You may have seen the status updates on facebook. Although it depends on who your friends are I guess. At the moment they look like this:
In 17 days 919 Palestinians killed by Israel including 284 children & 100 women, 4260 injured.
The purpose of this post is not to draw attention to those numbers, although that’s a worthy goal. Instead I want to unpack what else the update is saying. Which may seem self-indulgent when those tallies are going up as I type, but I will get to a point, I think.
Why are women counted separately?
Maybe that’s a disengenuous question, because I think I already know the answer. It’s not just because women are the marked category, the other, although that’s true too. Listing women separately in the death tally serves a rhetorical purpose, mentioning women is a preemptive argument of innocence.
Because (rhetorically) women are not Hamas, because women do not resist. Because women, and children, are a unit of innocence and inactivity.
Those 100 women (more by the time I publish this) each had a story – each had lots of stories. To reduce those women’s lives to a proof of innocence is to deny their agency.
There are many different ways women live and die in Gaza.
I understand why the makers of the ‘Stop Israeli War Crimes’ facebook application decided to structure their information around reinforcing the idea of innocence. – It’s almost as if arguing that some Gazans are innocent (as opposed to deserving collective punishment for having elected Hamas) has become a radical position.
But I think it’s foolish to base the defence of Gaza on the idea of innocence. Once, when writing about abusive relationships I said:
If anyone who fights back is in a ‘mutually abusive relationship, then the only way you are entitled to support is if you don’t fight back. But if you react to the abuse, physically defend yourself, act jealous or fucked up by what’s happened to you, then you don’t deserve support, and people around can wash their hands and walk away from what they term a mutually abusive relationship.
As a feminist, as a human being, it is my duty and my desire, to support the powerless against the powerful, and to not wash my hands of women who fight back.
To focus on the innocence of those killed is to take the position that it is less bad if those killed are not innocent in some way. Which is to imply that the only people from Gaza deserving of our solidarity and support are those who do not fight back.
That is not my position. I do not ask or expect people to stand still and silent in the face of starvation, murder, and mass imprisonment in order to get my support(I am aware that at this point I am supposed to disclaim that I don’t support Hamas, I will not do so).
Maybe I am asking a facebook status to do too much. But I think those of us whose political analysis is more complicated than ‘women and children first’, and who do not need to see innocence to offer solidarity, should make our politics clear. Because to do otherwise is to reinforce the idea that those who fight back against oppression need and deserve our solidarity less than those who sit still.
Note for Comments This post is only open to comments from people who do not support the current actions of the Israeli state.
I always thought it was a chivalry holdover, which is no better.
Is it acceptable for me to comment if I am undecided? Because I am definitely of mixed feelings over this and cannot bring myself to support either side so far.
And so I do not argue the justification or validity of the actions of either side. However, I do have a question about what you mean by a particular statement. I’m not clear that I understand what you say by this:
Do you mean that you think this way – that women must be presumed to be innocent in this situation and that they are presumed to not be acting as belligerents and on behalf of Hamas? Or do you mean that this is what people can be expected to think due to cultural conditioning, regardless of what the actual truth might be, and that’s why these images are being used?
I think the point being made is based on a legal distinction between combatants and noncombatants rather than an (IMO invalid) moral distinction between “good” people who don’t fight back and “bad” people who do.
Given that a de facto state of war exists between Israel and Hamas, the legal distinction between targeting of and casualties among combatants and noncombatants is significant. It’s probably still valid to presume that adult females are at least somewhat less likely than adult males to be active combatants, although more likely than children. Highlighting the indiscriminate nature of the attack and the resultant large number of non-combatant fatalities seems to me to be worth doing.
oh my god, thank you so much for posting this. this has been irritating me since i’ve started following the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and considering i’m writing my dissertation on it, that’s a long long time. This gets even more complicated because Israeli women are rarely used in this way by Zionists – Israeli women are soldiers! fighting for the homeland! while Palestinian women are innocent! need saving! Trapped In A Culture That Is Bad!
and what does this say about Palestinian men? that they are all a part of Hamas, or that they are all patriarchal, or that they ALL feel or love or think in particular ways? or that Palestinian men who die from Israeli tanks or bombs deserve it, are not a valued life? what are we saying in the West about men and women when we say this? it’s very very close to something like “brown men are inherently violent, while brown women need to be rescued by us”
i also (while i’m commenting, which i rarely do) wanted to just say something about RonF’s comment about “supporting either side.” I’m not recruiting or anything, and s/he should come to whatever conclusion they want. but i want to point out that there are way, way, way more than two sides to this conflict. “Hamas” and “the Israeli State” don’t even begin to cover it.
