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?