[ International ] [ Main Menu ]
53868
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Gaza Has Exposed the Shameful Hypocrisy of Western Feminism
URL: https://zeteo.com/p/gaza-has-exposed-the-shameful-hypocrisy
|
Zeteo THE GLOBAL SOUTH WITH FATIMA BHUTTO Gaza Has Exposed the Shameful Hypocrisy of Western Feminism From Hollywood actresses to Hillary Clinton, there are no tears to spare for Gaza's mothers. FATIMA BHUTTO APR 18, 2024 (A Palestinian mother meets with her 38 days old premature Palestinian baby girl on Dec. 6, 2023. REUTERS / Amr Abdallah Dalsh) Nearly a month ago, I gave birth to my first child. Though I had read all the books and watched all the videos and spent nine months preparing, I was blindsided by the pain of childbirth. With every luxury afforded to me – doctor, midwives, anesthesia, care, a safe hospital, a bed to recover in, food to sustain me, warm shelter, and clothing for me and my child – I still struggled with the pain and intensity of childbirth. And every time I felt frightened, I remembered Gaza and felt ashamed. I have been haunted by Gaza since Israel began its genocidal assault more than six months ago; haunted by the utterly preventable deaths of babies in neonatal wards, unable to have even a fighting chance at life by the shockingly cruel Israeli attacks on hospitals coupled with electricity and fuel blockades. Doctors in the Al Emirati hospital, the main maternity hospital in Rafah, told the United Nations Population Fund that prior to Oct. 7, their incubator unit had capacity for 10 babies at any given time. Now, they are caring for 70 premature babies, with multiple newborns sharing the same beds. There is only one ventilator in the ward, which means it is up to the doctors to make the nightmarish choice of which premature baby with respiratory issues, will get the care that will save their lives. They cannot all be saved. “Bringing a baby into the world should be a moment of celebration for a family,” Joe English, a UNICEF spokesperson told me over the phone last week, “but at the moment it is pure terror to hope, to pray, that you’re able to bring a healthy child into the world and that they’ll be able to survive.” There is almost nowhere in the world “where it is more desperate a time to be a pregnant woman, he added.” By the end of March, 31,000 babies had been born into this war, according to English. Beyond the 52,000 pregnant women in Gaza, 183 of whom give birth a day, an additional 105,000 breastfeeding women are being intentionally starved by Israel, which has stopped critical aid from entering Gaza. Without adequate calorie intake and water to drink, these women cannot feed their infants. Without clean water, new mothers cannot even feed their babies formula. Subscribe Tanya Haj Hassan, a doctor with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), has said that even in the womb, fetuses are being “sentenced to death” due to the stress faced by their mothers during pregnancy. Health organizations have reported that Palestinian women have faced an extraordinary 300% surge in miscarriages since Oct. 7 and various UN agencies have noted that half of pregnant women in Gaza are anemic, which increases the risk of preterm births and low birthweights. Women cannot give birth safely, and once they have given birth, there is no certainty that either they or their babies will survive. And yet, not only is Gaza not a universal feminist touchstone, but it also barely seems to register at all for some of the world’s most famous feminists. Appearing on the late-night talk show circuit, Hillary Clinton sneered at voters disillusioned with the prospect of voting for Donald Trump or a president who has actively aided and abetted a genocide to “get over yourself.” Those are the two choices, the hawkish Clinton lectured, going on to describe President Joe Biden as “effective and compassionate and (he) has a heart and really cares about people,” for his negatives, she only conceded that he was “old.” That he is old is the least disparaging thing you can say about a president who has generously ensured Israel doesn’t run out of 2,000 lb bombs to continue its ferocious carpet bombing of Gaza even after the International Court of Justice found that it was plausible that Israel’s campaign amounted to genocide. While Clinton is a particular breed of war-mongering feminist – the kind who gave speeches supporting the anti-hijab protests in Iran but continuously refuses to call for a ceasefire or press Israel on its wanton slaughter of women and children in Gaza – many Western feminists seem to have found themselves tongue-tied to the point of incoherence when it comes to the rights of Palestinian women. Brené Brown, the author and corporate motivator, wrote a rambling word salad of utter nonsense titled, ‘Not Looking Away: Thoughts on the Israel-Hamas War’ in February. Four months into Israel’s genocide, at a time when doctors and aid agencies were already sounding the alarm over the fact that 1 in 5 pregnant women was suffering malnourishment and the UN had projected that more than half a million Gazans faced “catastrophic conditions characterized by lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion of coping capacities,” Brown stretched the limits of intelligible language with a statement of milquetoast drivel. “I do believe that people have the right to defend themselves,” she wrote, “AND I believe the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the killing of thousands of innocent Palestinian people in response to the Hamas attacks is an unacceptable human rights violation.” Subscribe I cannot help hearing Carrie Bradshaw’s voice as I imagine Brown thinking deeply over her laptop as she parrots Israeli talking points about Hamas using civilians as “human shields” while she wonders to herself what role Iran has in all this (“not to be confused with the incredible people of Iran.”) Brown, unlike Clinton, at least professes to care about the human rights of Palestinians. But like all other white feminists, she is unable to speak of Palestinian suffering except as an unfortunate consequence of their own making. Israel is spared culpability and criminality, it is absolved of apartheid, femicide, infanticide – here too, the likes of Gloria Steinem would join Brown in reducing the totality of Israeli oppression to the lonely figure of Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who, according to this logic, if voted out, would take all of Israel’s murderous unpleasantness with him. The 50 French actresses and public