Displaced Palestinians flee from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Jan. 30. [Picture: Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images]
Survival is an extreme sport when you are a woman in Palestine. Amid a raging War of Extermination, an activist says Palestinian women are being dehumanised everyday. ‘Feminism’ has failed them.
Speaking in an interview on Salaamedia, Malak Shweiki said the women of Palestine were constantly being dehumanised. “They’re not even forming any kind of threat to anyone,” she said, yet the United Nations (UN) recorded an average of 63 women being killed daily.
A Palestinian woman from Jerusalem, Palestine, Shweiki is an active member of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy Organisation (PIPD). As an activist, teacher, and an educator in the occupied territory, she has seen firsthand the dehumanisation she speaks of.
“Women in specific are having such a hard time surviving. Even very basic needs as in pads and necessary hygiene is also a problem now for Gaza. I keep thinking of the girls who have their first periods, how would that feel,” she said.
SMread: Surge in violences forces more than 99 000 to flee
Dehumanisation
Shweiki said what the women of Palestine have endured, since the Nakba and before that, was nothing short of dehumanisation.
Strip searches, inability to access hygiene (Apartheid Israel has cut off supplies of water to Gaza), maiming and murder are but some of the abuses they are subject to.
“Palestinian women have been dehumanised multiple times,” she said. But she pointed to remarkable displays of resilience: mothers protecting their children; mothers keeping family bonds together.
“They have developed ways of fighting back and being resilient in the face of these dehumanising techniques. They try to do their best, but they are … human at the end of the day. They have needs,” she pressed.
The conditions of women in Gaza have pointed to double standards among some so-called ‘feminists’ and human rights defenders. Many celebrities, who advocate such causes, have been criticised for declining to speak up on the plight of their sisters in Gaza.
Among the more than 30 000 Palestinians killed in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank since the War of Extermination began on 7 October are no fewer than 9 000 women. Many more are under the rubble or missing.
