MIDDLE EAST | VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN | ADVOCACY & POLICY

OpEd: Women in War–A Feminist Perspective of Warfare and Human Rights Violations in Gaza

WORDS BY JOSHUA EDWICKER | EDWICKER@PROXYBYIWI.COM | 5 FEBRUARY 2024

 

Source: Fadi Amun

 
 

As the conflict between the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Hamas passes into February, we must not become numb to the horror unfolding before our eyes. As humans, we struggle to comprehend large abstract numbers. We understand the horror of over 25,000 Palestinian deaths, but are culpable of losing sight of the emotive and the personal. At the time of writing 25,105 Palestinians have been killed and 62,681 injured. Extrapolated to the corresponding size of America, these figures would equate to nearly 4 million Americans dead and almost 10 million Americans injured. This total is equivalent to the entire populations of New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.

We must not lose sight of the horror under which over two million Gazans currently find themselves. Men, women, and children are being systematically starved of food, medicine, and dignity by a barrage of bombs, populist rhetoric, and international inaction. Despite the recent International Court of Justice ruling that Israel must take action to stop the incitements of genocide against the Palestinians, and ensure that further military action is kept within strict accordance to international law, the IDF has continued to break international law and commit war crimes.

The tragedy unfolding in Gaza is ubiquitous, the victims of IDF aggression and persecution are numerous and the vast majority are innocent civilians. In recent weeks, the gendered impacts have crystalised. Women and children account for 70% of those killed in Gaza. Reem Alsalem, working for the United Nations has argued that ‘While these atrocities affect both women and men, their impact is gendered and disproportionality affects women’.

In recent weeks, as the supply of medicine has been further depleted, and the conditions and provision of hospital beds worsened, many women have been forced to give birth, many via caesarean sections without anaesthesia or pain-killers. Furthermore, with 1.9 million Gazans displaced since October 7th, a 2 square mile ‘tent city’ has been erected in Rafah. In Rafah, there are no period products, no toilet paper and no ability to wash. Many women have been forced to used scraps from tents as make-shift pads, exposing themselves to infection, bacteria and potentially death. Women are becoming increasingly at risk of infection and death whilst confined in such inhumane conditions.

It is a disgrace that the international community has fundamentally failed Gazans. Gazans are no more responsible for the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th than you or I. To live under Hamas’ regime whilst living next to Israel, a country whose government openly makes genocidal remarks relating to Gazans, has produced a poisonous concoction of pain, suffering and persecution which shows no sign of stopping.

The genocide occurring in Gaza is gravely concerning, and yes, I believe that word is appropriate. I believe it is the duty of the international media to call Israel out for what it is evidently doing. We must not let tyranny conquer, we must provide accountability and transparency, and we must put pressure on the governments of America and the UK to stop enabling the war crimes being carried out by the IDF in Gaza. The operation the IDF is currently carrying out is equivalent to the Royal Air Force carpet bombing Dublin and Belfast during the troubles; it is wholly unjust and disproportionate. History will judge the West’s response to this conflict. History will see how the West allowed and enabled thousands of innocents to die. History will be the judge of the West’s response to the conflict. I believe that this judgement will show that the West allowed and enabled thousands of innocents to die. That it will show that the west had a thinly-veiled racism towards people of Arabic descent. Such racism, whether conscious or unconscious is mixed with a vile strain of Islamophobia, which assumes that Gazans possess some inherited guilt for terrorism through their religion and ethnicity.

Does anyone believe for one second that if the race of Israelis and Gazans were reversed, the US and the West would sit idly by and ponder the course of action as 25,000 Israelis died at the hands of Gazans? We must hold a mirror up to our own society and question why it is permissible for the international community to fail Gazans in a way that they would not fail Israelis or any other Western nation.

I am ashamed of the response to this conflict by my own government in the United Kingdom, I am ashamed of the disingenuous hate-stirring of Suella Braverman, of the pandering to the Israeli Government by Rishi Sunak, and I am ashamed of the lack of leadership and integrity shown by Kier Starmer. The response of Britain and others has exposed international law and the principle of universal human rights as conditional, prejudiced, and unguaranteed. The persecution of Gazans at the hands of the IDF degrade our humanist commitment to universal human rights and disregards the legitimacy of international law.

History will judge the West for its failure to protect Gazans and to hold the Israeli Government accountable, and as this conflict inevitably worsens, with the spread of hunger, thirst, and disease, those of us with a voice must use it to condemn our society’s inequalities, veiled racism and to question the shameful actions of the international community for allowing genocide to continue unchecked.

Middle East, Violence Against Women, Advocacy & PolicyJoshua EdwickerComment