Here we present our English translation of a letter by a network of feminist and queer activists from China and Taiwan, followed by the Chinese original. An abridged pamphlet version is being published simultaneously on their Instagram and distributed by hand in various cities on the occasion of International Women’s Day. While Chuǎng generally does not engage in solidarity campaigns of this kind, and our own analysis would differ in some respects (such as the characterization of Ukrainians as an oppressed group in the same sense as Palestinians or Uyghurs), we want to support comrades in the Sinophone world, and we find this text to be a striking example of recent efforts by left internationalists in China to collaborate across national and sectional boundaries in radical movements of global significance. As such, it could be compared with “Sharing the Shame: A Letter from Internationalists in China”—a statement on Ukraine we published two years ago. We do agree with the overall message about Israeli and American attempts to pinkwash their atrocities in Palestine, and we find the comparison with the Chinese state’s claim to be liberating Muslim women from Muslim men in Xinjiang to be a particularly apt insight for identifying shared forms of oppression and fostering internationalist sympathies—a necessary component of any communist movement that may emerge in the future. We thank the authors for writing this letter and giving us the opportunity to publish it, and we hope it will contribute in its own small way to the fight to stop the genocide and end the occupation of Palestine.
— Chuǎng
Today is International Women’s Day, and also the 154th day of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people. On this day of global women’s solidarity, as feminist and queer activists from China and Taiwan, we stand firmly with all Palestinians.
Since October 7, 2023, despite the increasing voices of support for the Palestinian cause in the Sinophone world, there has been little discussion in Chinese about the Palestinian liberation movement as a decolonial feminist and queer political issue. Therefore, with this statement, we aim to broaden the perspective of decolonial feminism and queer politics, debunking the imperialist feminist discourse of Israel and the West, and calling for more feminists and queers to speak up for Palestinians.
Israel has long portrayed itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East” that supports women and sexual minorities, claiming to be “progressive” and “civilized,” while using the narrative of imperialist feminism and queer politics to legitimize colonization and genocide. For example, during the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza, when Palestinian human rights lawyer Noura Erakat questioned former Israeli Ambassador to the US Joshua Hantman about how to explain Israel’s “structural violence of occupation, racial segregation, and settler colonialism,” Hantman responded, “But Hamas doesn’t allow my gay friends to express their sexuality freely.”[1] In its destruction of Gaza, Israel also promoted the “women’s power” of female Israeli soldiers fighting against “terrorists” to defend their homes.[2] Meanwhile, Western “moderates,” represented by American journalist Nicholas Kristof, also cite Hamas’ misogyny as a legitimate reason for Israel to strike against Hamas.[3] However, such absurd narratives of pinkwashing collapse upon closer scrutiny. In 2016, during a Pride parade held in a Palestinian village after the ethnic cleansing of sexual minorities by Israel in Tel Aviv, there was no solidarity between the sexual minority groups and the colonizers.
