In every March 8, the world immersed shiny campaigns urging us to “accelerate work” and “inspire the inclusion”. The International Women’s Day has become a polished scene and a friend of public relations, as it preaches the sponsorship of companies with empowerment, while women who need solidarity are left to their motivation for themselves.
I can only hope that this year’s invitation to “accelerate the work” means work for all women-not only those who are accurately fit with feminism of companies, friendly activity, and elite success stories.
But if history is any evidence, then the only procedure that will be accelerated is the mark of feminism as a marketable commodity, while the woman who carries war, occupation, and physical violence face their erasure.
Year after year, International Women’s Day is shown as a global moment of solidarity, yet its priorities are carefully coordinated. The women’s institutions are behind the reasons that are equal, friendly and comfortable politically- where women’s conflicts can be frame as individual success stories, not a regular dark.
When Iranian women burned their veil in protest, they were accepted with widespread Western support. When Ukrainian women took weapons, they were welcomed with the codes of flexibility. But when Palestinian women dig through the rubble to withdraw the bodies of their children from the rubble of their homes, they are silent or worse than doubts. The same feminist institutions that are tired against “violence against women” are fighting to utter the words of “Gaza” or “genocide”.
In the United Kingdom, in the period before this year, the International Women’s Day, the feminist deputy and organizations hosted an event on “giving a voice to silence women in Afghanistan”, which includes feminists who spent months calling for a boycott of the Afghan cricket team. Because, of course, this is the way you deal with the Taliban – by making sure they cannot play the cricket game.
This is what goes through international solidarity: symbolic gestures that do nothing for women who suffer from repressive systems but make Western politicians feel morally superior.
Let me be clear: Afghan woman deserves every ounce of solidarity and support. Their struggle against a real repressive system, urgent, destroyed – and yes, what they hold is the racist separation system.
But recognizing their suffering does not exempt the hypocrisy of the rank of those who practice feminism as a political tool, and they appear for Afghan women while maintaining their silence on Palestinian women who are bombing, bombing, and brutality in front of our eyes.
The Taliban’s rise was not some of the nature of nature – it was a direct product of intervention in the United Kingdom and the United States. After 20 years of occupation, after handing over Afghan women to men, the West was by the militants and their empowerment, these themselves are now crying for their fate.
Where were these deputies, prominent women, and prevailing feminist organizations when pregnant Palestinian women were born in the streets of Gaza because hospitals were bombed? Where was the screaming when the Israeli snipers targeted journalists, such as Sherine Abu Aklele? Where was the boycott when the Palestinian girls were withdrawn from the ruins of their homes, were killed by US -made bombs?
Over and over again, we see the same pattern: conditional anger, selective activity, and solidarity is dedicated to those whose struggles do not challenge Western power. Afghan women deserve support. But also Palestinian women, Sudanese women, Yemeni women. Instead, their suffering, suspicion, or explicit erasure was met.
The International Women’s Day, which was once a radical invitation to equality, has become a hollow scene – where feminist organizations and politicians choose and choose women who are worthy of justice and which women can sacrifice on the altar of Western interests.
Feminal has always been used by the powerful as a tool to justify the empire, war and occupation – all under the pretext of “saving women”. During the Algerian War of Independence, the French launched the “liberation” of Algerian women from the veil, as women were unveiled in the propaganda ceremony with brutality at the same time and raped them in detention centers.
The French, of course, was never concerned about gender equality in Algeria; They easily restricted education and employment for Algerian women. Their actions were under the guilt of women about domination.
This same narration was used for the infrastructure and power in need of the white savior to justify the most recent Western military interventions, from Afghanistan to Iraq. Today, we see the same book of play in Palestine as well.
West is framing Palestinian women as victims – but not bombs, displacement or hunger. No, the real problem, we were told, are the Palestinian men. Israeli officials and their Western allies are reformulating the same oriental cup: Palestinian women should save from their culture, from their people, while their actual suffering is ignored under occupation.
The systematic slaughter of women and children is treated as an unfortunate footnote to the conflict, instead of central atrocities. We see the same style over and over again-to pay attention to women’s rights only when it serves a political agenda, and silence when these rights are crushed under the weight of Western-backed air strikes and military occupation. This is not solidarity. It is full of feminist rhetoric.
So, who will already benefit from International Women’s Day this year? Will the women who are fits accurately fits with Western women’s novels, allowing politicians, women’s organizations and women’s calling groups prevailing in their glow self -congratulations? Or are the women who were silent and affected and ignored – those who “accelerate the work” means 17 months of genocide and 76 years of colonial violence?
Is this just another exercise “feels satisfied”, where you can demand the support of women all over the world without facing the fact that your feminism has limits? Because if this is really related to accelerating work, then after 17 months of bombing, hunger and displacement, we must finally hear you for Palestinian women.
But we know how this is going. Speeches will be delivered, retail signs will be heading, and the committee’s discussions will be held – but Gaza women will remain buried under the rubble, and their suffering is uncomfortable politically.
For me, I join the march of the feminist movement today – but let’s be clear, so our philosopher is not the same. I will walk for every Palestinian woman who is not struggling to hear her, but she was so brutal that her suffering amid the genocide is broadcast live to blind eyes and deaf ears.
Me – along with countless other women who refuse silence – I think of every mother calms the body of her worn child, as she forced every daughter to become a crane overnight, and every sister searches through the rubble with her bare hands. We – who are women who believe in real feminist solidarity and reject selective anger – will not “hope” that this call to work means something; We will make sure of it.
We will make sure to hear the Palestinian votes. We will make sure to boycott those who benefit from Palestinian persecution. We will make sure to challenge each platform and every feminist that the Palestinian suffering is shone and accountable for their complicity.
For our Palestinian sisters: we feel your pain. We have carried your struggle in our hearts over the past 17 months, and we know that your battle has not started there – 76 years have passed since challenge, survival, and refusing to disappear.
And knowing this: next year, on March 8, we will not only grieve your suffering – we will celebrate your victory. The so -called “liberation” is not from your men, as Western feminists want to frame it, but you are free from the colonial occupation of the settlers. We hear you. We see you. We will not rest until the whole world also does.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editorial island.
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