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Abstract

On September 3, 2019, Israa Ghrayeb, a 21-year-old woman was murdered by her family. Soon after, on September 26, 2019, thousands of protestors took to the streets throughout 12 cities including Jerusalem, Ramallah, Rafah, and Haifa. The protests were organized by the Indigenous Palestinian feminist movement, Tal’at. Tal’at is translated literally from Arabic as “stepping out” and is semantically translated as “rising up.” It's slogan “No Free Homeland without Free Women” encapsulates the movement's assertion that national liberation and feminist liberation must be fought together. The femicide of Israa Ghrayeb mobilized Palestinian feminists to call for an end to gender-based violence, for legal accountability, and collective liberation. Palestinian women are faced with the intersecting oppression of both Palestinian patriarchal norms as well the Zionist military occupation and apartheid system. This paper examines the emergence and influence of Tal’at and its concurrent resistance to patriarchy and Zionist settler colonialism. It is ultimately a call to action for feminist social workers to act in solidarity with Tal’at's struggle for feminist, queer, and national justice and liberation.

Keywords

Indigenous feminism Palestinian feminism pinkwashing settler colonial violence transnational feminist solidarity

On September 3, 2019, Israa Ghrayeb, a 21-year-old woman was murdered by her family (Al-Bazz, 2019). This murder was one of 24 femicides documented in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in that year (Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling, 2019). News of her death spread through social media and local news outlets; community members took to the streets of Bethlehem demanding accountability. Feminist activists came together to organize a day of protests—a mass mobilization of Palestinian feminists demanding an end to gender-based violence and the recentering of anti-patriarchal struggle in the fight for national liberation. On September 26, 2019, thousands of protestors took to the streets throughout 12 cities of Israel/Palestine including Jerusalem, Ramallah, Rafah, and Haifa (Al-Bazz, 2019). The protests were organized by the feminist movement, Tal’at. Tal’at is Arabic for “stepping out,” and embodies a sense of coming into view, of ascending, and rising (Wehr, 1966). Tal’at's community Facebook page describes the movement stating: “We are a group of Palestinian women striving for a free, just, and secure Palestinian society for its women and all its members. There is no free homeland without free women.” The last sentence has become a slogan for this movement, which also shortens to “A free homeland, free women.” Tal’at's slogan elicits the convergence of national self-determination and decolonial Indigenous feminism. This Indigenous feminism simultaneously challenges the pinkwashing and feministwashing propaganda of the Israeli settler colonial state, as well as internal Palestinian discourse that relegates freedom and rights of women and LGBTQIA + Palestinians to the margins, in favor of a “unified” front of national liberation (i.e., after we are free from Zionism, we can address these other issues). Furthermore, Tal’at's movement brought this intersectional feminist positionality to the global stage, setting an example for transnational feminism. This conceptual paper examines the Tal’at movement as an Indigenous decolonization movement that challenges the intersecting oppressions queer and female Palestinians face. In doing so, it serves as a counter narrative to Israel's branding campaign and demonstrates that Palestine is a feminist and social work issue (Shalhoub-Kevorkian et al., 2022). I begin by providing a concise overview of the Palestinian feminist movement that brought together the struggles for feminist and national liberation in response to colonialism. I then examine the nascent Palestinian women's movement, Tal’at, as a continuation and expansion of the Palestinian women's movement to include queer struggles and transnational solidarity. This provides a counter-narrative to Israel's feministwashing and pinkwashing propaganda campaign whose sole purpose is to protect its image on the world stage and attempt to legitimate its violent settler colonial policies. I end with a discussion of how the aims, practices, and perspectives of both social work and feminism, urge us as feminist social workers to engage in transnational feminist solidarity with Tal’at and the movement for Palestinian liberation.

