals and means of living as mere collateral damage it seeks to fulfill. Perhaps, some internalize guilt for their preconceived ideas about Gazan women shaped by Western stereotypes of our environment and culture, prompted by admiration for their discourses on progress, development, modernity, and postmodernity, and this remorse could lead to understanding the military machine’s atrocities against women since 1948 up to the present.

Recognizing that feminism is an ongoing political struggle against all systems and structures perpetuating hegemony, exploitation, inequality, and injustice—as Qurami points out—requires us as academics to shape our issues, conceptualize their components, highlight their interconnections, and consider their cognitive, ethical, and interactive dimensions with society. Moreover, we must implement our feminist approaches across various fields and disciplines, elevating their significance while paying attention to linguistic meanings and implications, employing critical sensibilities, and engaging in contextualized thinking, as well as actively listening to marginalized groups. This will raise the level of Arab feminist discourse. It suffices to cease tallying the number of women in positions of savage male power and instead listen attentively to women’s experiences in challenging conditions, analyze the narratives that emerge, and learn from them, imbuing them with new meanings. Otherwise, we will remain within a parroted feminist framework that neglects national issues—horizontal, fragmented, broken, and whose proposals are individualized, violent, and fearful of its essence and identity, inadvertently terrifying others entrenched in their past; a discourse marked by contempt for history and anxiety over the future; resembling a phase of uncertainty we are navigating.

“This study was published in Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi magazine, Issue 549, November 2024.

Nahawand Qadiri Isa: Professor at the Faculty of Information and Documentation, Lebanese University.

[1] “The killing of 5,000 embryos at a fertility center in Gaza during an Israeli bombing,” Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, 4/17/2024, https://rebrand.ly/1kz2q91.

[2] Sources: United Nations Entity for Gender Equality; Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor; and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

[3] “Ahed Tamimi detained by the occupation on charges of ‘incitement to terrorism,’” Al-Modon, 11/6/2023, https://rebrand.ly/gpum57c.

[4] Nahid Derbas, “A Jerusalem court releases university professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian on conditions,” Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, 4/19/2024, https://rebrand.ly/bxsy339.

[5] “Mia Khalifa supports Palestinians and attacks Israel,” Al-Modon, 10/9/2023, https://rebrand.ly/8n​6​q​bqf.

[6] Raed Salha, “University of Southern California’s ‘top student’ banned from giving speech due to solidarity with Palestine,” Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 4/17/2024, https://rebrand.ly/7xosjve.

[7] Raed Salha, “Columbia University expels the daughter of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for participating in a protest supporting Palestine,” Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 4/19/2024, https://rebrand.ly/ettvgk9.

[8] Mohammad Hajiri, “Adania Shibli’s ‘Minor Detail’… Israel condemned from your own words,” Al-Modon, 10/9/2023, https://rebrand.ly/ex5yaoa.

[9] “Philosophy department chair at Emory University arrested for participating in a Palestine support protest,” Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 4/25/2024, https://rebrand.ly/qifvklm.

[10] Saeed Mohammad, “The leftist academic, Judy Dean: McCarthyism’s latest victim in the U.S. — the road to liberation passes through (the skies of) Palestine,” Al-Akhbar, 4/18/2024, https://al-akhbar.com/Palestine/379850.

[11] Saeed Mohammad, “Jewish American philosopher Nancy Fraser punished: Zionist Germany tailoring democracy to its own size!” Al-Akhbar, 4/9/2024, https://al-akhbar.com/Literature_Arts/379603.

[12] Jamal Al-Din Taleb, “‘Disappearance’ of a British broadcaster after an interview with an Israeli official, replaced by a ‘Zionist,’” Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 5/2/2024, https://rebrand.ly/77q3usx.

[13] “Harvard University president resigns after accusations of anti-Semitism and plagiarism,” Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, 1/3/2024, http://rebrand.ly/1jookhk.

[14] “New York Times: Egyptian-born president of Columbia University, Nemat Shafik, ‘survives by the skin of her teeth’ sacrificing academic freedom,” Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 4/19/2024, https://rebrand.ly/yrjyekk.

See also: Malik Wannes, “Nemat Shafik or a lesson in ‘Oriental despotism,’” Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, 5/9/2024, https://rebrand.ly/me287jg.

[15] Ahmad Diqa, “Amal Alamuddin… ‘our strange daughter,’” Al-Akhbar, 5/22/2024, https://al-akhbar.com/Media_Tv/382185.