figures who felt so moved by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody in Iran after breaching the country’s hijab rules, that they came together to record a video of themselves trimming their hair in solidarity with Iranian women, have made no such video for their sisters in Gaza. Under the embarrassing hashtag #hairforfreedom, Juliette Binoche, Marion Cotillard, and others cut their tresses while staring dolefully at the camera. “It is impossible not to denounce again and again this terrible repression,” the caption to their video read. “The dead are already numbered in the dozens, including children.” Instagram: juliettebinoche While Binoche has come out in favor of a ceasefire, the 9,671 dead women in Gaza and 15,370 slaughtered children have warranted no public acts of sisterhood from any of the public figures who made videos, wore t-shirts, posted, and bellowed the Iranian cry of Women, Life, Freedom during the Iranian protests against the veil. Gaza has also shown us that playing a feminist on the big screen is no guarantee of having any actual compassion for women in real life. Gal Gadot, the Israeli actress known for playing Wonder Woman, posted a photo of herself in a hospital bed after delivering her fourth child. “The pregnancy was not easy,” she wrote, “and we made it through.” The best you can say for the post is that Gadot — who served in the Israeli military during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and has publicly supported Israel’s bombing of Gaza in the past — is shamelessly tone-deaf given her country’s near-total destruction of Gazan medical facilities. Israeli bombardment has rendered a third of hospitals partially functional while two-thirds of primary health facilities have closed down. The worst you can say is that her post is heartless. Israel’s war on Gaza has left thousands of pregnant Palestinian women to give birth in tents and on roadsides. Those who have had cesarean sections are being discharged from hospitals as early as three hours after giving birth, endangering their and their infant’s lives. Since Israel has blockaded electricity, fuel, medical supplies, and drugs, doctors have described using the light from their cell phones during operations, performing c-sections without anesthesia, and keeping newborn infants warm with tins of hot water. The hypocrisy of Western feminists is not a new discovery. Their shallow version of women’s liberty only surfaces when the issue of women’s rights aligns with Western political interests, wars, and agendas – you can always rely on a Western feminist to be outraged over women’s issues in Afghanistan or Iran but never bothered by the status of women in MBS's Saudi Arabia or Narendra Modi’s India, which a Thomson Reuters 2018 poll found was the most dangerous country for women due to high rates of sexual violence and incidence of women being forced into slave labor. Subscribe Barbie is the patron saint of this brand of feminism, a plastic doll with perfect hair and hip-to-waist ratio who lives in a mansion and drives a convertible. It has no interest in the majority of the world’s women whose aspirations are more simple than owning their own private jet and who labor and fight for the most basic of dreams: to live and work safely, to feed their children, to keep their loved ones healthy and free of harm. Gaza has exposed how meaningless feminism is when it mobilizes its global forces against a piece of clothing but not against a live-streamed genocide whose primary victims are women. Seventy percent of those killed by Israel’s war in Gaza are women and children. In the end, Western feminism will not be betrayed by the patriarchy nor by Trump or Rishi Sunak or any of the interchangeable right- wing men in power, rather it will be undone by its own foot soldiers: women who have been silent over the worst crimes our generation has witnessed in our lifetime. Look out for The Global South every month. I’ll write about everything from geopolitics to humanitarian issues to pop culture. If you aren’t already signed up to receive The Global South, subscribe now and be sure to select my newsletter. Friendly reminder from Zeteo: All our contributor content is currently free during this limited, promotional period. Much of it will be going behind a pay wall soon though, so make sure you’re subscribed! Subscribe to Zeteo Tens of thousands of paid subscribers Zeteo is a new media organization that seeks to answer the questions that really matter, while always striving for the truth. Founded by Mehdi Hasan, Zeteo is a movement for media accountability, unfiltered news and bold opinions. |
53871
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: What does Western Feminism have to do with it?
|
What does Western Feminism have to do with it? Nothing. War is unhealthy for children and other living things. Interesting *not one word* about Hamas or their murdering, torturing patriarchal participation in this horror, only Israel and western women. Not Egypt or other Arab countries who won't let them emigrate, somehow we are supposed to feel guilty and responsible? Carrie Bradshaw is a fictional character used as an extreme example. What nonsense when many American and European women have donated, demonstrated, putting their lives and careers on the line for Palestinian sisters. Another example of the writer is a former Israeli soldier. Nowhere the call by Palestinian women for the extreme patriarchal Hamas to surrender. What happened to the Arab feminists? Chewed by Hamas? Maybe they are more prisoners of Hamas than Israelis? Maybe they aren't allowed to speak for fear of not getting the food Hamas passes out. Perhaps these westerners who refuse to speak against Israel are mindful that the Palestinians were not allowed to defend their murdered, raped, kidnapped Israeli sisters and children. That the horrors of this war aren't a gender issue but an urban warfare one the Israelis did not start, not last year, and not in 1947. Congratulations Akira, your talent to disgust with creative propaganda reposting marches on. I'd say you are pro-Hamas, but you only seem to post anti-Israeli hate filled posts. Who benefits from that? |
53878
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: What does Western Feminism have to do with it?
| we have to answer for our words to God. |
Responses:
None
53875
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: What does Western Feminism have to do with it?
| Say or don't say what ever you please. |
Responses:
None
[ International ] [ Main Menu ]