Israel’s long-standing pinkwashing not only deepens the international community’s pre-existing racial prejudices against Arabs since 9/11, but also solidifies its double standards regarding women’s rights. For example, after Hamas were said to have sexually assaulted Israeli women on October 7, international society expressed widespread anger and sympathy, condemning Hamas immediately. Palestinian feminist Samah Salaime also publicly expressed solidarity with Israeli women and called on feminists to adhere to the same principle, paying equal attention to the suffering of Palestinian women.[4] In contrast, when UN experts reported on sexual violence against Palestinian women by the Israeli military, there was little attention from Western feminists and the international community.[5] In fact, this Israeli exceptionalism has long existed in the field of global hegemonic feminism in the Global North. At the 1985 UN International Women’s Conference, Western feminists such as Betty Friedan discussed ending apartheid in South Africa while telling Egyptian feminist scholar Nawal al-Saadawi, “Do not mention Palestine in your speech. This is a women’s conference, not a political one.”[6] Even today, the voices of Global South feminism are marginalized and suppressed. Reports and documentation of Hamas’ widespread sexual assault have been questioned by numerous media outlets, independent journalists, women’s organizations, and human rights organizations in the Middle East and North Africa.[7] Few Western mainstream media outlets report on this issue. Even Samantha Pearson, former director of the Campus Sexual Assault Center at the University of Alberta in Canada, was dismissed for signing an open letter questioning the lack of evidence for related allegations.[8]
As feminist scholar Randa Abdel-Fattah, who has long studied Islamophobia, said, we do not deny the possibility of sexual violence in war (on the contrary, we are well aware of its widespread presence), nor do we excuse Hamas because the victims are Israeli women, but we oppose double standards of consistency and accountability.[9] We must be cautious especially when it is not female survivors but the Israeli government that is making accusations of sexual assault, as the latter has a bad record of fabricating information.[10] It is important to remember that the call for “believing women” in the MeToo movement does not mean believing colonial governments, as similar situations have occurred in history. African-American feminist scholar Angela Davis astutely pointed out that deeply entrenched racism in American society once fostered the “myth of the Black rapist”: black men were seen as potential predators threatening white women and were often lynched or falsely convicted based on allegations of raping white women.[11] Therefore, as feminists, we must not only oppose sexual violence by any party in war but also be wary of any possibility of using women to legitimize genocide. Furthermore, we must also see the hypocrisy and danger of selectively supporting racist narratives that support women. Although it appears to support feminism, in the context of pre-existing racial prejudices, it is used by Israel to demonize all Palestinian men and indirectly erase the violence experienced by Palestinian women.
Just as the United States invaded Afghanistan in the name of “liberating women,” Israel also uses the narrative of hegemonic feminism to legitimize its colonial aggression, and the latter’s narrative is even more self-contradictory: On the one hand, it portrays itself as a “savior” and aims to rescue “innocent” Palestinian women and sexual minorities from the “barbaric” Palestinian men (even though there are Palestinian men working to eliminate violence against women[12]), and on the other hand, it treats all Palestinian women as future “terrorists” who must be eradicated.[13] Israeli scholar Mordechai Kedar even proposed sexually assaulting female relatives of Palestinians to curb “terrorism.”[14] In short, in the eyes of Zionists, no Palestinian is “innocent.” This narrative stigmatizes not only Palestinian men and women but also Palestinian queers. As the Palestinian sexual minority rights organization alQaws put it, pinkwashing is not only Israel’s war propaganda but also part of colonial violence, because the myth of “Israel as savior” forces Palestinian queers to give up their national identity in exchange for gender identity.[15] In response to this oppressive narrative, the Palestinian community has internalized this myth, equating Palestinian queers with pro-Israel collaborators. It is through this narrative that colonizers attempt to narrow the political imagination of Palestinian national liberation and divide the colonized groups to continue colonization.
Additionally, this Orientalist narrative of “civilization vs. barbarism,” “progress vs. backwardness” and “democracy vs. non-democracy” also conceals the violence of Israeli colonizers against Palestinian women. Since October 7th, the Israeli military has arbitrarily detained many Palestinian women in Gaza and the West Bank, subjecting them to inhuman treatment, including the withholding of food, menstrual hygiene products and medicine, in addition to beating them and committing various forms of sexual assault.[16] Under the blockade and obstruction of humanitarian aid by Israel, many pregnant women in Gaza have had to undergo caesarean sections without pain relief[17] (and the rate of miscarriage among pregnant women had increased by 300 percent[18]), to take medication to delay menstruation due to lack of hygiene,[19] and even to eat livestock feed due to the lack of food.[20] As of March 1st, at least 9,000 women in Gaza have been killed by Israel, an average of 63 per day.[21] It is important to emphasize that this violence did not begin on October 7th, but has been rooted in Israel’s systematic colonial oppression for 75 years. According to a United Nations report from 2008 [22], around 10,000 Palestinian women were being arbitrarily detained in Israeli prisons; female prisoners were subjected to sexual violence, and even male prisoners were not spared [23]. Pregnant female prisoners were shackled even before and after giving birth [24]. Additionally, many Palestinian women were being sexually harassed by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints [25]; many pregnant women were being stopped on their way to Israeli hospitals and forced to give birth at checkpoints. [26] Moreover, as early as the 1948 Palestinian “Nakba” (Catastrophe), Israeli colonizers used sexual violence as a means of ethnic cleansing (of course, Hamas did not yet exist at that time) [27].
