Andi Razo on Johnson and Kuttab

One of Johnson and Kuttab’s main points is that when considering the role of women in the intifadas, it is not enough to encourage more of their participation in existing strategies and demonstrations but rather allow them to change and shape revolution based on their own experiences. The difference in visibility of women’s political participation between the first and second intifadas does not mean that women were less involved in resistance, but rather that their new forms of participation were less recognized by the mass movement.

Johnson and Kuttab explain that many activists don’t believe that it is fair to compare women’s participation of the two intifadas since their roles in both of them were so different and in the case of the second, harder to quantify and measure and so thus is not as evident as “on the ground, in the streets” activism and demonstrations. I am not extremely familiar with the intifadas and to be honest, found this piece a little hard to follow. But from what I understand is that during the second intifadas, the role women had was not necessarily more “support” but de-militarized, or engaging less with either State and instead focusing on the personal effects of the violence committed.

And this is not to say that women didn’t form resistance groups or weren’t actively part of Palestinian forces or fighting Israeli militants, because that’s not what I think and this piece does not lean that direction either. So I think it’s important that this piece critically examined the more interpersonal nature of these Palestinian women’s resistance because it validates and values it in the same way that more violent resistance is usually praised. But, it makes it seem like this is a “step in the right direction” or the “correct form” of resistance for women. While violent acts are usually deemed masculine and the less visible resistance is automatically labelled feminine, it almost seems like the authors are asking readers to accept that this resistance is inherently feminine and therefore the way to behave. I doubt that these are the authors’ intentions,  and in fact demonstrate the respect and power that women have in these roles (when they explain that women were able to dissuade reactionary young men from acting rashly in a confrontation).

Additionally, I hesitate to say that I feel this way due to my own limited viewpoint. I am familiar enough with dire situation in Palestine to understand the article, but sadly too ignorant of the Arab feminists’ efforts to critique the general move of women’s participation from being more in the spotlight to doing more organizing and interpersonal appeals--which is great on its own, but it does not seem that men are sharing in this responsibility equally. Again, the lack of the authors’ critique of this seems as if this trend has formed new although still divided gender roles within the resistance.

Similarly, this article from Al Jazeera highlights the value of women in leadership positions while seemingly maintaining yet redefining gender roles. While the women subverted expectations Israeli militants had of them in order to covertly plan the intifada, it again repeats the narrative that women are inherently peaceful and nonviolent while men are inherently violent and political. Violence in the name of self defense and self preservation should of course be respected, but I am by no means advocating that women should necessarily be violent too--violence and oppression are not good for anyone and personally I don’t believe it would resolve any political or social complaints in any society, not just Palestinian.   

THE FORGOTTEN ISM

It is an inherent part of the colonization process to create racialized mythos of people native to the lands. US politics, during much of the “Manifest Destiny” period of spreading further west (and prior, mind you), racially lumped people of the Americas as “savage” or “inferior” to the white American. As Nadine Naber, Eman Desouky, and Lina Baroudi point out in “The Forgotten -Ism”, this racialization is heavy throughout much of Zionist discourse, painting Arabs as inferior to the white Israeli or the westerner.

I feel as though I was ignorant to how far back the visibility of Arab peoples as a racial formation went. Post-reading this piece, I feel more knowledgeable. Granted invisibility is also in and of itself, a way of constructing a non-import around a people’s oppression, but my process was that the formation around Arab people in US discourse today was really shaped around 9/11, having become hyper-visible as a result. What this essay did was really enhance my knowledge of the racial mythos of Arabs (particularly Palestinians) surrounding much of American discourse. Though Zionism as a framework extends beyond just being that of American thought, having been birthed in Europe and the very building block of the Israeli state existence, zionism is heavily present in America’s approach to Israel (Naber, Desouky, Baroudi 2001). The US is frequently defending and supporting the state of Israel and their colonization of the Palestinian land. Much of US policy around Palestine serves to further the US’s own imperialist agenda, supplying the state of Israel with the powers and tools to continue to oppress the Palestinian natives. The image of Arab peoples within much of US discourse has been shaped by a hyper-visibility centered around colonization within the land that conveniently, pits Palestinians as violent and threatening to the Israelis. In turn Israelis are painted as victims.