The Palestinian Women's Movement

Emergence and Activities

Palestinian feminism arose in response to significant political shifts that impacted women, as opposed to an export from the Global North (Kumari, 1994). The formation of the Palestinian women's movement was a response to the political crises that had a direct impact on their lives, the most pronounced crisis being the 1929 Wailing Wall riots focused on control over the Western Wall/Wailing Wall of the Haram al-Sharif, which encloses the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque. The British detained about 1,300 individuals, the majority Palestinian, and executed three of them, all Palestinian (Fleischmann, 2003). In response, thousands of women participated in the first Palestine Arab Women's Conference and a subsequent motorcade demonstration against the British mandate policies in 1929. The demonstration propelled the organizing of the first women's activist organizations. In 1931, a key figure of the early Palestinian feminist movement, Mary Shihada, declared that the current status of women was in part due to “the imperialist enslavement of the Palestinian people” and Palestinian men, “who fear the awakening of woman and [who] have begun to place obstacles in the path of her awakening and resist it” (Shihada, as cited by Fleischmann, 2003, p.80). The Arab Women's Association (AWA, later Arab Women's Union), the most active women's organization in Palestine, embodied the Palestinian women's movement. The aim of the women's movement was malleable, allowing for flexibility in their approach and soon their charitable functions transformed into a political act of resistance, thereby dismantling the constructed distinction between social and political realms (Fleischmann, 2003). Palestinian feminists organized subsequent protests, mobilized financial support for prisoners and their families, smuggled weapons during the 1936–1939 Revolt, participated as combatants, attended regional and international women's conferences, and wrote about the Palestinian national struggle to generate support around the world. Palestinian women also provided services including medical care and education (Fleischmann, 1999). The Arab Women's Congress resolutions show that they conceptualized social, political, economic, and cultural issues as overlapping and interrelated. Their resistance to gender norms was often embedded within, and an exploitation of, traditional gender norms. For example, it was common for women to use their long thobes to smuggle weapons, exploiting British presumptions about gender in the Palestinian context and their aversion to breaching local customs, in this case of physically surveying women's bodies. Palestinian feminist organizing, along with every facet of Palestinian life, was halted when, in 1948, Zionist militias (the pre-state foundation of the Israel Defense Forces) perpetrated dozens of massacres, destroyed 531 villages, and murdered, displaced, or expelled close to 800,000 Indigenous Palestinians (Pappé, 2006). This spaciocide (Hanafi, 2013) became known as the Nakba, or catastrophe in Arabic (Pappé, 2006) and is celebrated every year as Israel's Independence Day. Unsurprisingly, the Nakba ruptured the fabric of Palestinian society and disintegrated the social infrastructure the feminist movement created (Hasan, 2019). Almost two decades later, Palestinian feminists reorganized and established the General Union of Palestinian Women, which unified women's organizations to provide an array of educational, medical, and social services. The height of women's involvement in the national struggle was evident during the First Intifada from 1987–1993 when women were present on the front lines of activism. In 1987 alone, 4,000 girls and women between the ages of 12–60 were incarcerated by Israel as political prisoners (Awwad, 1993).

Since its inception, the Palestinian women's movement situated their feminist agenda within a nationalist context (Fleischmann, 2003). They believed that through national liberation, social reform would materialize, so the focus, even within women's organizations, was the national struggle against colonialism. The women's movement maintained that rights can only be provided and protected by the nation-state, therefore, without first achieving national liberation, social change would not materialize. However, with the Oslo Accords of 1993, the newfound and short-lived optimism shifted the focus of NGOs to professionalize women's services and to advocacy, moving away from the nationalist movement (Kuttab, 2009). Although Tal'at is a nascent Palestinian feminist movement, their achievements were made possible by the groundwork of the women of this era who solidified feminism's position within the national struggle.

Tal’at's Indigenous Feminism

Following their feminist predecessors, Tal’at's slogan, “No Free Homeland without Free Women” reinserts the feminist struggle into the nationalist movement for self-determination and sovereignty as a primary element of any genuine movement for equality and justice in Palestine. Tal’at's Palestinian feminism is inherently decolonial; moreover, Tal’at's use of “homeland” as well as its transnational organizing are both challenges to settler colonialism. The word “homeland” is an assertion of Palestinian Indigeneity—it is a claim that we are native to the land, a fact that Israel continues to deny and erase from history. Tal’at's organization of protests throughout all segments of historic Palestine, from the Occupied West Bank, to present day Israel, and the Gaza Strip challenges the forced fragmentation of Palestinian society that Israel created. Ta’lat's transregional organizing despite the numerous obstructions to movement (e.g., military checkpoints and the apartheid wall) as well their use of “homeland” in their slogan which symbolically unites all Palestinians are acts of resistance to this forced fragmentation. Indigenous feminisms propose “that actively decolonizing the very process of decolonization is just as important as achieving Indigenous communities’ political end-goals” (Arvin et al., 2013, p. 15). In other words, challenging patriarchy within their own communities requires just as much attention and effort as movements to gain political sovereignty. This critique speaks to the experiences of many Indigenous women whose needs and rights have been sidelined in decolonizing sovereignty struggles as well as feminist struggles, where their indigeneity is downplayed (Arvin et al., 2013). The founding presumption of Indigenous feminism is that “occupation and colonialism are endemic in society” (Cristobal, 2018, p. 36). Any sociopolitical analysis of Palestine must acknowledge this fact, because failing to consider this historical and chronic experience of trauma and violence would result in an incomplete understanding (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2014; Zinngrebe, 2016). In the Palestinian context, these conditions include the on-going settler colonial “logic of elimination” (Wolfe, 2006) that attempts to erase the Indigenous people, their bodies, homes, olive trees, and culture. Dorries and Harjo (2020) state that Indigenous feminism is a political endeavor that works towards liberation and sovereignty while paying attention to the specific experiences and needs of Indigenous women. Indigenous feminisms acknowledge the goals of simultaneously dismantling patriarchy as well as fighting for the right to sovereignty and self-determination (Goeman & Denetdale, 2009).

