The Palestinian National Council issued a statement “recalling the role and contributions of Palestinian women to the Palestinian national struggle for liberation from occupation.”
In a statement issued by its president, Salim Al-Zanoun, on the occasion of International Women’s Day, the National Council “saluted the Palestinian women in the homeland and diaspora, especially the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the martyrs, the prisoners, and the wounded, who were patient and endured, and who bore great responsibility after the loss of the breadwinner.”
They also showed appreciation for “the steadfastness of the struggling female prisoners in the Israeli occupation prisons.”
“At a time when the world celebrates women and their accomplishments in various aspects of life, Palestinian women still live in suffering, injustice, occupation, arrest and deprivation of their rights, and still feel the pain of losing a husband, son and brother, whether he is a martyr or a detainee,” the statement said.
To the Palestinian leadership, women’s jobs are to support their terrorist husbands and sons, except for the exceptional ones who perform terror attacks themselves. Otherwise, Palestinian women are not expected to be strong, independent women – not professors or doctors or programmers or politicians or peacemakers. They are defined by old men to be supporters of terror against Israel, and to be used as propaganda to play the part of passive victims of Israel’s existence. To them, Palestinian women have no aspirations to go beyond that. Not a word about battling inequality, about women’s rights, about the theme of helping women in the workplace.
Palestinian leaders show through their International Women’s Day statement that Palestinian nationalism is defined by opposition to Israel rather than building a state and that women have no use except for being assistants for this goal of erasing Israel.
Palestinian leaders issued a fundamentally misogynist statement for International Women’s Day. Yet feminist leaders won’t call them out on it – because they have embraced the falsehood that Palestinians are nothing but victims to show solidarity with, rather than a culture that relegates women to bit roles, a culture that should be fought by everyone who cares about human rights.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Leave a Reply