What The Forgotten-Ism really had me thinking due to both this hypervisibility under this image and the invisibility they face in fighting for justice, Arab people, most particularly Palestinians exist and have existed in this space between hypervisibility and invisibility. They are painted as violent and overly volatile due to this racial mythos and due to this, are often talked over and unheard in most spaces. Because of this Zionist fear mongering targeted on scapegoating Arabs, Palestinians have no voice within most of, if not all of the public domain.

I was raised Jewish and being raised Jewish is constantly being informed that Israel is your true home. Mind you, none of my family was particularly Orthodox, but this was always insisted upon when Palestine was brought up. It took a lot of personal research and discussion to solidify that I wasn’t going to be a Zionist like, a good 70% of my family. I’ve been called anti-semitic, my cousin went as far to liken my anti-zionist beliefs to Hitler. Maybe the shoe fits on the other end, that is on the Israeli government and all of the west for withholding necessary resources to the Palestinian people and killing them in masses. This is something I often struggle with; how could a people go through something as horrific as the Holocaust, then turn around and push another peoples into the same conditions? The entire zionist movement to me is built on hypocrisy.


IMAGE LINK: https://i2.wp.com/www.jweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/BAzioness-1-e1519752707984.jpg?resize=1280%2C720px&ssl=1

I choose this image mostly because it encapsulates the same hypocrisy set forth with the rest of the zionist movement. How can one stand for equality of any kind yet still endorse major human rights violations? The feminist-zionist movement (as with many of the aspects of the third wave this image shows so generously) needs to die as it has no place in an inclusive model of feminism that is in fact, anti-zionist.

QUESTION: We’ve talked a lot about stepping outside the boundaries that the state provides us in our own activism. How can we step outside these boundaries in solutions for Palestine?

Alex Phistry on Forgotten-ism

In “The Forgotten ‘ism:’ An Arab American Women’s Perspective on Zionism, Racism, and Sexism,” the authors describe how Zionist practices from Israel to America and throughout the world have demonized, excluded, and/or silenced Arabs and Arab-Americans. In particularly, they argue that Zionist propaganda portrays Arab women as the most oppressed women in the world who “need to be saved and/or spoken for by their Western feminist ‘sisters,’” (6).

The fact that Palestinian / Arab women have been portrayed in such an oppressive light in order to provide a reasoning for Zionist colonization is not a new idea—however, that makes it no less infuriating. Colonizers have always provided false, negative over-exaggerations of the native or indigenous people of the lands they are colonizing in order to excuse the dehumanizing way they treat and displace those people. In painting native or indigenous people as “uncivilized,” “immoral,” or even “violent,” it provides colonizers with an excuse for their brutalities in the eyes of Western society. This idea is especially true for Western women—and even more so for the Western feminist woman.

The Western feminist savior complex is an idea that places Western feminists as the bleeding-heart spokespeople for those seemingly more-oppressed Third World women. However, the best way to approach feminism is through an intersectional lens. That being said, it would not take much research by a true intersectional feminist to realize how over-dramatized Zionist propaganda has portrayed Arab women in an unfavorable light simply to justify their demonizing, excluding, and silencing Arab / Palestinian people. In doing so, Zionists have sparked an empathetic outcry in the Western feminist who now believes that in order to “save” these overly-oppressed women, Zionism must be upheld and those “uncivilized,” indigenous people must become “civilized” through colonization. This tactic has been used for hundreds of years and, though it is successful, it negatively shapes the way the world views the people in certain countries or who belong to certain religions, creating lasting, false images in the minds of those who do not dig deeper into the cultures.

Colonization and its repercussions are felt throughout the entire world. The cultures who are colonized are forcibly silenced, demonized, and excluded from society, and the false ideas spread by the colonizers are perpetuated throughout Western society. It is the misunderstandings of these cultures perpetuated by the colonizers that create and justify the Western feminist savior complex. However, Arab / Palestinian people do not need the “saving” that can come from the Western feminist. Those, as well as seemingly all other colonized people, simply need a true understanding of their culture and values in order to be legitimized in Western society. By marking cultures we do not understand as “uncivilized” due to them not fitting into the Western expectation of what a culture should look like, we are creating the “forgotten-ism” the authors are talking about—thereby perpetuating the normalization of Western societies and the demonization of native and indigenous societies.