Tal’at identifies as a feminist queer movement and merges the goals of feminist, queer, and Indigenous liberation. It affirms that these struggles are interconnected with all other social justice movements. The inclusivity of their intersectional decolonial feminism is highlighted in a Facebook post on June 20, 2022, which translates to:
We affirm our struggle for a free, just and pluralistic society, accommodating all gender and sexual identities without discrimination or oppression…We proceed in all of this from the foundations of our feminist liberation struggle, a struggle whose center is the values of justice, liberation, human dignity, and the rejection of all forms of violence and oppression against the marginalized and marginalized of our people. These are the values of our radical struggle against colonialism and all oppressive regimes today, and they are the same values that we seek in our liberated homeland…We will continue our struggle against violence and oppression, towards establishing the concepts of justice and liberation at the core of our discourse and political struggle, and towards a free, just and secure homeland for all (Ta’lat, 2022).
Ta’lat also co-organized the “A Rallying Cry for Queer Liberation” protest in conjunction with the queer feminist Palestinian organizations alQaws and Aswat calling for an end to the “patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist oppressions on our bodies and lives” (Alqaisiya, 2022, para. 4). In Tal’at's speech at this protest, they shared their decolonial vision for Palestine and the world: “…safety and liberation for women and queers in all segments of Palestinian society” and called for transnational feminist solidarity: “the oppression we live is also an opportunity for resistance. For joint resistance, for connecting struggles, so we can build a better reality and a better world” (David, 2020, para. 38).

Tal’at engages in transnational solidarity combatting sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and racism. In addition to fostering solidarity and activism within the Middle East, Tal’at connects the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and Palestinian liberation movement. After the murder of George Floyd in the United States and the murder of Iyad Hallaq in Palestine in May 2020, Tal’at organized a protest against the brutality of the Israeli Occupation Forces and the police force in the United States (Nofal, 2020). Solidarity between the BLM movement and the Palestinian movement for freedom and justice is predicated on the fact that both the United States and Israel are settler colonial projects and there exist parallels between oppressive practices that Black and Indigenous communities are subjected to in the United States and Palestine. Incarceration and policing policies are products of the settler colonial state, and BLM's protest of police brutality is not only for Black communities but for all, including Indigenous communities.

Tal’at's call for a free homeland, where all of its people, including women and all those with marginalized identities, can live in a safe, just, and free Palestine is heard and reverberated abroad (Marshood, 2019). The coordinated marches on September 26, 2019 to protest the murder of Israa Ghrayeb sparked solidarity protests in Beirut and Berlin. Tal’at's decolonial feminist call continues to circulate and be uplifted. The Palestine Feminist Collective (PFC, 2021), a group of US-based Palestinian and Arab feminists, created and disseminated a pledge to affirm that “Palestine is a Feminist Issue” stating the PFC “…joins [Palestinian feminists] in centering the slogan ‘no free homeland without free women’.” The pledge affirms the interconnections of all social justice and Indigenous struggles articulating a commitment: “to resisting gendered and sexual violence, settler colonialism, capitalist exploitation, land degradation and oppression in Palestine, on Turtle Island, and globally” (para. 1).

