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?