The only questions I can think of are what can be done in order to lessen misunderstandings of non-Western societies/cultures? Is simply having a better understanding of the cultures enough? Or is there more that could be done to lessen the global effects of colonization?

Johnson & Kuttab -Jessica Wagner

In this article entitled, Where Have All the Women (and Men) Gone? Reflections on Gender and the Second Palestinian Intifada, the authors ground their reflections on gender and the complex realities of the second Palestinian intifada against Israeli occupation in the political processes. The two also explore three linked crises in gender roles emerging from the conditions of the second intifada: a crisis in paternity, a crisis in masculinity, and a crisis in maternity. One of the points Penny Johnson and Eileen Kuttab make in regards to the crisis of maternity is on page 37 where they claim “In both intifadas, informal women’s activism has taken the form of an extension of women’s roles, particularly ‘mother activism’, most visible in the first intifada when older women sheltered youth and defied soldiers” (Johnson and Kuttab, 37).          

           

            Throughout the second intifada, we witnessed women’s activism extending WAY further than “maternal protection”. Contrary to contemporary media’s representation of the duties of these women, the issues they faced are far more agonizing than simply “blessing their sons’ martyrdom” (Johnson and Kuttab, 37). These women were forced to deal with the practices and consequences of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, and thus reacted in such ways that appeared to be maternal in nature. It infuriates me that so much work was done by Palestinian women in order to counter allegations that they are the ones sending their children to die at a variety of checkpoints.

These women wanted nothing more than to protect their children from the violence imposed by Israeli soldiers, and I truly think that if these women didn’t have to put their energy towards this, they would be able to participate other anti-occupation efforts. Instead, these women were forced to act off their maternal instincts and work towards preventing children from participation at the checkpoints and deep racism towards Palestinian women through organizing and letter-writing meetings and press conferences. Not to say that the work these women were doing did not matter…their efforts were vital efforts in public demonstration and proved that the community was in desperate need of political and communal expression.

After reading this piece by Johnson and Kuttab, I wanted to find a news article regarding Palestinian women’s activism during both the First and Second Intifada. Almost immediately I came across a piece on Aljazeera.com describing three generations of women who have been proudly and strongly fighting Israeli resistance across both Intifadas. Through protecting their homes, protesting in the street, using their homes as refugee camps, and most importantly, providing emotional support to neighbors, family members, and friend who lost someone close to them in the fight against Israel. Not only are these women conducting both emotional, “maternal” labor, but they are also initiating majority of their community’s protests, meetings, and financial plans, just as Johnson and Kuttab explained in Where Have All the Women (and Men) Gone? Reflections on Gender and the Second Palestinian Intifada.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/10/women-intifada-palestine-151023085848279.html

Question: As a woman, I can sit here and appreciate the efforts done by Palestinian women to protect themselves and their loved ones…do you think the men are able to appreciate and accredit these women for being influential activists during the Intifada?

SAY IT LOUD- GENOCIDE

In The Forgotten "-ism:", the writers bring up a specific obstacle in tackling the aid of Zionism by Western nations. That claim state of Israel has to the word "genocide"- the deliberate killing of a larger group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. Many people don't know that a group of people can legally claim the rights to a word, or that that claim to the word can have dangerous impacts on others.

In section C of the reading, "The Anti-Semitic Charge: A Silencing Strategy", they write, "the Zionist project use(s) the experience of the Holocaust to legitimate the creation of an exclusionary state at the expense of the displaced indigenous Arab population, it also attempts to foreclose the possibility of other peoples- whether in Rwanda, former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Afghanistan, or Palestine- from calling attention to genocidal practices which in many ways mirror the atrocities that took place in World War II, even if not on the same scale" (12). This is one of the many ways that Zionists protect their occupation of Palestine- by illegitamizing the struggles of other groups, LIKE THE PALESTINIANS, in order to highlight the Jewish genocide and make that of other nations look more like an irrationality than anything else. The authors' inclusion of this strategy is vital to understanding the bigger picture of Zionism- as it is a worldwide movement, not exclusive to the people inhabiting occupied Palestine.

