European feminists are accused of selective outrage and double standards, practicing a brand of 'white feminism' which ignores the concerns and rights of black and brown women (Photo: europarl.europa.eu)
On International Women’s Day, European feminists must break their deafening silence on the unspeakable horrors facing women and girls in Gaza.
Israel’s unrelenting offensive in Gaza, following the October 7 Hamas terror attack, spares no one. The overall number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces has topped 30,000.
The Hamas raid into southern Israel killed about 1,200 Israelis. 100 Israelis are still being held hostage.
As Israel reportedly prepares to invade the town of Rafah in southern Gaza at the start of Ramadan next week, UN Women has warned that “the war in Gaza is also a war on women”.
The number of women killed by Israeli forces has climbed up to 9,000 — and will climb higher unless there is an immediate ceasefire.
The statistics are shocking, the reality, heartbreaking.
An estimated 37 Palestinian mothers are killed every day. Women are tasked with finding food which is scarcer and scarcer, they are giving birth in the most egregious conditions — and either dying in childbirth or burying their babies and children. Sanitary products are in short supply.
Palestinian women have become “victims of war crimes, crimes against humanity and an unfolding genocide”, according to Reem Alsalem, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls.
There are allegations of rape and sexualised torture being committed against hostages seized by Hamas as well as of widespread abuse of Palestinian detainees, including women, in Israeli detention centres.
The plight of these women is clearly in breach of myriad UN conventions and declarations as well as the EU’s commitment to ending gender-based discrimination and eliminating violence against women and girls.
Many in Europe are speaking out.
Several women’s organisations as well as serving EU staff members, European politicians, including Belgian, Spanish and Irish female policymakers, are leading calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, demanding an EU arms embargo against Israel and pushing for humanitarian aid deliveries to the enclave.
Thousands of women — and men — are also out in the streets every week, asking their governments to live by international law and the EU’s own numerous pledges on human rights.
Sound of silence
Yet, sadly, many others are conspicuous by their silence.
European feminists have used their voice and visibility to help draw attention to the tragic case of Iran’s Mahsa Amini who died after being taken in police custody for wearing an “improper” hijab.
They have also focused on Afghanistan where women and girls are denied the right to education — although their simplistic Eurocentric feminist approaches have not always aligned with the reality on the ground.
European Parliament president Roberta Metsola and other women MEPs have led calls for the protection of women fleeing Ukraine.
These demonstrations of solidarity provide valuable support to those fighting for their rights, freedom and, sometimes, their lives.
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Yet despite last month’s provisional ruling by the International Court of Justice instructing Israel to stop a “plausible genocide” in Gaza, references to the terrible plight of women and girls in Gaza have been few and far between.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who discovered her inner feminist after a much-publicised ‘sofagate’ moment in Ankara three years ago, has admitted to little more than being “deeply disturbed by images from Gaza” following what the UN has described as a “massacre” of civilians seeking humanitarian aid.
Her undeterred “absolutely pro-Israeli” stance has been criticised by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell — and her own staff.
German foreign minister Analena Baerbeck, a strong advocate of a “feminist foreign policy”, spent months refusing to join demands for an end to hostilities in Gaza before finally calling on Israel in mid-February “to agree to a ceasefire rather than undertaking a ground offensive against Hamas in the city of Rafah”.
References to the rights of Palestinian women are rare in many feminist circles in Brussels and other EU capitals. Concern, when it is voiced, is in whispers, possibly for fear of being misinterpreted as anti-Semitism.
Not surprisingly, European women are being accused of selective outrage and double standards and of practicing a brand of ‘white feminism’ which ignores the concerns and rights of black and brown women — except when it is (geo) politically convenient.
“It’s as though feminist ire and power selectively rears its head for issues that fit a decidedly western narrative of liberation — leaving others, such as those in Palestine, in the shadows,” according to Maryam Aldossari, a University of London researcher on Middle East inequality.
The opinion is shared by others who believe feminism should be inclusive and intersectional, not swayed by ideology or geopolitical considerations.
“One of the principles of feminist foreign policy is to lay down arms to enable humanitarian aid,” writes Lydia Both, head of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s regional project on political feminism and gender.
Berlin’s stance on Gaza has caused “disbelief and indignation” in the Global South, she says.
Gaza’s “living hell” cannot be allowed to go on.
EU humanitarian aid and its decision to restore some funding to UNRWA are important steps. But they cannot become a smokescreen for the bloc’s repeated collective political failures.
European feminists who have so far kept silence while Israel’s war in Gaza kills women in horrific “unprecedented ways”, must find their voice — and the courage to speak up.
International Women’s Day offers them an opportunity to do so.
Source: euobserver.com
