First off, I’ll need to apologize to the friend who lent me the book. It is not as new as it was. I have wrestled with it, I have wept over it, there was even a stress-related incident with a strawberry jam sandwich. I am not normally like that with books but this was that sort of reading experience.
Elia’s is a much-needed book. Please get hold of a copy. It’s been a struggle, persuading some women’s groups that Palestine is an urgent issue for women, and explaining why it matters beyond the borders of Israel/Palestine. It’s been a struggle for years, persuading some ‘socialists’ that you can’t be socialist without being internationalist and you can’t be internationalist without seeking real connections with Palestine. This book does that job. It doesn’t just tell you what’s happening to Palestinian people, it gives you information about what Palestinian people are doing and thinking, and how people in general, and feminists in particular, could be responding. It names organizations you could contact and events and campaigns you could investigate.
If you happen to be a socialist though, or a feminist of the old sort (you know, women’s liberation for women and all that) it’ll drive you nuts because, whilst it does what it does very, very well it also makes clear that the author could do with a few hours talking to someone who understands the difference between socialism and identity politics, and why that matters – but you need to read it anyway. If you have a background in class analysis, you’ll feel the infuriating pull as much as I did, because where socialism unites people, identity politics pulls them apart into ever smaller camps, it’s an invitation to the Oppression Olympics, as you start quibbling over where your ‘us’ fits into all the different teams of the oppressed and the oppressors, and who in the damnable post-modernist matrix of oppression is giving you a hard time, and while you’re having a virtue-signalling battle with each other, the real enemy continues with old-fashioned simplicity, to take from the poor to benefit the rich, from women to benefit men, and from Black people to benefit white.
It’s the sort of thing that leads to accidents with ill-advised strawberry jam sandwiches. Anyway…
The book lays out a vital picture of where Palestine sits in the world, and quoting Amy Kaplan, makes clear that ‘Israel follows “the American model” of settler colonialism – in other words, the plan always was to present Zionists as “pioneers” with a “frontier mentality”, pushing the aboriginal peoples out of the way of the progress they were bringing to a benighted land.’
It details not only the endless displacement, denial and often, death, Palestinians have suffered at the hands of Israel but it also shows us what Palestinians – particularly, of necessity, Palestinian women – have done about it. Elia quotes the repeated, increasingly desperate UN resolutions about refugees and their legal “right of return”, pointing out that most of the people now in Gaza are multiple refugees, having been hounded out of other parts of Palestine only to be hemmed in in Gaza, then instructed to dash to and fro in search of various theoretical ‘safe zones’ , whereas there are also vast numbers of external refugees, as those who have escaped Palestine now make up the largest single group of refugees in the world.
At the same time, Elia wishes to challenge the “exceptionalism” exhibited by many who challenge Israel. She points the finger back at the USA, and reminds us that settler colonialism is by definition racist and sexist, and what it produces is as a result, enduringly toxic. It is not only Israel that needs to change, she declares (and she’s right). She discusses some women’s attempts to go in the opposite direction, exempting Israel from feminist analysis. She quotes bell hooks in response…
Feminism cannot be selective. Its framework comes from true and absolute liberation not just of women, but of all peoples. This is why Zionism and feminism cannot merge. A feminist who is not also anti-colonial, anti-racist and in opposition to the various forms of injustice is selectively and oppressively serving the interests of a single segment of the global community.
Elia goes on to investigate how women’s bodies become the battleground as a settler-colonialist mind-set looks upon the indigenous people as a ‘demographic threat’. Reading this, I remembered that ‘little snakes’ comment, and thought about how the world is horrified and baffled by Israel’s apparent determination to wage war on women and children.
Elia is rightly scathing of western women who seek to “rescue” Arab women from their culture, seemingly unaware of those womens’ own actions and attitudes. That this is a common problem in the UK can be seen in the contrast between those women who take to social media to criticize hijab-wearers (how is that feminism?) and those who gathered in town squares to amplify the Iranian women’s protests after the death of Mahsa Ameni (supporting other women’s campaigns is feminism).