Pinkwashing not only reduces Palestinian women and sexual minorities to victims of local patriarchy but also erases their agency. In reality, Palestinian feminists and queers, who have long been marginalized by the national liberation movement, are resisting both colonialism and patriarchal oppression simultaneously—a double colonization articulated by postcolonial feminists. Palestinian writer Sama Aweidah once said, “We as women cannot attain freedom unless we live in a free country. Even if we are free from the occupation, we cannot know what freedom is as long as we are oppressed in our own society.”[28] For Palestinian queers, it is also crucial to root their queer identity in their Palestinian one.[29] It is because of such beliefs that Palestinian women and queers not only resist Israeli colonial occupation but also fight for justice within their communities. From the women’s military organization Zahrat Al-Okhowan, which resisted British occupation in the 1930s, to Leila Khaled, who became a symbol of Palestinian liberation, to the thousands of Palestinian women who organized protests, taught underground, operated makeshift clinics, and engaged in agricultural production during the First Intifada; from Fadwa Tuqan, hailed as the national poet of Palestine for her writings against Israeli colonial occupation and patriarchal oppression, to Dareen Tatour, who was arrested for a poem; from Ahed Tamimi, the young resistance icon imprisoned for slapping Israeli occupation soldiers, to Lamia Ahmed Hussein, who supports her family while volunteering in ambulance services; from Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead by Israeli forces while reporting on the Israeli military’s attack on a refugee camp in Jenin, to Hind Khoudary and Sumayya Wushah, who follow in her footsteps by continuing to spread the truth about Gaza. It is because of such beliefs that Palestinian women initiated the Tal’at movement against domestic violence and took to the streets chanting, “No freedom for women, no freedom for the homeland.”[30] It is because of such beliefs that Palestinian queers wave both the rainbow flag and the Palestinian one while opposing violence against sexual minorities, and rushed to the frontlines during the 2021 Palestinian uprising.[31] It can be said that they are not only liberating themselves and pursuing national independence, but also shaping an equal and diverse Palestine.
The structures of oppression are always similar, a hybrid of patriarchy with capitalism, authoritarianism, racism, and imperialism. Resistance is never one-dimensional. Our resistance actions are not only for queers and women but also for all oppressed people, those in conflict, those exploited, those silenced, those in exile. Therefore, a free Palestine is not only crucial for Palestinians but also reflects and influences all oppressed groups: Ukrainians, Uyghurs and Kurds oppressed by imperialism and colonialism, dissidents in Iran, Myanmar/Burma, Syria, Russia and China oppressed by authoritarianism. These resistance movements are often divided into two opposing camps in the new Cold War. The same Western powers simultaneously support Ukrainian resistance to imperialist aggression and Israel’s actions of imperialist colonization, while Russian and Iranian authorities hide behind Hamas to stir up the situation in the Middle East. At a time when international solidarity is precarious, we must see the Ukrainians standing with Palestinians against the Kremlin, and Iranian queers opposing the Iranian authorities while still supporting Palestine. Therefore, we urgently need to break the geopolitical trap of camps and unite in the struggle for everyone’s freedom.
At the same time, we also see how important the Palestinian liberation movement is for China’s decolonial feminism, because the shameful excuse of liberating local women from patriarchy is also used by the Chinese Communist Party to justify its oppressive rule in minority areas. While the Chinese authorities exploit individual Uyghur women like Dilraba on the Spring Festival Gala to promote ethnic harmony, they claim that forced birth control measures “liberate the minds of Xinjiang Uyghur women and extensively promote gender equality and reproductive health concepts, so that they are no longer reduced to breeding machines.”[32] Large numbers of Uyghurs are incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps, where Uyghur women suffer violence such as sexual assault and forced sterilization. Although the Chinese authorities treat actual feminists as enemies, Islamophobia spreads throughout China under a similar narrative of imperialist feminism: Ordinary people easily accept the image of Uyghur men as “terrorists” and the image of Uyghur women as needing to be rescued. Under the threat of state violence, Uyghur women are forced to accept “Han–Uyghur marriages” as a form of sexual violence.