[16] Zainab Assaf, “White and colored women who don’t look like us,” Al-Modon, 12/20/2023, https://tinyurl.com/mr36akt8.

[17] Azadeh Moaveni, “What They Did to Our Women: Women in Wartime,” London Review of Books, vol. 46, no. 9 (May 2024).

[18] Ghada Haddad, “Julia Hartley-Brewer… ‘White feminism’ serves colonialism,” Al-Akhbar, 1/12/2024, https://al-akhbar.com/Palestine/375114.

[19] Ahmad Nadhif, “The naked white man: The roots of the Western affinity with ‘Israel,’” Hibr, 10/18/2023, https://tinyurl.com/ms9rmjwh.

[20] Nahawand Qadiri Isa, “Dilemmas of forming an Arab feminist discourse,” paper presented at the 8th General Conference of the Arab Women Organization, under the title “Arab Women and Cultural Challenges,” February 23–25, 2021.

[21] Israeli War Minister Gallant described Palestinians as ‘human animals’ in a call for a comprehensive blockade on Gaza.

[22] As’ad AbuKhalil, “NGO feminism vs. radical feminism: On Israa Ghrayeb,” Al-Akhbar, 9/14/2019, https://tinyurl.com/h6cmbys9.

[23] Virginia Held, Ethics of Care, trans. Michel Hanna Matthias, Alam Al-Ma’arifa; 356 (Kuwait: National Council for Culture, Arts, and Literature, 2008).

[24] “Feminist Ethics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, trans. Zainab Salah, Hikma Magazine (October 1, 2017), https://tinyurl.com/yc7u83ff.

[25] “Le Care: ‘Théorie de soin’ contre ‘théorie de genre,’” Les Antigones (June 13, 2013), https://tinyurl.com/yc67mswt.

[26] Sadqi Asour, “Can studies on ‘counter-terrorism’ save Western academia on the Palestinian issue?” Al-Akhbar, 4/27/2024, https://tinyurl.com/mvmxact.

[27] “Le Care: ‘Théorie de soin’ contre ‘théorie de genre’.”

[28] Nicolas Weill, “‘La Reconnaissance’ by Axel Honneth: The Three Grammars of Freedom,” Le Monde, 12/17/2020, https://tinyurl.com/bdf93584.

[29] Sarah Leonard and Nancy Fraser, “Capitalism’s Crisis of Care,” Dissent Magazine (Fall 2016), https://tinyurl.com/dv3k3jx3.

[30] “Feminist Economics,” https://www.exploring-economics.org/fr/orientation/feminist-economics/.

[31] Joan Tronto, “Ethics of Care, Interview on 4 August 2009 (published on 16 October 2009), https://ethicsofcare.org/joan-tronto/, and “Le Care: ‘Théorie de soin’ contre ‘théorie de genre’.”

[32] Bertrand Badie, “Between Aspirations and Disappointments,” in: Searching for Alternatives: World Conditions 2018, supervised by Bertrand Badie and Dominique Vidal; trans. Nasir Marwah (Beirut: Arab Thought Foundation, 2018), pp. 9–27, and Bertrand Badie and Dominique Vidal, eds., L’état du monde 2018: Enquête d’alternatives (Paris: Ed. La Découverte, 2017).

[33] François Pollet, “Extending Social Protection in the South: Challenges and Pitfalls of a New Momentum,” March 1, 2014, https://www.cetri.be/Etendre-la-protection-sociale-au-3411?lang=fr.

[34] Geneviève Fraisse, The Making of Feminism (Paris: Le Passager clandestin, 2012), https://www.lepassagerclandestin.fr/catalogue/essais/la-fabrique-du-feminisme/.

[35] Gilles Lipovetsky, The Era of Emptiness: Contemporary Individualism and Postmodern Transformations, trans. Hafiz Idoukhraz (Beirut: Nama Center for Research and Studies, 2018).

[36] Abdelkader Melouk, “Postmodern Democracy According to Gilles Lipovetsky,” Manar Islam, January 7, 2021, https://islamanar.com/democratie-a-postmoderne.

[37] Cited in: Fawaz Trabulsi, “Reading Gramsci in the Neoliberal Era,” intervention at the International Gramsci Studies Conference, Cagliari – Sardinia, September 2021… and on the first Arabic translations of Gramsci, June 17, 2021, <https://rommanmag

.com>.”