November 16, 2023
A socialist feminist view of the Hamas breakout of Gaza and Israel’s attack on Palestine
By Adrienne Weller
Report to Seattle Radical Women meeting
Current situation. On October 7 Gazans, led by Hamas (Islamic resistance movement), broke out of their open air prison where they have been incarcerated by Israel since 2007. The Gazans have the right to defend themselves and to resist Israeli brutality. They took over military bases, attacked a music festival, killed 1300 people, and took about 240 hostage, including soldiers and civilians.
Israel’s retaliation has been genocidal, and have killed more than 11,000 Palestinian civilians in the past 5 weeks. They bomb Gaza and also kill Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Over 45% of houses in the Gaza Strip are destroyed. Doctors perform critical medical procedures without anesthesia and using phone flashlights because Israel has cut off electricity, food and fuel and WATER. Israel enforces phone and internet blackouts, preventing the injured from calling for help, or paramedics from locating the wounded, or journalists from reporting.
Today the U.S. capitalist ruling class pulls the strings that allow Prime Minister Netanyahu and his pro-fascist government to bomb Gaza for over a month. Gazans are locked in, no place to run in this genocidal attack.
Western governments have given Israel a free hand to commit these atrocities, and in the past, closed all diplomatic and nonviolent avenues for their liberation — from boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) to appealing to the UN Security Council for intervention.
How did we get here? Zionism is the founding ideology of Israel. It says Jews must have their own state to be safe. It came out of the Holocaust. Other countries would not let the Jews in, when they were being driven out of Europe and murdered by Nazis. Zionists sold themselves to ruling powers as a Western white population to turn Jews away from revolution and to counter the Arabs, who they called barbarians. Zionists were allowed to settle in Palestine in 1917. They were backed first by the ruling capitalist powers in Britain and later by the U.S., who see Israel as an army to protect their interests in the oil-rich Middle East that could control the poor and rebellious Arab masses. Israel walled in Gaza and occupied the West Bank. There they arm Zionists settlers who drive Palestinians off their land.
The dream of a safe Jewish homeland became a nightmare of a Jewish supremacist state that stole the land from the indigenous Palestinians and occupied them under brutal and murderous conditions.
Freeing Palestine and ending Zionism is a socialist feminist struggle. Women movements have historically been central to the struggles against oppression, discrimination, colonialism and militarism. It is feminist to demand an end to Israeli apartheid and occupation of Palestinian lands, to demand an immediate end to the bombing of Gaza, an end to the siege, to stop the U.S. selling arms to Israel, and to begin a massive humanitarian operation in Gaza. Every day without an end to bombing of Gaza, hundreds more innocent Palestinians die—including pregnant women and premature babies whose life support systems are failing because Israel’s government continues to cut off power.
State misogyny in Israel and Gaza. Women and their responsibility for children bear the brunt of war. Religious fundamentalists in Israel and in Gaza accuse feminists of creating chaos by undermining gender roles and the patriarchal family.
Israeli women’s job is to have babies to outnumber the Palestinians. Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, said “A Jewish woman who does not bring at least four children into the world…is defrauding the Jewish mission.” When a state views a population — its dispossessed, disenfranchised and occupied indigenous population — as a ”demographic threat,” that is both racist and sexist.
Hamas is religious fundamentalist movement that bullies and oppresses its own rebel youth and women. Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip advocates armed resistance, but is dictatorial to impoverished residents, and brutalizes and imprisons the Left and activist youth.
Palestinians/Gazans and Israelis desperately need better leadership.
The turmoil in Israel/Palestine is not a religious battle, but the attempt of US and Western capitalist/imperialist powers to keep control of the region. But Hamas’ attack and Israeli retaliation has unleashed a worldwide flood of protests for Palestine – numerous of them led by women, including Arabs, Iranians, Irish, English, and in the US. The Solidarity Initiative with Palestinian Women led a three-day sit-in protest in Istanbul. Palestinian feminist led groups have held protests of 1000s every week in Seattle. Jews have taken over the Statue of Liberty, NY Grand Central Station, blocked White House doors, and proclaimed “No genocide in my name” and “Never again for anyone.”
As a Jewish anti-Zionist I have fought for Palestinian rights for decades. RW and our sister group, the Freedom Socialist Party, have supported Palestine since our beginnings. We recently sent a support letter to the letter to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib who was censured for her brave defense of Palestinians on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
What to do Attend protests and demand Biden stop the bombing of Gaza.
And – just as urgent is getting involved in a revolutionary feminist group like Radical Women. Because the root of the problem is U.S. and worldwide capitalism and imperialism. We must take it down and change the system to egalitarian socialism. Women, and especially women of color, who are ready to lead in this fight are essential.
For one secular, and socialist Jewish/Arab state with full rights for Jews, Palestinians, women and non-European Jews, integrated into a federation of socialist republics of the Middle East.