No end in sight to the ‘war on women’ in Gaza
18 July 2024
Wars are never gender neutral and Gaza is further evidence of this as some one million women and girls bear “the worst brunt” of nine months of conflict, the UN Women Special Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory said on Thursday.
“They are losing their lives, they are sick, hungry, exhausted, holding families together despite their constant fear and loss,” said Maryse Guimond, speaking from Jerusalem to journalists at UN Headquarters in New York.
Tweet URL
Ms. Guimond recently concluded a weeklong mission to Gaza - a place she has visited more than 50 times in her six years in the job, including after previous escalations.
She was not prepared for “the total destruction and inhumanity” that she saw this time.
War ‘embedded’ on women’s faces and bodies
“What I witnessed defied my worst fears for the women and girls I have been working with for so many years,” she said. “It was unbearable to witness the daily escalation of violence and destruction of a war on women with no end in sight.”
The UN WomenOpens in new window Representative said she entered a world of devastation and total deprivation when the fence at the Kerem Shalom border crossing closed behind her.
“I cannot underline enough the impact that this war has had on women and girls. I barely recognized women who I knew before the war. The last nine months is embedded on their faces, on their bodies.”
Death, displacement, deprivation
Ms. Guimond explained that Gaza is “a war on women” simply because of the numbers who have been killed and injured, and the overall level of devastation that women there are facing.
“We have never seen this before,” she said.
More than 10,000 women have been killed since the start of hostilities on 7 October 2023, following the brutal Hamas-led attacks against Israel in which some 1,200 nationals and foreigners were killed and another 250 taken hostage.
Conditions in the enclave are dire. More than half a million women “are severely hungry, eating the last and the least of their families, skipping meals and not eating healthy foods for months and months,” she said, citing UN Women data.
Furthermore, people are “living in overcrowded spaces, where infectious diseases are much more rampant”. Because there is no water, women have been forced to shave their heads to avoid infections.
Pregnant women ‘fearful’
“I could not recognize the Gaza I knew,” Ms. Guimond said. “Homes, hospitals, shops, schools, universities have been destroyed. Crowds of men, women, children trying to survive and in makeshift tents and overcrowded shelters surrounded by rubble and total destruction.”
As most hospitals are no longer functioning, access to healthcare and medical treatment is limited.
Asked about the situation of pregnant women, Ms. Guimond replied that “some of them are so fearful of delivering in conditions that they have no control over that we’re hearing that some are actually asking if there’s a way for them to deliver more rapidly.”
‘No safe places’
Since January, UN Women have published several reports on the gender aspects of the Gaza conflict, highlightingOpens in new window how it is “fundamentally a protection crisis for women”.
Gaza has a population of some two million, and 90 per cent have been displaced, including nearly a million women and girls who have been uprooted multiple times in an increasingly shrinking space.
“There are no safe places to be a woman in Gaza,” she said. “They move with no cash, with no possessions, and with no clue how and where they're going to live. Many women told me that they will not move again as it does not make a difference for their safety or survival.”
Yet in the face of death, disease and displacement, women in Gaza “show remarkable strength and humanity in their struggle to survive, with hope and solidarity amidst the devastation,” she added.
The latest UN Women Gender AlertOpens in new window, published last month, examined how the war is impacting 25 women-led organizationsOpens in new window in the occupied Palestinian territory, 18 of which are based in Gaza.
They have over 1,500 personnel who provide shelter site management, hygiene kits, food parcels, psychosocial support, and other essential services, , despite a shortfall in funding.
These organizations need financial support to sustain their efforts, she said. But they also need to see an increase of women's representation at the decision-making table in every step of the humanitarian assistance - from planning to final delivery - and they need them now.”
Ms. Guimond ended her briefing by echoing the UN’s longstanding call for peace in Gaza, full access for humanitarian aid through the opening of all land crossings into the enclave, an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages.
National Organization for Women, Intersectionality, and Gaza
Image by Mohammed Ibrahim.
The National Organization for Women was seen as a radical organization in the 1970’s because of its valiant fight to protect reproductive rights for women. But even in those early days, NOW was not radical enough to include black women and LGBTQ as part of their mission. As the times changed and some people of color and LGBTQ members increased in the organization, including in leadership positions, the issues NOW addressed were mainstream, with the focus being on white middle class women’s rights and some attention to working class labor issues. In New York State, for example, NOW mostly addressed certification of reproductive rights, shielding sex workers while increasing the offenses for solicitation of sex workers, and protections for pregnant women in the workplace.
In the last few years NOW included intersectionality in its mission, because feminists who were elected to the highest offices of the organization believed that an intersectional lens helped one to look at the interesctions of power and privilege, as our identities are marked by race, ethnicity, gender, ability, age, sexuality, wealth, and so on. Reproductive issues, for example, was not just a binary issue of choice versus removal of choice to have an abortion; they incorporated so much more depending on the situation of a woman: her ability to nurture her babies, support for mothers, IVF treatments not just for wealthy people, access to birth control, healthcare for women, trans women getting care, STD testing and treatment, and more. NOW has been slow to catch up on feminist ideas flowering in academia and in women and gender studies conferences. Leading my chapter in Suffolk, Long Island, I was hopeful that we were on the right track of building a nuanced intersectional lens to the issue we addressed.