[Pulled by author, who does support most of Israel’s current actions]
Tea wrote:
Thank you for saying this. I do not support the Israeli attacks in Gaza, but I also acknowledge that the situation is far more complex than Israel vs. Hamas and that, within that larger complexity, the categorical stance Hamas takes regarding the elimination of the State of Israel, puts Israel and Israelis, even (and perhaps especially) those who oppose the occupation, in a very, very difficult position.
And I think, Maia, you’ve hit something right on the head, though I wonder what would happen if you start to play out the larger implications of what you’ve said, i.e., which is that, on one level, no one is really innocent (in the sense of being unimplicated in the political, social, cultural, etc. context in which they live). I don’t buy studebaker hawk’s assertion that listing women separately is about distinguishing combatants from non-combatants. I think it is a rather cynical rhetorical ploy–and I think it’s cynical even though I agree, in this case, with the people who are using it. A Palestinian child’s life is neither more nor less valuable than an Israeli soldier’s, than a Christian Palestinian woman’s, than a Filipino migrant worker in Israel, than an Israeli civilian’s (male, female, adult or child), than a devoutly Muslim Palestinian woman who supports Hamas, than a Druze, than a Hamas fighter, than UN aid worker’s etc. and so on. (I am sure I left examples out, but you get my point.) Any one of those people might be more likely to be attacked than any other–and perhaps for entirely legitimate reasons–but their lives are no less valuable as human lives because of it.
I never dared to say anything negative about this tearjerkery way of presenting women and children as pure innonce (because I didn’t want to divert attention from the actual catastrophe) but thank you so much for speaking up!
Ugh, yes, the “women and children”. Because women are soft, gentle, flinching little things. Practically children themselves. And men! Well, they deserve to die in armed conflict, they’re clearly combatants and probably looking forward to being martyred anyway, am I right or am I right? Reminds me of the opening verse of that vomitacious Decemberist’s song, Sixteen Military Wives:
Sixteen military wives
Thirty-two softly focused brightly colored eyes
Staring at the natural tan
of thirty-two gently clenching wrinkled little hands
Seventeen company men
Out of which only twelve will make it back again
Sergeant sends a letter to five
Military wives, whose tears drip down through ten little eyes
Barf.
Isn’t this the position of the US regarding wars? That their enemies are not innocent, and thus deserve their just wrath? It’s probably not limited to the US, but it is the closest example I have (I live in Canada).
The position that men are not worthy of concern over their deaths is nothing new though. They probably deserved it is an understatement. Just consider what conscientious objectors have to go through in the 100ish or so countries who still practice conscription, or how they were treated in the second world war, in the US and Canada. Free labor for the state, isn’t this the definition of slavery?
I take no position over the conflict. I know too little about it. It is a shame there has to be any deaths, from whatever side and demographic.
Firstly, the gender distinction in the victims of this war was one of the first things I noticed in the coverage of the war. It makes little sense to me as to why this distinction needs to be made.
The primary reason I believe for the distinction between the innocent and not, is that Israel is seen to have a right to defend its civilians (independent of whatever illegal or immoral actions its government or military might have taken). It’s reasonable for Israel to take action against those involved in the terror attacks, while it is unreasonable for it to take action against those who are innocent (of making such attacks).
The context of the innocence is important here. Fighting back against a military occupation is understandable. However the terrorizing and murder of civilians is not ‘fighting back’, and neither is the defense of those who commit such actions.
That seems to be an odd philosophy “righteousness of the underdog”.
Lord, thank you for this post. The parallel you make re. abusive relationships and only supporting those who do not fight back is incredibly insightful. It’s something that’s been bothering me for some time now, but I haven’t been able to put a finger on it. Thank you, again.
It seems the IDF is making use of this rhetorical strategy as well. Women and children first!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7828536.stm
This was quite brave of you to write. Good for you.