When Rayhan Asat, a Uyghur human rights lawyer advocating for the rights of Palestinians, questions the disappearance of Han Chinese solidarity, how can we not stand with all survivors? When we are outraged by the plight of the Chained Woman of Feng County, how can we separate ourselves from our Uyghur sisters? At the same time, while the Chinese authorities appear to stand with Palestine geopolitically, we must also see that Israel and China are using the same rhetoric and methods for genocide. Therefore, we also implore Palestinians and their supporters to stand with the Uyghurs rather than being divided by campism.
As advocated by American feminist Nancy Fraser, we need a feminism that is anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and opposed to all forms of structural racism—one that exists for the 99 percent. Such a feminism would refuse to confine itself to traditional “women’s issues,” standing up for everyone who is exploited, oppressed or marginalized. For this reason, it must be internationalist. This echoes the decolonial feminism of Mona Ameen, a Palestinian feminist still trapped in Gaza. Ameen said that if she had anything to say to women and feminists around the world right now, it would be for them to not stop talking about Palestine.
Notes
[1] “Gaza Debate: As Palestinian Deaths Top 100, Who’s to Blame for Escalating Violence? What Can Be Done?” (Democracy Now!, 2014)
[2] “Israeli Women Fight on Front Line in Gaza, a First” (New York Times, 2023)
[3] “Seeking a Moral Compass in Gaza’s War” (New York Times, 2023)
[4] “Women’s liberation mustn’t stop at either side of the Gaza fence” (+972 Magazine, 2023)
[5] “Israel/oPt: UN experts appalled by reported human rights violations against Palestinian women and girls” (United Nations, 2024)
[6] “Palestine solidarity: Women, children, gays – and straight men too” (Middle East Eye, 2015)
[7] Women’s rights organizations and human rights organizations in the Middle East and North Africa jointly signed a petition questioning the adequacy of evidence and accusing the New York Times of utilizing female bodies to cooperate with Israeli misleading propaganda based on the December 28, 2023 report “How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” As of March 7, 2024, 17 organizations and over 1,000 individual signatories have joined the petition. Several independent American media outlets, including The Intercept, have also published multiple reports questioning the allegations. Key reasons for skepticism include: lack of victim testimony and forensic evidence, inconsistencies in some sources’ accounts, reliance on information from individuals associated with the Israeli military and police, denials of sexual assault by relatives of the individuals involved, Israel’s prohibition on doctors who participated in the October 7 rescue from being interviewed by the UN Human Rights Council, and limitations in witness testimony and forensic evidence. Additionally, the UN report released on March 4 of this year indicated “clear and convincing information” of sexual violence occurring during the Hamas attack on October 7 last year, yet the expert group explicitly stated that at least two allegations of sexual violence lacked evidence, crime scenes and bodies had been altered and moved by Israeli authorities, a large amount of information was provided by Israeli officials, Israel refused to accept a comprehensive investigation by the UN Human Rights Council, evidence and forensic evidence were limited, photos and videos showed no signs of sexual assault, and the scale of sexual violence could not be confirmed. It is important to emphasize that this effort is not investigative in nature, and the expert group stated that a complete investigation process is needed to reach a final conclusion. Furthermore, Israel continues to reject a comprehensive investigation by the Human Rights Council while actively inviting an expert group without investigative capabilities to visit. UN officials previously urged victims of suspected sexual assault to come forward as witnesses, but received no response. All of these factors raise doubts.
