A group of women, feeling that trying to stop the genocide and end the illegal occupation of Palestine was too important a task to be sidelined at a feminist conference, ran their own Palestine fringe meeting. Here is Emily Garcia’s speech, which opened the event…

*** Guest post***

There are many reasons why the issue of Palestine liberation is such a vital one.

For me, the major focus of my political activity since 2020 has been research and activism (in fact putting on events like this one) to raise awareness of the dangers of the incoming transhumanist era, also known as the fourth industrial revolution.

The biggest piece of research I have done on this is an article series I’m about to publish in the next couple of weeks called: ‘The Great Health and Social Care Reset for the Big Data Economy’. The first three articles follow a timeline of NHS capture by institutions and actors orchestrating the fourth industrial revolution, particularly the World Economic Forum.

For those completely unfamiliar with the term ‘fourth industrial revolution’, in a nutshell, this is about the merging of the physical with the digital and virtual worlds, and the merging of the human being with the internet and machines.  It means the integration of smart technologies—like AI, robotics, the Internet of everything, cloud computing, and advanced data analytics—into every sphere of economic and human activity, including health and social care.

There has been strong pushback from anti-genocide campaigners against the NHS contracts given to Palantir, who provide surveillance and data analysis software to the occupation. Less often highlighted is the work of Matthew Gould the ex-UK-Israel ambassador, who helped launch the UK-Israeli tech hub, which includes the UK-Israel Healthtech Gateway programme. Whilst he was director of the now disbanded NHSX, he introduced the NHS contact tracing app and worked on projects opening up access to healthcare data to the private sector, including a partnership with Amazon Alexa. 

Israel is one of the world leaders in the bio- convergence and surveillance technologies that are driving the fourth industrial revolution, and this is at least in part thanks to the access they have had to a captive rightless population to test these technologies on.

The capture of our institutions by financial interests and organizations at the heart of the Zionist project is not only in healthcare but across the board.

The influence of the Zionist lobby has been corrosive. I question whether we can still claim to live in a liberal democracy in the UK when multiple forms of peaceful protest have now been made illegal? This is the work of entities like Elbit and the Campaign Against Antisemitism. Researchers like Low Key, David Miller and Matt Kennard have done important work exposing this. 

Women’s rights have to rest on a foundation of human rights to have any meaning. 

And as we see in the examples I’ve just given, it is the same institutions and corporations carrying out the horrifying genocide of Palestinians that are attacking our fundamental freedoms and human rights, and moving all of us, including ordinary Israelis, into this techno-totalitarian system.

Our struggle as women and as ‘have-nots’, or ‘the 99%’, is inextricable from the Palestinian struggle. We absolutely all are Palestinians.

This is why any women’s liberation movement with integrity must take a stand for Palestinian liberation. Our vision of women’s liberation must include that of all women from all forms of domination. And today is about figuring out how we start to build that. 

Emily Garcia is a feminist, activist and researcher who has campaigned and written on issues including the harms of pornography, resisting gender identity ideology, and the dangers of transhumanism. She is an editor for Real Left, an online publishing forum, which platforms critical analysis of the fourth industrial revolution from an anti-capitalist perspective.

Click here to read Genocide was stalking the corridors of conference

Click here to read about Jewish not Zionist, the story of Marilyn Garson’s journey away from Zionism, and her battle with the IHRA.