As Bangladeshi women, we have specific historical reasons to support free Palestine movement. We experienced atrocities during our liberation war in 1971, but our liberation war lasted for only nine months, compared to the 75 years of occupation and freedom struggle of the Palestinian people against the settler-colonial state of Israel, writes Farida Akhter

FEMINISTS, through their ideological commitment and practical engagement, stand strongly for the Free Palestine movement and condemn all forms of oppression, apartheid, genocide, racism, and ethnic cleansing. Feminists around the world have expressed their solidarity with Palestinians. Their opposition highlights the feminist position against colonialism, genocide, military occupation, ethnic cleansing, racism, and the continuation of the apartheid state. As of December 6, Gaza’s death toll from Israeli war crimes rose to 16,248, including 7,112 children. In a rare move, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, forcing the Security Council to address the Gaza war.

Gaza has been under various forms of Israeli control and blockade since 1967, with the most recent escalation beginning in October 2023 following the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7. Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic political party, took control of the territory. The blockade restricts the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, significantly impacting the lives of its 2 million residents. The blockade has severely limited access to food and water, leading to food insecurity and malnutrition, especially among children.

Feminists are particularly concerned because war has a disproportionate impact on women and children. The impact of the blockade on women and children has been devastating. Disproportionate harm includes physical injuries, deaths, psychological trauma, and the disruption of essential services like healthcare and education. Women and children constitute the significant majority of civilian casualties. Hospitals often lack essential medicines and medical supplies due to the blockade, impacting the quality of healthcare available to women and children. Pregnant women delivered babies with Caesarean sections in the absence of anaesthesia, performed in unhygienic conditions. Women had miscarriages and experienced other reproductive health problems. The blockade and the conflict have disrupted education for children in Gaza. Israeli airstrikes destroyed schools in Gaza. This can have a long-term impact on their development and future opportunities.

Women and children are vulnerable to different forms of violence, including domestic violence and sexual assaults, during periods of conflict. The ongoing conflict and the harsh living conditions in Gaza have a significant impact on the mental health of women and children. They experience anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Military closures and restrictions on movement disproportionately impact women’s access to healthcare, education, and economic opportunities. This further limits their agency and participation in public life.

We urge all the feminists in Bangladesh to support the Free Palestine movement and to demand an immediate cease-fire. We must continue protesting against the genocidal Israeli aggression, indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, racism, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and disregard of international law.

As Bangladeshi women, we have specific historical reasons to do so. We experienced atrocities during our liberation war in 1971, but our liberation war lasted for only nine months, compared to the 75 years of occupation and freedom struggle of the Palestinian people against the settler-colonial state of Israel. A settler-colonial Zionist state is integral to the imperial extension of US power to ensure sources of oil. The United States’ dominance through Israel is the major obstacle to the democratic transformation of the people of the Middle East and the major cause of war and instability in that region. The settler-colonial state of Israel is also linked to corporate profit generation through industrial killing, or, in other words, maintenance of the military-industrial complex in the USA, which provides billions of dollars for weapons. Feminists have multiple concerns about opposing Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza.

We cannot accept the killings of innocent civilians, particularly women and children, year after year. The tiny enclave of Gaza is facing Israeli bombardment from the sky, sea, and air. Hospitals, civilian houses, and infrastructure are all destroyed. Children’s dolls and toys become part of the rubble. They are writing their names on their hands and legs to be identified by their parents after their deaths. The world is witnessing such a humanitarian crisis in a situation of total siege since October 7, with Palestinians in Gaza without access to food, water, and electricity.

Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi, founder of the civil society group MIFTAH and also a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Executive Committee, gave a video message and said, ‘To all people of conscience, of integrity, of compassion, and of courage, I address you from Palestine, where we are witnessing one of the most horrific chapters of siege, destruction, bombing, and shelling, the deliberate killing of a captive Palestinian population in Gaza that has been held under siege and that has been brutally pounded for decades’.

Israel’s atrocities are escalating with the support of the Western powers and the United States of America in the name of so-called Israel’s right to self-defence. The attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7 was a response to decades of occupation, suffering, and deprivation. Israel wants to justify bombardments and killings in the name of self-defence, which is not acceptable to us as feminists.

Feminists around the world have been supporting freedom movements, liberation, and the self-determination of colonised people. Feminism has denounced violence. Israel’s attitude towards Palestine is extreme violent domination and naked masculinity, which feminists have always condemned.

