“Palestinian women have long been resisting occupation and apartheid, and a system that stigmatises them and dehumanises them and their experiences.”
This week, activists joined Labour & Palestine and Arise Festival for an event held in solidarity with Palestine, as part of the calendar of events around International Women’s Day. Jess Barnard, members’ representative on Labour NEC, celebrated the generations of Palestinian women who have resisted occupation and apartheid.
You can watch the event in full or read Jess’ speech published below:
International Working Women’s Day is not about being a ‘girl boss’ or ‘She-EO’, or any other attempt to reduce women’s solidarity to individualistic capitalist buzzwords. This day is and should be about the struggles, resilience, and victories of working class women across the globe. And it’s a real honour to be on this panel with truly incredible women from across the movement for Palestine.
Women are the cornerstone of struggles for justice, equality, and liberation in every part of world, but the women on all our minds on international Working Women’s Day this year, and for years to come, are Palestinian women: whose fight for freedom is inseparable from the global struggle for women’s liberation.
As you will all know, Palestinian women have long been resisting occupation and apartheid, and a system that stigmatises them and dehumanises them and their experiences – as seen in the speeches of our politicians and the representation in our media, who reduce the experiences of Palestinian women to an ‘unfortunate unavoidable consequence’, rather than what we know to be: an abhorrent and systematic injustice, which in any just and equal world would have been prevented by so called ‘world leaders.’
From the Nakba, for over 75 years, generations of Palestinian women have endured the brutalities of displacement, apartheid, and military occupation. They have had their homes demolished, had their children imprisoned, and their lands stolen.
In Gaza, Palestinian women have lived under a suffocating 16-year blockade and of course, 18 months of a genocide, the horrors of which you know all too well.
They face crimes against humanity, being denied access to food, water, electricity, and medical supplies by Israel (and supported by the US and the UK). They endure the trauma of constant bombardment, the loss of loved ones, C-sections without pain relief, no access to menstrual products- stripped of the dignity that healthcare and a home provide.
Some of you will know i have spoken about this before, but in 2022 I met with women working with children in Gaza. Those women told us story after story of Palestinian children with PTSD wetting the bed from fear of bombs: something no child should have to endure. They told us about cases of deep psychological trauma in children who had been captured by the IDF and captured and beaten by illegal settlers. I will never ever forget those women, the work they do, the impossible burden that they carry and how much more we need to be doing.
When we visited the West Bank, we saw for ourselves how Palestinian women face daily violence from the Israeli occupation. From dehuminising checkpoints, students being denied basic rights, home demolitions, and the constant threat of arrest or violence.
And this is a reality not just for women but for young girls. When visiting a refugee center in the West Bank, we heard a young girl talk about how her act of resistance against the illegal occupation was refusing to leave her land. While an incredible testament to the resilience of the Palestinian people, how unjust that this child grew up surrounded by armed military watch towers, all too aware of the threat against her right to exist in her own home.
It’s with this at the forefront of our minds that we have to confront the hypocrisy of this Labour government.
How is it that our government can pledge to half violence against women and girls, all while continuing to create weapons to be used on women and girls in Palestine?
How is it that Keir Starmer can write letters to his daughter about an equal world, all while dismissing the human rights of the daughters of Gaza?
How is it that Labour can claim to be in support of breaking down barriers, when the barriers that Palestinian women face every day are propped up by our support for israel?
Let us be clear: the liberation of Palestinian women cannot be achieved without the liberation of Palestine itself. Attempts to justify the actions of israel as if somehow assisting the liberation of women and LGBT people are an insult, and rooted in colonial mentality. We must be clear that the Israeli occupation is not only a political and military system; it is also a gendered system of violence. Palestinian women face the dual burden of that occupation and that patriarchy.
So, on this International Working Women’s Day we stand with Palestinian women.
We do this by amplifying their stories, supporting their movements and calls to the international community, and challenging the government and corporations which enable the occupation.
And for as long as I sit on Labour’s NEC, I promise to continue raising the cause of Palestinian women directly to Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, who should never be given a free pass to sit and feel comfortable with their support for israel.
But more importantly: collectively, we continue to organise on the streets, in our workplaces, for justice and to defend the right to protest in support of Palestine.
We will not stop until we see liberation and a free Palestine.
- Jess Barnard is a members’ representative on the Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC): you can follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
- You can follow Labour & Palestine on Facebook and Twitter/X, and Arise on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.
- You can watch back the Women for Palestine event in full here.