The criticism of the Israeli occupation is included under the contradictory definition of  anti-Semitism. The understanding that there is an injustice being done to Palestinians is seen as a hate-crime to the Jewish community. Unfortunately, it is hard for Zionists and allies of them to believe that Jewish people themselves organize against their (il)legal occupation of Palestine and fight for the freedom of the people they oppress on their own land. It is very possible to be a Jewish person and anti-Zionist, or an ally of the Jewish community and anti-Zionist, as there is no correlation between fighting for the freedom of a nation while discriminating against an entire group of people who happen to share the same religion as the oppressor; if that were the case, then every Christian/Catholic person would be discriminated against by those who fought for the rights and freedoms of black people in the U.S. or EVEN Jewish people in Nazi Germany. Therefore, the use of the word genocide for non-Jewish genocidal actions does not take away from the persecution of Jewish people during the Holocaust. Rather, it builds agency for other persecuted peoples and gives recognition to OTHER atrocities in the world (because this is NOT the only one and we refuse to believe it is!).

Just how greatly does this affect victims of unrecognized genocides in the world? I come from a war-torn country- Yugoslavia. My family and I have found refuge in the U.S. from the genocide of our people by Serbian soldiers and civilians, and we cannot even call it a genocide. The Genocide of Srebrenica was THE worst tragedy of Bosna-Hercegovina, claiming the lives of approximately 8,373 innocent people in 1995. To this day, we cannot legally call this tragedy a genocide because Israel's hostage of this word has aided Serbia in ignoring their faults and their acts of terror on us. This has resulted in the inability to gain funds for families of the victims and promote a reconstruction of our economy/society. Today, our country is just barely in ruins, with civilians emigrating from it every day for better opportunities in neighboring countries. The lack of a legal definition for what happened in our country simplifies it to a Civil war, something it was not (as Bosnia's lack of weapons, funds, aid, and military in comparison to Serbia's provided a bias in the war).

I want to simply know how a group can claim the rights to a word, how it can live with the consequences to this, and how we can work to change it.

Bella Pizzo - Color of Violence - Federal Indian Law and Violent Crime

Sarah Deer's "Federal Indian Law and Violent Crime" in The Color of Violence discusses Indigenous American folks and their relationship to the federal law system as well as their own jurisdiction and its effects on various Native communities. Deer asserts that although no criminal justice system is perfect, the justice system that was a part of the indigenous population was more victim-centered and emotionally affirming than our current U.S. system.

Deer describes the Native American justice systems, stating that there were various powerful social checks and balances, ensuring that the person who has been found guilty of a crime is held responsible for their actions while focusing on the healing of the victim. This is very much unlike the newer Anglo-American system that eventually took over these indigenous justice systems. Typically the American criminal justice is "hard on crime" and focuses on punishing the "criminal" by perpetuating systemic violence. There is a high recidivism rate in American crime because of the nature of the criminal justice system: continually perpetuating violence only creates an environment where violence is acceptable.

I really like this idea of restorative justice that stems from indigenous roots of Native American people, trusting victims, and treating people who commit crimes as human. We have talked a lot in class about the way people are treated as subhuman when they are the perpetrator of a crime, and how that ends up reinforcing the cycle of systemic violence that creates "criminals" and "bad guys" in America. People who have committed what a society enforces as a crime are still people, and it does not necessarily mean that something that is criminalized is actually a problem. Some societies criminalize different behaviors that are geared specifically towards people of color and gender nonconforming people.

In terms of this criminal justice system outside of the classroom, I immediately think of the documentary Girls on the Wall. This documentary is about young girls of color primarily and their experiences in a juvenile detention center. Instead of harsh punishments that are typically seen, these girls are encouraged to create a musical together, collaborating and working together to weave their unique stories and experiences together while using their energy productively to create something. Although these girls are still being criminalized and punished by being kept against their will in a prison facility, there are glimpses of restorative justice that aligns with this reading by focusing on the human experiences of people who are criminalized.

I would love to discuss other ways that communities of color have originated great successes in community enforcement of rules and regulations.

