Permission to Narrate Palestinian Feminisms

New Article Submission

Thank you for your interest in Jadaliyya. We welcome all submissions. The most significant requirement is for Jadaliyya submissions to be analytically compelling and offer a perspective or argument that has not been covered at length either on Jadaliyya or elsewhere. Because of the volume of submissions, well-written pieces are prioritized. Length is flexible, 1000 to 2500 words is the average range. However, we will accept longer pieces. Once submitted, several members of the editorial committee will review your piece and one of them will inform you of the decision.
Author Details
Article Details
Select Countries
Select Keywords
Select Topics
Only RTF, Word, and Pages documents accepted.

Recommended image size: 762x800 px

Location of each image should be indicated in the text of the article via a square bracket caption that includes: (1) a description of the image; (2) the photographer/designer and source of the image. Please note we only use images you as the author have the right to use, which usually means those of your own creation or those published under Creative Commons. Alternatively, you need specific permission from the copyright holder.
Please read the Release Form and provide an electronic signature [your full name] below to confirm that you accept its terms
Required
Hyperlink words in your article if they refer to links on the internet. We encourage more, rather than less, links (try to avoid footnotes—embed them as hyperlinks if possible)

Article added successfully.

Pages Menu BETA
Oct 7, 2020 Palestine
Permission to Narrate Palestinian Feminisms

Permission to Narrate Palestinian Feminisms

By : Palestine Feminist Working Group

On September 23, 2020 the corporate digital platform Zoom blocked an online open classroom featuring Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled. The panel, titled “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, and Resistance: A Conversation,” was co-organized by Professors Rabab Abdulhadi and Tomomi Kinukawa and co-sponsored by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program (AMED) and the Department of Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University. Part of AMED's Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice series, the webinar was the first of a two-part series focusing on gender and sexual justice in Arab, Muslim and Palestinian communities.  The incident became a shameful display of the role that technology companies can play in the larger landscape of racist, patriarchal and Zionist repression of Palestinian speech. In particular, it illustrates ongoing attempts to silence Palestinian narratives--and specifically, Palestinian feminist narratives--that elevate not only the voices of women who have played a foundational role in our historical struggles for liberation, but more generally, a gendered analysis of our ongoing struggles for freedom from patriarchal violence and the machinery of settler colonial dispossession. 

From our standpoint as Palestinian feminists who confront Israeli colonial occupation and dispossession, we assert that the voices, experiences and narratives of Palestinian women have long been surveilled, policed and targeted as part of the same structure of violence that targets our bodies, sexualities, lands and lives.  We understand that the attempted devaluation and erasure of our narratives as Palestinian feminists is intimately connected to the attempted erasure of our indigenous history and presence in our homeland. When writing or speaking out about the injustices facing our people, including histories of gender and sexual violence that continue to inform the present, many of us have faced Israel’s violent attempts to silence our voices and in doing so, discipline us into erasure, with punitive ramifications politically, professionally, and personally. 

We also recognize this incident as a continuation of a wider context of censorship on Palestine in the United States, a litmus test for other marginalized communities who speak out against repression and injustice.   In December 2019, Donald Trump signed an executive order directing government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Education, to consider a distorted definition of antisemitism designed to further censor free speech on Palestine, after failed attempts to pass similar legislation in Congress. This order has emboldened Israel’s allies to further attack  scholars, students, institutions and others engaged in speaking out against Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights.  Zoom, and later Facebook and Youtube’s rescinding of their services to SFSU after thousands of Zionists lobbied the platform cannot but be understood in relation to this heightened context of surveillance and repression of Palestinian speech in the United States.  Indeed, this move sets a dangerous precedent for the extension of recent policies of repression into virtual spaces not only for Palestinians but for other subaltern groups as well. 

As we increasingly rely on digital platforms to engage broader publics, and especially as the space for face-to-face engagement has narrowed in the wake of COVID-19, we know that this kind of suppression will be weaponized to silence any and all marginalized communities using digital spaces to voice opposition to the oppressive systems under which we live.  While we are acutely aware of the systemic logics of racism inherent in digital technologies for racialized communities, digital platforms also produce opportunities of sociality in the face of erasure. If digital platforms continue to have the power to dictate the terms of the conversation, and if we continue to have to ask for permission from massive technology conglomerates to share our vital histories, we can only expect a further restriction of what Palestinian scholar Edward Said called “permission to narrate” (1984). As Palestinian feminists, we know the stakes of this moment all too well.  

Further, the censoring of AMED's “Whose narratives?” webinar is a stark example of the weaponization of the language and hegemonic narrative of the oppressor to silence our histories of resistance. To justify denying its services to the panel, Zoom stated that “in light of the speaker’s reported affiliation or membership in a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization...we determined the meeting is in violation of Zoom’s Terms of Service.” This patterned logic relies on the designation of what constitutes terrorism. As an imperial power in the region, the U.S. continues to provide Israel with unequivocal financial, ideological, military, and diplomatic support. To paraphrase Khaled’s own powerful words, it is not terrorism to resist the occupation and colonization of one’s land and people. The true terrorism is Zionist occupation itself. 

Colonial powers have historically instrumentalized the meaning of terrorism so that it is associated with particular actors rather than actions, thereby delegitimizing the resort to force, irrespective of targets or tactics of certain actors and absolving the violence of the most powerful states. This process has invoked civilizational tropes in order to frame the use of force by Indigenous, Black and Brown combatants as barbaric, savage, and beyond the bounds of regulated warfare. While the international community has recognized the right of all peoples, including Palestinians,  to use force “against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right to self-determination,” Israel and the United States have refused to recognize this right and have continued to frame any use of force by non-state actors as criminal and terroristic. Simultaneously, the United States and Israel have framed their force as defensive and legitimate, even as their forces have targeted schools, hospitals, electricity plants, agricultural fields, funerals, graduations, and weddings. 

As a collective of Palestinian feminists based primarily in the U.S., we understand it as part of our duty to confront hegemonic colonial and orientalist Zionist imaginaries that construct Palestinians, and in particular, Palestinian women, as monstrous, terrorists, racialized “Others” outside the realm of the human.  We recognize current attempts to pervert and dismiss histories of struggle as “terroristic” as part of an ongoing legacy aimed at achieving our indigenous erasure. We are aware that attacks on Palestinians are often the gateway to broader attacks against emancipatory movements and thus, both far from exceptional and a matter of general concern. As Palestinian feminists, we honor and claim Leila Khaled, as we claim all of the Palestinian women, in the homeland as well as in exile, who have fought to ensure that current and future generations of Palestinians do, and would, exist. We are honored to continue this legacy through our unwavering commitment to the Palestinian liberation struggle. 


Noura Erakat, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, Rutgers University

Dr. Sarah Ihmoud, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The College of the Holy Cross

Dr. Hana Masri, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Maisa Morrar, Physician Assistant and member, Palestinian Youth Movement

Dr. Loubna Qutami, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, UCLA

Basima Sisemore, Researcher, Othering & Belonging Institute, UC Berkeley

Randa M. Wahbe, Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology, Harvard University

Yazan Zahzah, MA in Women and Gender Studies, San Diego State University

Leena Odeh, J.D., The Decolonizing Race Project

On behalf of the Palestine Feminist Working Group

The Palestine Feminist Working Group is a U.S. based network of Palestinian and Arab feminists who are committed to ending all forms of Zionist colonial and gendered violence and oppression. We believe that social liberation is a critical component of Palestinian national liberation. The working group was founded by the Palestinian Youth Movement’s (PYM) Women’s Committee. To learn more about our work and/or to join our efforts contact us at Palestinianfeminists@gmail.com
Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412