Ending #GazaGenocide is a Feminist Issue: Call from Palestinian Women

Women movements have historically been central to the struggles against oppression, discrimination, colonialism and militarism. In the same spirit, and in response to Israel’s unfolding genocide in Gaza, we, women’s unions and grassroots movements representing Palestinian women inside historic Palestine and in exile, call on women and women’s organizations worldwide to speak up and rise up, especially on the global day of action on November 11/12, to support our struggle to end this genocide.

Our immediate demand is for a ceasefire, lifting the siege and allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza unimpeded. For this to happen, though, we need meaningful pressure to end all military-security ties and business-as-usual with Israel. We call for organizing street actions where possible, initiating solidarity statements and campaigning strategically and creatively to cut all links of state, corporate and institutional complicity with Israel, as was done against apartheid South Africa!

If not now, when?

Since October 7, apartheid Israel has murdered over 9,500 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 2,500 women and close to 4,000 children. Israel is carrying out what UN experts, 880 international scholars, including genocide experts, a former senior UN official, and an increasing number of states have described as an unfolding genocide against the 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. 

An open-air prison for over 16 years, Israel has in the last few weeks indiscriminately carpet bombed entire civilian neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, churches and mosques; ethnically cleansed 1.5 million people; and cut off water, food, fuel and medical supplies, turning Gaza into what a former UN official calls, the “world’s largest open-air death camp.”

If not now, when?

In the same period, the Israeli military occupation forces and fascist armed settlers have escalated their pogroms; forced displacement; willful killings; random kidnappings and torture of Palestinian workers, farmers and youth; arrests and extreme repression in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. 

Contextualizing the current unfolding genocide in Israel’s 75-year regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid, senior UN official Craig Mokhiber wrote before resigning, “The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine.” 

In the meanwhile, the anti-Palestinian colonial western establishment, in tandem with its deeply racist and dehumanizing media, continues to arm, fund and shield Israel from accountability, thus enabling its ongoing genocide. Several states in the global south continue to buy weapons, spyware and military training from Israel, thus feeding its genocide coffers. 

Palestinian women have been struggling for decades against the intersection of national, social and economic oppressions, calling out the inherent patriarchal core of Israel’s regime of oppression.

We urge you to escalate BDS pressure campaigns against apartheid Israel and to simultaneously pressure your governments to: 

• Implement an immediate ceasefire and ensure unhindered life-saving aid supply to Gaza

• Reject any forced transfer of population

• Ensure UN protection for Palestinians trapped under Israeli siege in Gaza

• Impose a comprehensive military-security embargo on Israel as well as other sanctions to end their own complicity.

• Demand that the ICC investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the crime of genocide and apartheid, perpetrated by Israel.

This moment is the litmus test not just for international law and the global human rights framework, but also for humanity and the very meaning of justice and freedom. 

If not now, when?

Signed:

General Union for Palestinian Woman “GUPW”
Palestinian Federation of Women Action Committees 
Union of Palestinian Women's Committees “UPWC”
Mothers - school society
Women's collection for justice and equality “ERADA”
Women Struggle Block
Al- Najdeh Social Association for Palestinian Women's Development
Women's Campaign for Boycotting Israeli Goods
Roles for Social Change Association “ADWAR”
The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy MIFTAH
جمعية العمل النسوي Association of Women’s Actions
Al- Najdeh Social Association for Palestinian Women's Development, Gaza