Alien in your Native Land

In Kimberly Robertson's essay, they write about feminist discourse around the Tribal Law and Order Act. This act grants to tribal courts jurisdiction across the nation. In their work, Robertson writes, "Deer (2005, 2015) argues that sovereignty of Native nations is intimately tied to their ability to address sexual violence against Native women" (13).

Robertson suggests that settler colonialism has an agenda to maintain crime by Native Americans in order to continually justify their intrusion on the jurisdiction of Tribal leaders and the further victimization of Native women. One point of reasoning brought up for the victimization of Native women is for the consistent perpetuation of the cycle of the hierarchy heteropatriarchy in the U.S. This is an old-as-time discourse for women of color in this country; their bodies are a constant battle ground for the fight over who will govern it, a tool for the White Man's burden. By allowing for the interruption of national U.S. governance onto tribal law, there will always be room for the perpetuation of a hierarchy between communities.

The only community that can ever really know just how serious the need for justice for Native American Women victims is is Native American communities. Therefore, it only makes sense for jurisdiction to be given to the leaders of these communities to protect their female members. Without this, and without further funding for a tribal law and order, justice cannot be given and crime will always be pushed into pockets of communities to bear the burden of them, rather than tackled as a real issue within the nation.

As I have mentioned, this is not a new concept for other minority groups in the U.S. we have seen a pattern of this, specifically in the black community. Now more than ever, individuals and organizations' have brought about a powerful movement (the Black Lives Matter movement) which has exposed the injustices of black men and women directly perpetuated by police officers and other 'leaders" of our country. Prior to the eruption of this movement, many Americans allowed themselves to live in ignorance regarding the criminalization of black men and women, and chalked it up to violence and criminal activity being an inevitable characteristic of the black culture. With the further pressure to recognize modern black suffrage, we have no opened the door to the fact that the U.S. government strategically uses black bodies to push crime onto one community so as to further incapacitate them. This is what is also happening in Native American communities when their own rights to govern their people in the way they know is best is not an option.



I wonder: Could there ever be an emergence of under-the-rug violence against Native American women if there is not a greater government to watch over things (I'm wondering about this in terms of the abuse of power and how Native American women might be able to promote their inclusion in governmental positions).

Sarah Deer reading

The point that Sarah Deer makes in Federal Indian Law and Violent Crime which I will be grappling with in this blog is that sexual violence towards native women and children perpetrated by government workers is a continuation of colonization. Deer points out that the rate at which native women are sexually assaulted is higher than in any other population. This is a result of the lack of government accountability, and the stripping of native tribe’s power to enforce their own justice system.

In order to see sexual violence as a tool of colonization we must understand the metaphoric (but also very literal) way in which native women’s bodies represent land. The federal system not adequately investigating sexual assault allegations put forth by native women and children is an example of our nation’s ongoing legacy of colonization. Sexual violence is a form of control psychologically, emotionally and physically. One of the goals of the white settlers in the beginning of the nation’s legacy of colonization was for Native Americans to disappear or become “extinct”, rape is one of the ways to make this possible. Rape is a form of control over not just Native women but Native people as a whole.

Survivors of sexual violence overwhelmingly do not have a way heal or feel a sense of justice within our nation’s criminal justice system. Native women’s assaults are taken even less seriously than a middle class white woman’s assault, just one reason being that Native Women are almost non-existent in public discourse due to the belief that Native People do not exist. (which was created by our nation’s legacy colonization in the first place) On top of that, native survivors by law (Oliphant v. Suquamish) are not able to have their tribe prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians.

In order for sexual violence against native women to be a form of colonization, we must understand that women’s bodies are seen as the land. (“Mother Earth” or “Mother Nature”, the Earth is a woman even in the general population’s understanding) I wanted to talk briefly about environmental racism and how it is a form of violence upon specifically native women reproductive health which in the long run effects entire native communities. An example of environmental racism in practice would be the dumping of toxins by large corporations into bodies of water near tribal land.These toxins then directly affect women’s health and their children’s health. This in my eyes is another way our nation’s legacy of colonization continues on into the present. The photo below is a depiction of the connections between the environmental justice movement and the reproductive Justice movement.

