I came across a tweet recently that reads:
“reminder that rape is used a weapon of war on a regular basis because it is one of the most demoralizing, terrifying and life-changingly traumatic things that can happen to a human being.”
By: Jenin, CODEPINK
This post was in light of the gruesome sexual assault case coming out of Cornell University, and it really stuck with me. I’ve spent the past few years reading and talking about the experiences of Palestinians as they face every kind of abuse from Israeli soldiers and settlers. It is not lost on me that the vehicles used by the patriarchy to suppress women, like rape, are unfortunately present in every aspect of our society — the same society that has manufactured consent for a genocide in Palestine. From college campuses to Palestine, we are seeing sexual and gendered violence being intentionally used to strip human beings down to the barest parts of themselves.
It is this system of imperial patriarchy that cultivates a world in which two situations are allowed to occur simultaneously: A college girl can be drugged and sexually assaulted for 7 hours, and women and men in Palestine can have their bodily autonomy ripped away from them as a tool of genocide. In both cases, the victims have been dehumanized by the outside world to such an extent that they are now an other.
And in both cases, their perpetrators and assailants can leave the crime scene unscathed, with their hands clean.
This summer, the Palestinian Feminist Collective released a report on the harrowing sexual and gendered violence Palestinians have faced during 70+ years of occupation, and increasingly so in the past three years of accelerated genocide. Israel has always treated its military personnel and settlers with impunity, allowing them free rein to sexually torture Palestinians. With extensive evidence, the report concludes that Israel systemically uses sexual violence as a method of genocide.
The stories that are recounted in “A Predatory State,” by both Palestinian men and women, are absolutely terrifying. When read all together, the pattern is plain and clear: Israeli soldiers and personnel operate within a dynamic of power where they believe they have complete authority over another human being. This results in gruesome and grotesque behaviors like sexual coercion, assault, harassment, and even enslavement. Palestinians are subjected to these abuses any time Israelis show up to steal their homes, massacre them, and round them up in mass-imprisonment campaigns.
I think of my family members who have lived in Palestine for generations. What have they experienced? What kind of trauma runs through my veins right now, as I am writing this? It is terrifying to know that as a woman in this world, the threat of sexual assault is always there. In Palestine, you can’t really avoid it when the perpetrators are at every checkpoint, storming into your house at night, encroaching on your backyards with their illegal settlements, guarding the prisons, and just being everywhere all at once. It’s not a matter of if but a matter of when. It also isn’t a matter of man or woman, because in reality it happens to both. In a culture that holds modesty as a core value, I can only imagine the emotional and socioeconomic toll sexual violence takes on Palestinian people and their families.
Bell hooks defines feminism as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” I would think anyone would see this situation and resonate with it as a feminist issue. The ideology is not selective, nor is it performative; it’s supposed to be something whole and intersectional. Feminism in practice should advocate for every person affected by the oppressive structures of patriarchy. That being said, you would be surprised at how many feminist and women’s organizations act otherwise.
The Western feminist space has become one where optics are the only thing that matters. These “feminist” organizations operate as an institution for the institution, yet they brand themselves as global caregivers fighting for gender equality. In reality, they are the fruition of neo-liberal co-optation of actual revolutionary ideas. That is why they deem Palestinians as non-human, consistently failing to speak up about the sexual and gendered violence they face in genocide. Palestine is too revolutionary for them.
Reading through PFC’s report and then researching some of the most influential women’s organizations — who have either never said a word about Palestine, despite their decades of existence, or issued a few measly statements here and there — was a painful process. The first target we had identified at CODEPINK was the Center for Reproductive Rights. This global legal organization upholds reproductive and sexual rights for women, not only in courts but also through consultations with other human rights organizations. They are active worldwide, fighting for reproductive and sexual health as a basic human right from the U.S. to Africa to Asia — but somehow Palestine is missing from their picture.
In Palestine, women are facing a maternal health crisis with hardly any functioning hospitals, dangerous sanitation levels, and an overall stressful quality of life. A report was recently published highlighting the unprecedented rise of miscarriages in Gaza under Israel’s blockade. In 2022, Gaza reported 57,000 births. In 2024, just one year after Israel’s genocidal campaign began, the birth rate in Gaza dropped to a staggering 38,000. Then, from December 2025 to April 2026, in the span of just six months, birth rates in Gaza declined by 67 percent.
This seems like something the Center for Reproductive Rights should absolutely make noise about, but every single one of our attempts to speak to them has been blocked and ignored. When you look at their board and staff, the answer is pretty clear. When you have an organization run by a culmination of ex-CIA operatives, presidential campaign officials, and venture capitalists, Palestine seems to be the antithesis of the “values” they ascribe to, and the “feminism” they follow.
Israel is committing one of the world’s greatest acts against feminism right now: dehumanizing Palestinians, men and women both, to such an extreme degree that they are seen as disposable cattle to Israeli soldiers and settlers. Yet, that does not concern the self-prescribed feminists who work for the state and war economy that is aiding and abetting this tragedy.
I leave Nawal El Saadawi’s quote here as a reminder that liberal, white feminism does not seek true liberation for all those the patriarchy oppresses. Just because a woman is brown and Muslim, or just because the man being abused is Palestinian, does not mean their pain should be ignored by the mainstream feminists of today. Feminism is intersectional and whole, and it is beautiful that way. These organizations’ hypocrisy in the face of injustice is a horrible stain on the feminist movement. I wish nothing more than for all of us to stand together as women subjected to struggle and scorn against the colonial powers of this world.
“Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change, and can influence future development in ways favourable not only to women but also to men.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World