Israel's Pinkwashing and Feministwashing

The “Palestine is a Feminist Issue” pledge in addition to the Tal’at movement serve as a counternarrative to the hegemonic settler-colonial narrative that aims to hide Israel's crimes. As international criticism of Israel's violence and apartheid system grew, Israel's rebranding became increasingly imperative (Reut Institute, 2010), leading Israel to galvanize pinkwashing and feministwashing campaigns. Pinkwashing refers to Israel's propaganda strategy to portray itself as the singular queer friendly country amidst a sea of homophobic nations (Puar, 2010; Shafie, 2015). The goal of this rebranding is to avert attention away from the human rights abuses and settler-colonial reality it perpetuates (Shafie, 2015). Re-branding efforts aim to present Israel as an enlightened progressive nation that is feminist and LGBTQIA + friendly as opposed to its “backward” neighboring states (Abdulhadi, 2019). Israel attempts to amplify one microcosm of the nation: its relative protection for (white) LGBTQIA + citizens. Highlighting this feigned progressiveness as its brand simultaneously aims to justify its military occupations and dissolve the human rights abuses it perpetuates into the periphery. For example, a propaganda poster encouraging tourism to Israel states in large letters, “See the real Israel” with a background of all white tourists relaxing in a large body of water. In smaller print, it highlights that the “real Israel is different than the Israel in the news” and “all Israelis—Jews and Arabs, women and men, straight and gay, religious and secular—share the same freedoms of speech, press, religion, and assembly” (Blue Star PR, 2008). In reality, Palestinian citizens of Israel, who constitute 20% of the population, are not granted the same rights as their Jewish counterparts (The Working Group on the Status of Palestinian Women Citizens of Israel, 2010). The Jewish Nation-State Law, passed by the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) in 2018, explicitly states the right to national self-determination is only a right for Jewish Israelis (Rolef, 2022), thereby codifying Palestinians’ standing as second-class citizens. Pinkwashing, as well as feministwashing campaigns, also promote Orientalist stereotypes of Palestinians as homogenously homophobic and violent; and correspondingly, Indigenous queer and female Palestinians being in of need saving by the White Israeli settler (Puar, 2013). It promotes a constructed binary of Palestinians as “backward” compared to Israel, which is positioned as a beacon of “modern” social progress (Elia, 2017). Whatever issues exist within Palestinian society, this racist premise overlooks the gendered embodiments of Israel's hyper-militarism and settler colonial practices that target Palestinian women. Between 2002 and 2007, 10% of pregnant Palestinian women were stalled at checkpoints, 69 women were forced to give birth at the checkpoint and 35 of those women died (Shoaibi, 2011). The gendered nature of Israeli settler colonialism can also be seen in threats and actual perpetuation of sexual violence as a form of torture and physical and sexual abuse of Palestinian women political prisoners by Israeli interrogators and guards (Abdo, 2011). Shalhoub-Kervorkian and Daher-Nashif (2013) demonstrate that femicides in the Palestinian context are bolstered by the settler colonial infrastructure and its policies of spatial domination that stifle and fragment Palestinian society. Shalhoub-Kervorkian and Daher-Nashif (2013) theorize that both colonial state “politics of exclusion” and local “culture of control” conspire together and create the conditions in which violence against Indigenous women is emboldened and often made permissible. Examples include when Israeli law enforcement refuses to intervene in cases of domestic violence and send women back to their abusive families even when they fear for their lives (Shalhoub-Kervorkian & Daher-Nashif, 2013) as well as the disproportional use of sexual torture and blackmail against female political prisoners (Darraj, 2004). Additionally, home demolitions have a devastating impact on Palestinian women's social capacity (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2005). Clearly, Israel's re-branding campaign misrepresents the lived experience of female and LGBTQIA + Palestinians. Pinkwashing efforts also preclude the organizing of Palestinians through organizations such as Aswat Palestinian Feminist Center for Gender and Sexual Freedoms, Al Qaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (PQBDS), and Tal’at.

Transnational Feminist Solidarity

Leading by example, Ta’lat calls us, as feminist social workers, to engage in transnational feminist solidarity with their movement for feminist, queer, and national liberation. As social workers, the tenets, practices, and commitments of our field align with those of feminism; indeed, Collins (1986) asserts that “social work is fundamentally feminist in nature” (p. 217). Feminism and social work are united in attending to context, embracing intersectionality, and engaging in praxis and political action for justice and liberation for all.