While reading Sarah Deer’s piece and thinking intersectionally about movements we have been talking about in our class, I’m thinking about how coalitions between immigrant rights activists and indigenous rights activists can exist. Is it possible since the very nature of what both groups of people are fighting for contradict one another? Are there any intersections between them?

Dom Rosario on Deer Reading

    Our reading today discussed the ways in which the federal government has impacted and weakened the Indigenous community's justice system. The point that resonated with me the most in this essay was toward the end, when Deer states "Without and adequate system for resolution and healing, psychological trauma and victimization create a cyclical sense of despair and desperation- indeed, a very continuation of the colonization process," (39).
    In a great deal of GWS classes we learn of the different process of colonization and how it has had long lasting affects on different groups of people around the world. Reading this essay, it defiantly helps the argument that colonization is still very much alive, just in different forms. The United States government continues to use different tactics in an effort to keep Native nations reliant on them, which includes weakening their justice systems and forcing their own ideas of "justice" on the Native peoples. The United states has done this through implementing laws restricting tribal laws, imposing their own health care in which people are abused, and by continuously ignoring the violent crimes that occur while sipping tribal nations of their own justice systems.
     While the U.S government stripped tribal governments of their authority to handle what is seems to be becoming any crime, not just felony crimes, they rarely actually investigate crimes that are brought to their attention. It strikes me as a form of abuse and neglect that the government takes the right s of tribes to handle their own issues, but leaves them with nothing because they don't do anything to hold anyone accountable either. In essence, the U.S government is just letting criminals inflict violence upon Native women and children without any repositions, which makes them a larger target for others, which Deer discusses in her essay.
     These issues have been brought up again and again. In 2015, the U.S Supreme court agreed to hear a case in which a young Indigenous boy was assaulted by a white manager. The issue was whether or not the man was subject to tribal trial since it occurred on their land. Indigenous people are fighting to have their own trials and actually have justice since the U.S government ignore their issues and when they do actually do something, it is often ineffective in helping the victims heal.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bnpb73/native-american-women-are-rape-targets-because-of-a-legislative-loophole-511


My question is : How could the U.S government give Indigenous Nations back their sovereignty without completely destroying the nations? Do you think there are ways non-native people can aid in the fight for Indigenous people in their quest to regain sovereignty and fight the extremely high levels of violence?

Stamps_Marla_Federal Indian Law and Violent Crime_Blog 4

In Sarah Deer’s chapter, Federal Indian Law and Violent Crime, Deer addresses how tribal communities were stripped of their own autonomy. Because of this, tribal communities have become dependent of treaties and federal policies (33).

Before colonialism, tribal communities governed themselves. Colonizers impeded tribal communities and took control of them. One of the ways in which tribal communities were taken control of was through sexual violence. It made it easier for colonizers to take control of communities. According to one of the statistics Deer included, “native women are the most victimized population in the Unites States” (34). After colonialism, it appears that native American communities have adapted to the colonial culture. Sexual violence has become normalized within the community.

It seems that, after colonialism, power was not restored or given back to the tribal communities. And so, laws like the Major Crimes Act and Public Law 280, are dismantling the tribal community’s justice systems. The laws are slowly removing power from the tribal community to handle situations within their community. So, they are becoming more dependent on the U.S jurisdiction. Deer mentions that federal agencies place “tribal citizens at a high risk for victimization and violence” and “hire persons with a history of violence” (37). So, it becomes apparent that the federal agencies need to make major adjustments to help the tribal communities. Because even after colonialism, native women are still experiencing sexual violence and they are the most victimized.

After doing a bit of research, I found an organization called the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women. The organization’s goal is to “create violence free communities.” I do not know much about the efforts of people trying to help tribal communities. It is not something one hears about, unless they actively look for organizations helping. This organization is mobilizing tribal communities to bring forth systematic change.And this is done through training to not only educate natives, but people who aren't native as well.    

https://www.csvanw.org

I guess something we could discuss in class would be how can we restore power within tribal communities without enforcing new laws upon them. I know that the obvious answer would be to withdraw policies or laws from the communities, but the U.S probably will not do that.