[8] “Head of Canadian Sexual Assault Center Fired for Questioning Accounts of Hamas Raping Israeli Women” (Haaretz, 2023)
[9] “A Critical Look at The New York Times’ Weaponization of Rape in Service of Israeli Propaganda” by Randa Abdel-Fattah (Institute for Palestine Studies, 2024)
[10] In May 2022, American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by Israeli forces while reporting on the Israeli military’s attack on a refugee camp in Jenin. Then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett immediately blamed Palestinians for the journalist’s death. However, subsequent investigations by various media outlets revealed that it was the Israeli side that killed her. The Israeli government later stated that “it is highly likely that the Israelis killed her.” For details, see “Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing: Lies, investigations and videotape” (Al Jazeera, 2022)
[11] “Rape, Racism and the Myth of the Black Rapist” by Angela Davis (1978)
[12] “Positive Masculinity: Helping Eliminate Violence Against Women in the West Bank” (UNFPA, 2022)
[13] In 2014, Israeli politician Ayelet Shaked publicly posted on Facebook, calling for the genocide of Palestinians. She wrote: “⋯⋯ They [mothers of Palestinian martyrs] should follow their sons, that’s justice. They should die, just like the snakes they raise. Otherwise, more little snakes will appear.” See “The refreshing bluntness of Ayelet Shaked” (Mondoweiss, 2015)
[14] “Israeli Professor’s ‘Rape as Terror Deterrent’ Statement Draws Ire” (Haaretz, 2014)
[15] “Beyond Propaganda: Pinkwashing as Colonial Violence” (alQaws, 2020)
[16] Same as [5]
[17] “Pregnant Women in Gaza Are Undergoing C-Sections Without Anesthesia as Humanitarian Crisis Worsens” (Jezebel, 2023)
[18] “Miscarriages in Gaza Have Increased 300% Under Israeli Bombing” (Jezebel, 2024)
[19] “No privacy, no water: Gaza women use period-delaying pills amid Israel war” (Al Jazeera, 2022)
[20] “Palestinians in Gaza eating animal feed to survive as NGOs condemn Israel’s use of hunger as weapon of war” (The New Arab, 2024)
[21] “Press release: 9,000 women have been killed in Gaza since early October” (UN Women, 2024)
[22] “Fact Sheets Series ’Behind the Bars: Palestinian Women in Israeli Prisons’” (UN, 2008)
[23] “Sexual torture of Palestinian men by Israeli authorities” by Daniel J N Weishut (Reprod Health Matters, 2015)
[24] Same as [22]
[25] “Israeli Soldiers Accused of Sexually Harassing Palestinian Women at Checkpoint” (Haaretz, 2018)
[26] “Checkpoints Compound the Risks of Childbirth for Palestinian Women” (UNFPA, 2007)
[27] “Don’t wait for Israeli archives to prove what Palestinians already know” (+972 Magazine, 2019)
[28] “Naila and the Uprising” by Julia Bacha (2017)
[29] “Decolonial Queering: The Politics of Being Queer in Palestine” by Walaa Alqaisiya (Journal of Palestine Studies, 2020)
[30] In Arabic, “Tal’at” means “to step out.” In August 2019, Israa Ghrayeb, a 21-year-old Palestinian woman, was beaten to death by her family for going on an outing with her fiancé. Her death sparked outrage among many Palestinian women. They took to social media, using the hashtag “#We_Are_All_Israa_Ghrayeb,” and took to the streets to protest against the pervasive patriarchal violence faced by Palestinian women, calling for judicial reform and the protection of women’s rights. This movement marked the first time in modern Palestinian history that the liberation of women was intertwined with national liberation, making it profoundly revolutionary. The slogan of the movement, “There can be no freedom for our homeland without freedom for women,” became widely circulated. See “Tal’at: a feminist movement that is redefining liberation and reimagining Palestine” (Mondoweiss, 2020); “Palestinian women demand change after tragic death of Israa Ghrayeb” (The National, 2019).
[31] “Queer Palestinian community holds ‘historic’ protest against LGBT violence” (+972 Magazine, 2019)
[32] “Chinese Embassy in the United States praises Xinjiang Uyghur women for no longer being ‘baby-making machines’, tweet deleted” (RFI, 2021)