Dear feminists, Gaza is our reckoning

Feminism, my dear feminists, is at a crossroads because of Gaza. Because a ceasefire is a respite for Gazans and an opportunity for us to take stock.

The silence, and in some cases the outright support for the genocide by some Western feminists in the face of such unprecedented violence, raises questions about the very basis of the ideology.

The genocide has brought to the fore the glaring contradiction between seeking women's equality as a basic feminist principle while adopting silence on the besieged, starved, dying women of Gaza. It has picked holes in the argument that ending violence against women is a priority to achieving women's empowerment while a record number of women in Gaza are killed either by powerful Israeli bombs, man-made famine or intentional destruction of hospitals and basic facilities during child birth.

Since Israel's military re-entry into Gaza — they have previously attacked Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021 — we have witnessed one of the most brutal and deadliest assaults in recent history. A former chief of staff of the Israeli army says more than 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded since Israel's genocide began. Leaked Israeli data reveals 80% of those killed are civilians, of which 70% are women and children.

Maternal and child health infrastructure is nearly obliterated, with over 84% of health facilities damaged. Pregnant women are undergoing C-sections without anaesthetic and infant and maternal mortality rates have soared. Pregnant women face malnutrition, and the lack of the most basic support puts them at risk of severe complications and death. Women, like others, are close to starvation, skipping meals to feed their children instead; two mothers dying every hour. The social fabric that sustains caregiving and community cohesion is shattered as death and destruction take over Gazan bodies and its landscape.

Dominant feminism today imitates Western liberal values, with subjectivity as its main underpinning. The suffering of only those is amplified and relevant if it aligns with accepted Western geopolitical narratives. Since October 2023, the scenes of Gaza's women dying, hungry or mourning their children have received little to no airtime. They are rarely told in the first person but instead flattened into numbers and mass casualties. In comparison, the personalised stories and pictures of Israeli hostage families continue to receive sustained media attention.

Similarly, Ukrainian women's stories are told with a broad liberal narrative of resistance and victimhood. Palestinian women's stories are not viewed under this same framework and are sometimes even portrayed as suspects by association. When Iranian women sought freedom from their government, most Western feminists spoke up for Iranian women. And now for Gaza, there is a void, barely a social media post by the same feminists who seemed so invested in all women's safety and freedom.

When the US invaded Afghanistan, it announced its intention to liberate Afghan women. Laura Bush argued that the "fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights of women." This same narrative was used, though not as consistently, during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, despite the literacy and employment of Iraqi women being the highest in the region and secularism being a core principle of Saddam's Ba'ath party.

During the recent unprovoked attack on Iran in June 2025, Israel's prime minister talked of bombing Iran's regime to liberate Iranian women — "woman, life, freedom is the future of Iran" — using the slogan of Iranian activists, which gained international attention during the 2022 protests in Iran against mandatory dress codes.

From Afghanistan to Iraq, and now Iran, the rhetoric of saving Muslim women is used to legitimise war, disregarding local agency and the worsening conditions war brings for women in every aspect of their lives. Afghanistan is back in the hands of the Taliban, from which the US was liberating the Afghan woman for over 20 years. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a harrowing percentage of women have been forced into sex work because of economic insecurity and destruction of formal state and government institutions, the biggest employer of women. Iranian women question their liberation: Will liberation be achieved by bombing and killing us?

Imperialist feminists are blinded by the all-powerful narrative of politicians, heavily invested in the global military complex. They march to the drumbeats of a violent, bloody genocide while singing the songs of liberation, peace and security.

This false equation of empowerment as inclusion in corporate boardrooms and in military leadership, rather than questioning the very structures that perpetuate inequality and violence, has led us to a place where women and children are killed by the thousands in Gaza, while liberal feminists remain subjective and silent.

Capitalism's co-opting of feminism has limited the movement for women's liberation to individual advancement, while accelerating the justification for wars and the exploitation of the people and planet — think Iraq and oil. It has led to feminists proudly peddling imperialist agendas of liberating 'oppressed' women from internal enemies as some sort of good, moral act. Never mind that the so-called internal enemies are their brothers, husbands, sons.

An ideology that chooses selective solidarity while also being ignorant of the impact of empire, racial bias, occupation and global systems of oppression, cannot survive.

The genocide in Gaza has forced a reckoning for feminism because, without recognising Palestinian liberation as a feminist issue, the ideology betrays the very foundation of feminist thought. As the horrors of the genocide unfold in front of us, and will continue to do so, as the weeks and months pass, feminists must — led by feminists from the global majority — reassess this ideology we hold so dear. To stay relevant, we must reclaim feminism, where instead of seeking inclusivity in a patriarchal system, we seek intersectional solidarity and global alliance building in order to challenge violent colonial structures, beliefs and practices. If we do not adapt, along with the destruction of Gaza, feminism, too, will turn to rubble.