But after Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the holes in NOW’s intersectional mission became obvious. Within a week of the attack, NOW put forth a statement denouncing Hamas. It read: “NOW members are sticking fast to our core principles of human rights and freedom from fear, violence, and division. The rise in antisemitism and violent attacks on Jewish communities here and around the world underscore our alarm. The people of Israel live in constant fear of days like today. This is what happens when hate has no boundaries. NOW supports the right of the Jewish people to live without fear or violence, and we condemn antisemitism in all its forms.”
True, we were all horrified at the attack, and especially at the news about vicious sexual assaults on women. When Israel’s initial bombardment of Gaza took place, I was shaken when I heard 4000 children were killed in the first few days. When the killing did not stop, I and many others knew this was genocide, even though there was barely anyone using that term. Then Code Pink came out with their banner and march to stop the genocide. We were not alone. The world shuddered at the ongoing killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Many members of NOW responded, “No, this is not genocide. Israel is protecting its people. Hamas is using Gazans as human shields. This is Hamas’ war. Blame Hamas, not Israel. Israel has the right to defend itself.”
I attended a meeting of all the NOW chapters, where I stated the urgent need for NOW to come out with a statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, especially since the US was supporting Israel by sending arms. The moment I said this, members from different chapters began screaming at me. One said I was offensive by calling Israel’s action genocide. Some said: How can you use that term on Jews who have gone through the Holocaust?” The words “offensive” in subsequent meetings was used multiple times at the very mention of ceasefire or genocide. Needless to say, upon writing to the President and Vice President of NOW, the Suffolk and Nassau chapters were able to call for a Board meeting to discuss putting together a resolution for a ceasefire. An ad hoc committee of the Board worked on the resolution which was brought to a vote. The resolution failed. One member abstained and a couple of members left the meeting since the vote was called toward the end of a 3-hour meeting where other items on the agenda such as by-laws took precedence. Clearly, the ceasefire resolution was not a priority for NOW, and most of the members of NOW did not really care for the Gaza issue. The question that came up again and again was why were we focusing on an international issue when there are so many national issues that call for our attention? Moreover, NOW is a national, not an international organization. Valid points. But, Suffolk and Nassau chapters asked, why did NOW respond with a statement about Hamas’ attack on Israel, particularly to the sexual assaults? Why was Israel an urgent issue but not Palestine? For that matter, why weren’t we addressing Somalia, Sudan and the Congo? Members who opposed a ceasefire resolution countered with, “Is this a tit for tat?”
I was not surprised that NOW did not really believe in intersectionality, for that would mean applying the rule of equity to different groups. Our chapter demanded equity in how we talked about women’s issues. Why was NOW selective about populations it supported? Support for Gaza was seen by many members as anti-Semitic. While antisemitism resolutions were introduced in NOW, there was not a single one about countering Islamophobia. Is it any surprise that NOW barely has any Muslim members? Another member asked at one of our national Board meetings, “We are being dragged into someone else’s drama,” without realizing that feminist activism is about being dragged into other people’s dramas! Audre Lorde’s statement was lost on her: “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
Most of the younger feminists in the US support and apply intersectionality to women and gender issues. NOW cannot attract younger feminists, because of the severe lacunae in NOW’s vision that dismisses people who are marginalized. NOW leadership does not see that there is a contradiction in demanding ERA yet opposing Palestinian rights to life, their country, and self-rule. NOW does not see the connection between Black liberation and Palestinian liberation. While speaking strongly against sexual assaults on women, many NOW members don’t see a problem with advocating for victims of sexual assaults but not for women and children blown to bits or undergoing amputations and cesarean sections without anesthesia.
As some newer members observed, NOW is becoming defunct. It is old, stodgy, unwieldy, mismanaged, and disintegrating. While some chapters on the ground are doing some good work, as a national organization it has a brand name but without the substance behind it. It is unable to grow and move beyond the feminism of the 1970s and 80s. Therefore, adding intersectionality is “an empty gesture that reaffirms white supremacy,” say Ashlee Christofferson and Akwugo Emejulu (https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxac044). The further assert, “Intersectionality is fundamentally about recognition of the interrelation of structures of inequality (particularly race, class, and gender). Yet recognition of, and engagement with, the interrelationship of inequality structures, requires a prior step of recognizing the ontology of the structures themselves. This refusal to do so is reflected not only among white feminist academics who appropriate the language of intersectionality but fail to name or recognize white supremacy, instead bending and stretching intersectionality in the interests of white women—but also among practitioners.” NOW leaders need to recognize where they are operating out of priorities already established within systemic structures, deconstruct them, and look at issues that people are contending with. This means looking at sexual assault and genocide and ask the difficult questions such as why women are targeted, how as feminists we might advocate for all women, how we should not allow our language and thinking be coopted by the military lingo used to euphemize horrible truths on the ground. Such an intersectional look at violence against women needs to be paramount in feminist struggle to bring about change and truly embrace Audre Lorde’s belief in embracing freedom from oppression for all women, irrespective of their nationality, statehood, or other identity markers.
No comments:
Post a Comment