DON'T BE LIVNI

International Women's Day in Tel Aviv

Having written about the upsurge in radical feminism (as defined by grassroots action targeted at the root causes of injustice, not to be confused with radical feminism as defined by essentialist and separatist tendencies) in the UK, following the International Women’s Day rally in London last year, it was a real treat to be part of this year's IWD Tel Aviv march – a demonstration with similarly radical credentials and markedly better weather.

One of the organisers, an activist from the Coalition of Women for Peace, explained the purpose of the march as marking an opposition to all crimes against women be it domestic violence, war and occupation, racism, heterosexism, or economic oppression under the neoliberal project.

The previous day Tel Aviv had seen a more mainstream feminist demonstration which didn’t talk about Palestinian women – in Gaza, the West Bank or Israel – and focussed instead on the spheres of the Israeli home, workplace and Knesset.

The sentiments of Friday’s protest were echoed in a statement made today by the Prime Minister: ‘The fact that we mark this day shows that we have not yet reached the worthy status for women in Israel. We must work to change the situation, be it by legislation, through the Authority for Advancement of the Status of Women in Israel or through any other means. Despite the achievements we have in the State of Israel, that includes 21 female Knesset members, there are still concerning trends such as violence, women trafficking and discrimination of women in the workplace. We must deal with this as soon as possible.’

When your vision of feminism coincides exactly with that of Ehud Olmert’s then sister, it might just be time for a rethink.

Undoubtedly, violence, women trafficking and discrimination are important issues for feminists to organise around. But Olmert’s concern about violence certainly doesn’t extend to concern for the thousands of women who were victims of the violence wreaked upon Gaza. Nor does his concern about discrimination extend to concern for those women discriminated against as Palestinian citizens of Israel or residents of East Jerusalem. The message of Saturday’s march was in stark contrast to this ethos. The slogan adorning the leading banner read, ‘Stop Crimes Against Women’ in Arabic, Hebrew and English. And as elaborated upon above, this meant all crimes – be it domestic violence or war – against all women – be they Jewish or Palestinian.

Having recognised the different ways in which different groups of women are oppressed the next step is joining the dots (and thus the struggles). Maya, an activist who travelled from Jerusalem for the demonstration, explained the links she makes as an anti-occupation feminist activist. She talks about how the militarism that sustains the occupation in Palestine breeds a hyper-masculinised, macho culture in Israel which is hugely repressive for women. Similarly, Simona Sharoni, an Israeli activist and academic, has linked violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to domestic violence in Israel.

Zionism has always been intimately tied to militarism and centred on men and masculinity, enshrining the redemptive ideal of the ‘New Jewish Man’ – tough, assertive, protective, master of his body and emotions and constructed in opposition to traditional conceptions of femininity and the antisemitic portrayal of the weak, effeminate Diaspora Jew. Meanwhile, the Zionist obsession with maintaining the Jewish nature of the state reduces women to wombs in a demographic war.

When Olmert talks about changing the situation of women in Israel ‘by any means’ you can be sure he’s not referring to any project that challenges the ideologies and practices of capitalism, militarism, or Zionism – the triad at the base of contemporary Israeli society and the structural roots of women’s subjugation.

Olmert may hail the 21 female Knesset members as one of the ‘achievments of the State of Israel’, but these women represent only 17 per cent of MKs. And while Tzipi Livni may have run for the office of Prime Minister as the leader of Kadima, one of Israel’s major parties, the Likud’s patriarchally puerile slogan ‘It’s too big for her’ makes it clear that being a woman is still seen as a disability in Israeli politics.

In any case, in assessing how feminism-friendly the makeup of a particular Knesset is policy position analysis is far more important than an X chromosome tally. Most of the current female MKs eschew feminist politics and during the election campaign gender, along with most other issues, was sidelined by the security discourse. Livni, the most powerful woman in Israeli politics, pushed the devastating siege and war on Gaza, and was formerly an MK of the party (Likud) that initiated a frenzy of privatisation, while systematically dismantling the social welfare net, thereby plunging thousands of women below the poverty line. A final case in point: the party with the highest proportion of female MKs is Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu.

Focusing exclusively on political institutions such as the Knesset means prioritising the representation of women so that they may have their rights bestowed upon them, rather than empowering them to fight their own subjugation and involving as many women and men as possible in the struggle to bring about liberation from below.

An Israeli feminism that speaks only of politics inside the Green Line, while ignoring Gaza and the West Bank, only of political issues in terms of gender, without reference to class, sexuality, and race, only of political solutions in terms of legal and policy – rather than structural – change, and only of political power in terms of institutional representation, is a feminism that speaks only for, to and about middle-class, heterosexual, Israeli Jewish women of European origin.

Saturday’s march, however, was a different kettle of very colourful fish: there was a happy turnout of men, women and gender-binary-transcenders (a more eloquent term, or indeed an actual word, eludes me), Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, L, G, B and Ts, communists and anarchists, the very young and the very old. Oh, and samba and sunshine! To be sure, multitudes of identity and disparities in power means this kind of feminist organising is going to throw up all manner of problems that need to be identified and dealt with. And this kind of feminist organising is that of a minority within a minority, overshadowed by a majority of warmongers, who have just elected the most right-wing Knesset in Israeli history.

BUT… let’s please take just a moment to be joyous and celebratory. So, Happy International Women’s Day! And here’s to an Israeli feminism that’s anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-war, anti-occupation and definitively not Tzipi Livni.