Free Palestine is the call for the freedom of all Palestinians, irrespective of their religion or ethnic identity, and never against Jewish people. It is a call for freedom from occupation and apartheid and an end to genocide and ethnic cleansing. It is not about being anti-Semitic. It is against Palestinians being treated as less than humans, like animals. So their lives don’t matter. They don’t have to have the right to food, education, and health — the basic needs of human beings. Feminists like Sunera Thobani have termed the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel a ‘challenge’ to the morality, legitimacy, and legality of the settler colonial society that has condemned Palestinians to dispossession, brutalisation, and rightlessness. She also pointed out that in Canada, where she lives, those who support the Palestinian struggle are under attack, and there have been injunctions against public statements in support of the Palestinians. Of course, the killing of the Israeli civilians needs to be condemned, but Israel’s retaliation with the total siege of the population of Gaza as collective punishment, which includes bombardment and barring the Gaza population from access to food, fuel, shelter, water, and medical supplies, cannot be justified. The death toll is rising, but Israel’s bombing does not stop. However, despite the support of the Western governments to Israel financially and with arms, there have been protests around the world almost every day with tens of thousands of people, men and women.

Voices of women

JUDITH Butler, the American philosopher and gender studies scholar, took a strong position in support of the Palestinians. She is confronted with the question of whether she condemns Hamas’s attack on October 7. She said, ‘I do condemn without qualification the violence committed by Hamas. This was a terrifying and revolting massacre. That was my primary reaction, and it endures. But there are other reactions as well….Israeli violence against Palestinians is overwhelming: relentless bombing, the killing of people of every age in their homes and on the streets, torture in their prisons, techniques of starvation in Gaza, and the dispossession of homes. And this violence, in its many forms, is waged against a people who are subject to apartheid rules, colonial rule, and statelessness’.

Angela Davis, the renowned feminist scholar, author, and political activist, is one of the signatories to the open letter of over 140 prominent feminist scholars demanding a ceasefire and an end to the occupation in Gaza. The important message in the letter is, ‘We will not be silent when the bells of genocide ring. Silence is complicity’.

Angela Davis spoke in a webinar on October 23, titled ‘Black Feminist Writers and Palestine’. She mentioned her trip to Palestine with a delegation of women of color and indigenous feminists in 2011, in which they were moved and disturbed and felt that the situation in Palestine was far worse than they imagined. She said, ‘Radical black feminist approaches demand a willingness to embrace complexity. We are aware of the danger of simplistic analysis and the assumption that there are only two sides to choose from. And there is only one that can be chosen. To criticise the Israeli government is not anti-Semitism, and it is also possible to oppose the attacks by Hamas and say a resounding collective no to the massive Israeli military incursion that is now taking place in Gaza.’

It is to be noted that back in 2020 in Gaza, Palestinian artists made a large mural of George Floyd, the African-American murdered by police in Minneapolis, USA, showing their solidarity with black liberation. So there was a connection between the Palestinians and Black liberation. Angela Davis referred to June Jordan, a poet who was upfront in supporting Palestine, arguing that it was not only necessary to support people in Palestine but to recognise that ‘Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world’.

The position that feminists in Israel took was very significant. Veteran Israeli feminist Hannah Safran asks, ‘How can you ask for freedom for yourself if you don’t ask it for other people?’ The Israel Women’s Network, founded in 1984, has long advocated for women’s equal participation in every aspect of Israeli public life, including the military. They were fighting to become pilots. A high military rank is almost a prerequisite for high political office. But the feminists soon realised that they could not become part of the coercive institution, and that was violating the rights of the Palestinians under settler occupation.

Feminists like Dr Ruchama Marton witnessed violence during her service in the Israeli military and became unequivocal supporters of human rights. She is living in Israel and yet supporting the cause of free Palestine. A psychotherapist, psychiatrist, feminist, and the founder of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel earlier said in the speech she delivered on the occasion of receiving the Yeshayahu Leibowitz Award from the Yesh Gvul movement on April 2, 2019, ‘Palestinians were here and will continue to be here. They can, and some indeed want to live in peace, if only the occupier’s boot were lifted from their necks. They love this land and are connected to it, and we, Israeli Jews, must find a way that is not despotic occupation and apartheid to share it with them.’ In a webinar with Peace Women Partners, she clearly demanded an immediate ceasefire and the end of the occupation.

However, there are feminists who are not supporting the Palestinians. Some are keeping quiet; others hesitated or refused to sign statements or open letters, which is equivalent to complicity.

But if one is a feminist in the real sense, one must be against war, illegal occupation, killings, genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.

Farida Akhter is a feminist writer and the executive director of UBINIG and organiser of Nayakrishi Andolon.