Palestine gaze

Ana Valdés, writer and member of Women in Black
Photo: Women in Black

I was invited many years ago by the Spanish singer Cristina del Valle and her Platform of Women Artists against Gender Violence to visit Palestine. We visited groups of women who worked tirelessly for Palestinian political prisoners, some of them minors.

Israeli and Palestinian women lawyers and trade unionists were working for their release, almost none of them had been tried, they were accused of throwing stones at tanks or resisting arbitrary arrests. Some of them were active in the Israeli peace movement Bat Shalom and others in the Women in Black movement.

We also visited homes for women who have suffered domestic violence. Many of the Palestinian women having become responsible for their families, elderly parents and many children when their husbands were taken prisoner by the police or the Israeli army. In such situations of constant threat, violence against women and children escalates.

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 has caused irreparable damage to the weak Israeli peace movement. Many say that the October 7 attack has made people forget the occupation that began in 1948 and that originated the first Nakba, the first Palestinian exile where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their lands and their cities. Israel was founded on their homes and olive groves.

Adam Keller, the spokesman for the Gush Shalom peace movement, is very concerned about the right-wing Israeli society that is against Binyamin Netanyahu, but defends the war and demonizes the Palestinians.

The women’s movements we met on our visit such as Bat Shalom and Women in Black, which was founded there in 1988, are aging and failing to attract the young people.

Israel’s international isolation and its condemnations by the Hague court are used in the right-wing discourse to accentuate Israel’s role as victim, accusing all its detractors of anti-Semitism, even though thousands of Jews around the world have distanced themselves from the state of Israel, which they see as a failed project of Zionism. And the recognition of the Palestinian state by Spain, Norway and Ireland has further aggravated the tensions. Netanyahu has already said that if the price of eradicating Hamas is to stand alone against the rest of the world, Israel is willing to pay it.