“Women historically have always been at the forefront of the struggle for peace and global justice. And with the horrors taking place in Gaza and the West Bank, we need women’s voices now more than ever.”
Sophie Bolt, General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), recently addressed the ‘Women for Palestine’ event, organised by Labour & Palestine and Arise Festival as part of the calendar of events around International Women’s Day. You can watch the event in full or read her speech published below.
We know that women historically have always been at the forefront of the struggle for peace and global justice. And with the horrors taking place in Gaza and the West Bank, we need women’s voices now more than ever.
Israel is once against inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian people in Gaza. Blocking life-saving aid and now halting critical electricity supplies shows Israel is only interested in continuing its brutal genocide.
Today Israeli forces have killed at least six people in central and southern Gaza, while four people, including an elderly woman, have been killed in the occupied West Bank.
This is why we must all be out protesting this Saturday in London.
So, as well as condemning Israel’s horrific destruction of Gaza and Trump’s obscene calls for the enforced ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians for their Gazan homeland, we should also be celebrating the amazing resilience and courage of Palestinian women.
We know it is overwhelmingly women and children who are being killed in Israel’s genocidal war. Back in November 2024, the UN’s Human Rights office reported that over 70% of those killed in Gaza were women and children.
The reproductive rights of Palestinian women are also at the heart of this genocide. Last year’s crucial ruling by the international Criminal Court of plausible violations of the Genocide Convention highlighted that the attempt to prevent women from giving birth falls within the Convention.
In their pivotal case against Israel, South Africa cited the deliberate targeting of hospitals that has had a devasting impact on women’s lives: on their ability to survive, to give birth, for their babies to survive. We’ve all seen the horrific images of premature babies left to die by the Israeli occupying forces.
Over 1 million women and girls have been displaced, forced into makeshift refugee camps where disease is rife. It’s in these conditions, that thousands of pregnant women have been forced to give birth.
And now, for those who have survived the horror of Israel’s genocide, they are once again under siege.
So I pay tribute to the resilience and courage of Palestinian women – which is an inspiration to us all.
And call on all of us to redouble our efforts to stop this genocidal war.
And to defend our right to protest. It is a critical human right, that has been central to the struggle for peace and justice for generations. And with this government continuing to defend the indefensible as part its ongoing complicity in the genocide, the need for protest has never been greater. We stand in a rich, powerful tradition of women’s protest: from the Suffragettes, to Greenham Common, to those today opposing genocide.
Our struggle of solidarity for Palestine and for Palestinian human rights goes to the heart of all progressive struggle for peace and justice for all oppressed peoples across the world.
- Sophie Bolt is General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: you can follow her on Twitter/X, and CND on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and TikTok.
- 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.