Similarly, and still rightly in my view, Elia calls out Israel’s “pink washing”, pointing out that being bombed by gay IDF pilots is every bit as fatal as being bombed by straight ones. She tells a story of a group of lesbians in Tel Aviv who sought to rescue a Palestinian sister, assuming she could be ‘out and proud’ with them – so long as she played down the ‘Palestinian’ bit.
Sadly, I then found myself in a mire of words about “the cultural identity of Palestinian queers”. What is so difficult here is that I somehow don’t think she’s talking about the kind of people who annoy me so much in my own country. I do get that some people don’t like the ‘rules’ that develop on how gay and lesbian people are ‘supposed to’ live, and I do get that the notion of heteronormativity is an obstacle to developing our own, feminist way of seeing the world, and even that ‘homonormativity’ does the same to lesbian and gay ways – but I never did get how calling yourself ‘queer’ instead of gay, bi or straight solves that. I still rather suspect that most of what’s in the Q+ end of LGBTetc is just a modern brand of sexism but above all, how can it be that, in all Elia’s categories, she is so sure that indigenous people are all naturally good at living the right way, and need to be allowed to return to their roots (where they were all healthy, liberated, sustainable farmers, apparently), but at the same time she wants us to believe that the repression and intolerance Arab culture exhibits towards ‘queers’ is a backsliding caused by colonizers? Is the Palestinian past all roses, or is it plain old, bad old, old-fashioned? Surely you can’t have it both ways.
So, okay, white, establishment gays are a part of the hegemonic system of oppression – yes, they can be, but I do not wish to be dragged so far into the post-modernist matrix that I can (mis)place Woodie Guthrie as a settler-colonialist oppressor because he stood there with a white face and sang “this land is your land, this land is my land.” Surely he was talking to everyone, including indigenous Americans? What can a man do but grow up with his feet in the soil of the land he was born in, and challenge those who fence it off for the rich?
I do not wish to give up on reforming the laws and the police in the UK because Elia has decided (possibly correctly) that the US police are irredeemable, but I do agree that the ‘reasonable’ demand for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine is sometimes well-intended, sometimes cynical, but always a red herring. I’m with Guthrie here – it’s the rich, the extensive land-owners, the corporate extractors, who are the enemies, not the descendants of those who came from here and/or those who came from elsewhere.
Elia does mention in passing the violent, sexist, mind-bending, militaristic nature of Israeli society, as part of her evidence of the inherent toxicity of settler-colonialism but it does not appear to occur to her that if that is the case, feminists should surely acknowledge that the women of Israel are in deep trouble too. We need to hear so much more from politically and socially active Palestinians about how they think a one-state solution could work, and from world feminism about how we can help both groups of women. We might even need to take it a step further back than Elia has with her invariably virtuous indigenous people – perhaps we need to aspire beyond the concept of ‘statehood’ so we can stand together globally, and deal with those who are the real enemy.
Elia rounds up by saying that “the capacity to survive, even to thrive, under the harshest circumstances is a queer, feminist, abolitionist, intersectional, non-binary practice.” I reckon we just need to decide how to deal with the billionaires. Everyone else is just us. There are, however, several points that mark out the Palestinians as particularly harshly looked upon. They have, as she states, “been smeared for denouncing the injustice against them”. I’m not sure she’s right when she says native Americans were never called ‘anti-white’ or that Black South Africans were never accused of ‘reverse racism’ but the determination with which establishment forces have got away with calling Palestinian resistance, and international support for Palestine, antisemitism, is remarkable.
Whatever. Read this book. Don’t be put off by those whining about culture wars, don’t worry if it makes you feel ‘anti-woke’, and don’t worry if all the queers you’ve ever met are middle class narcissists whose only qualification in the Oppression Olympics is the colour of their hair dye. Read this book anyway, learn about the Palestinian resistance, and pick up the inspirations in the global movement that is developing out of a reaction to the horrendous suffering in Gaza. May it grow, as Elia clearly hopes, into a global resistance movement with a full-blown understanding of the nature of US hegemony, and of who the enemy actually is.
Dear Reader,
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Cheers,
Kay
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Kay Green 