Attending to Context

Both social work and feminism holistically recognize the large social, economic, and political structures that shape women's personal lives. For feminists, it is epitomized as the “personal is political” and for social workers we understand this perspective through the concept of person in environment from Bronfenbrenner's (1979) socio-ecological theory. The experiences of Palestinian women must be contextualized within the all-encompassing political context that denies them of their basic human rights. If we omit this political reality and hyperfocus on their experience of patriarchal oppression, we subvert Palestinian feminist movements like Tal’at. This feminism distills feminist movements in Palestine/Israel to an issue of women's rights that removes any discussion of political rights and the impact of occupation and colonialism on Palestinian women (Elia, 2017). Feminisms that detach from Israel's setter colonial practices and dismiss the Indigenous feminist's movement for national self-determination, inadvertently align with Zionism (Elia, 2017). Critical feminism counters feminisms that overlook or ignore the historicity of Palestinian women's experiences living under occupation and colonialism—what Green (2007) refers to as the “invisibility” of Indigenous women. An illustrative example of reinforcing Indigenous invisibility occurred when Betty Friedan, the renowned American feminist writer, activist, and author of Feminist Mystique, attempted unsuccessfully to censor Egyptian feminist writer and activist, Nawal el Saadawi, at the 1985 UN International Conference on Women, stating “Please do not bring up Palestine in your speech. This is a women's conference, not a political conference” (Elia, 2011). Within the context of Palestine, it is imperative to elucidate the settler colonial project and continuing Nakba to gain a holistic understanding that is critical of dominant hegemonic narratives.

Embracing Intersectionality

Both social work and feminism embrace intersectionality. An intersectional approach acknowledges the multiple systems of oppression that intersect and create a combined effect (Crenshaw, 1991). Race, class, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, and immigration status are identities that are experienced concurrently and result in a multiplicity of experiences and therefore cannot be essentialized (Mehrotra, 2010). To holistically understand the varied positionalities, context must be considered: “transnational feminism examines the specific nature of oppression as it occurs through the intersectionality of race, class, and other social-identity locations within a particular local context” (Moosa-Mitha & Ross-Sherif, 2010, p.3). As all oppression is interconnected, all systems of oppression uphold patriarchy; therefore, we must work to eradicate all systems of oppression (Combahee River Collective (CRC), 2015). Tal’at reminds us that Palestinian women experience oppression by both Zionism and patriarchy and that these oppressions are entangled (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2014).

Praxis and Political Action for Justice

Praxis is emphasized in feminist social work. According to Cowley (2013, p.1), “praxis is the synthesis of theory and practice and the reciprocal relationship between them.” Feminist praxis strives to engage in a collective process of critical analysis that unearths systems of oppression, so that they may work to dismantle them and transform their world (Lykes & Hershberg, 2012). Similarly, as social workers, our Code of Ethics impels us to fight for social justice, self-determination, and worth and dignity of all human beings (NASW, 2017). One of the ways to advocate for justice is through the process of decolonization and as colonization is a gendered process, decolonization must also be gendered (Dorries & Harjo, 2020). Acting in solidarity with the decolonial struggle for a free Palestine is feminist praxis (Elia, 2017). An example of feminist solidarity praxis includes engaging in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement, a tactic successful in advancing the struggle against apartheid South Africa. The BDS movement aims to pressure Israel to abide by international law and stop US military aid to Israel (Sharoni et al., 2015). The BDS movement offers a strategy to support the vision of Tal’at and other civil society organizations for freedom and justice in Palestine. By supporting this call, we “can send a message to Palestinians that we refuse to be complicit in perpetuating their oppression, reassuring them that the whole world is watching and they are not alone in their struggle for freedom and justice in/for Palestine” (Sharoni et al., 2015, p. 666). As feminist social workers, we must seek to realize our commitment to social justice and liberation for all (Shalhoub-Kevorkian et al., 2022).

Conclusion

Tal’at responded to the femicide of Israa Ghrayeb by organizing thousands of women in a day of protest under the banner of there is “no homeland without free women.” Feminists from around the world responded with protests and pledges of solidarity for full liberation and dismantlement of the interlocking oppressions (CRC, 2015) that Palestinians experience. The philosophies and practices of both feminism and social work call us to recognize that the Nakba continues today and to challenge the systems that continue to oppress Palestinians. As feminist social workers we are called to engage in transnational solidarity with Tal’at's Indigenous feminist movement for feminist, queer, and national justice and liberation in Palestine.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Lucas Al-Zoughbi, Emmanuel Chima, Dr. Salah Hassan, and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and guidance in the development and revision of this paper.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jessica Saba

Author Biography

Jessica Saba, LLMSW is a doctoral student in social work. Her research examines the intersections of settler colonialism, resistance, and gender, particularly within the Palestinian context.

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“No Free Homeland Without Free Women:” Tal’at's Indigenous Feminist Movement

Abstract

Keywords

The Palestinian Women's Movement

Emergence and Activities

Tal’at's Indigenous Feminism

Israel's Pinkwashing and Feministwashing

Transnational Feminist Solidarity

Attending to Context

Embracing Intersectionality

Praxis and Political Action for Justice

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Author Biography

References