by E.A.S.T. and Transnational Migrants Coordination
On 25November, the day for the elimination of violence against women, as Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational and Transnational Migrants Coordination, we call women, migrants and essential workers to take to the streets and join the demonstrations. As we said during the TSS transnational meeting, to fight against the racist and patriarchal conditions in which we live, demands also that we take a stand against the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the war on Palestine which is destroying thousands of lives.
As we did at the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, we stand with those who suffer the effects of wars, we stand with the women of Palestine who struggle to survive, with those who resist in non-violent ways, with those who suffer the devastating consequences on their lives, with those who flee because they have no chance to exist. We stand with the women in Israel who refuse to join the army and with the migrant and Muslim women who have been fighting against threats, harassment, violence and Islamophobic discrimination since the war started. We reject the instrumentalization of anti-Semitism used to support Israel’s extermination of Palestinians and we support all Jewish people, Black, Latinx around the world who are demonstrating to stop the occupation and the bombing of Gaza.
We do not align ourselves with the positions of powerful governments in this genocidal war and we reject any nationalist rhetoric. To claim freedom from the occupation for us is also to claim freedom from racism and patriarchy. Therefore, we won’t fall into the trap of policies like those of the Iranian regime, which, while claiming to support Palestinian women by only labeling them as martyrs of Islam,, has killed and continues to oppress millions of women in Iran who have radically asserted their freedom by refusing to wear the hijab. The Islamic Republic of Iran, while supporting Hamas and nominally the struggle for a free Palestine, is carrying out the forced repatriation of refugees – especially women and children – to Afghanistan, where the Taliban imposes severe restrictions on women’s lives. Turkey’s Erdogan pretends to be a champion of the Palestinian people, condemning Israeli attacks, whilst imprisoning, torturing and denying all expressions of Kurdish self-determination and launching drone and air strikes on North-East Syria (Rojava) and Iraq.
We think that to support Palestinian struggles is to fight for women’s freedom and we refuse any attempt to make feminism an unimportant issue in this situation. We know that the Palestinian population right now has to survive the violence of the State of Israel, not the violence of Hamas, but nevertheless, we believe that in Hamas’s confessional project, based on the subordination of women, there is no room for feminist liberation. Across the world, there are Ukrainian, Russian, Iranian, Kurdish, Palestinian, and Israeli women and LGBTQ+ people who have struggled for their freedom and continue to do so today. During the pandemic, women have been exploited across borders, and all the weight of the crisis has been put on their shoulders. At that time, we said what is essential is not only women’s work but women’s struggles. This is even more true today.
Our opposition to war and genocide is linked with all our struggles that exist everywhere against patriarchal oppression, against exploitation, and against border and racist violence. The fact that Turkey and Tunisia, where Erdogan and Saied continue to receive millions of euros to prevent migrants from reaching Europe while oppressing and exploiting them in these countries, offer “support” for Palestinian refugees, is for us the demonstration that these fronts need to be broken. The EU continues to back Israel, holding it as the bastion of civilization against barbarism, while implementing racist measures of refoulement, repatriation and detention of migrants under the guise of the threat of Islamic terrorism. The war on Palestine and the genocide in Gaza are used to justify the indiscriminate criminalisation of migrants and the closing of borders as yet more evidence of the interconnectedness of such politics. In the meantime, Meloni is making agreements with Albania to externalize Italian borders on the other side of the Adriatic Sea, and Scholz and Macron are planning more effective and faster forms of border controls, detentions, and pushbacks. As we demand an end to the occupation of Palestine, we reject racism and stand on the side of those displaced, migrants and refugees, survivors of extreme state violence. It is them who will have to face further violence of border regimes, bureaucracy, and institutional racism.
War increases and legitimizes male violence and the patriarchal system, but at the same time, conceals it, because it calls on everyone to take sides, to erase differences, to forget about the oppressor who sits in parliament, who exploits and harasses us at work, or who lives in our homes. We learn from our Iranian and Kurdish sisters who acknowledge the Islamic regime funds Hamas and choose instead not to defend any fundamentalism – to pick an alternative between bad and worse – while still fighting for the life and freedom of all Palestinians.
As feminists and anti-racists, we want to fight alongside Palestinian, Iranian, Afghan, Kurdish and all women and men shouting “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi”: because we want life and freedom for everyone. For us, fighting for the end of this terrible occupation means fighting for peace that puts an end to the subordination of women, patriarchal oppression, domestic violence, colonisation and racism.
On 25 November, we want to take to the streets all over the world against all wars and the patriarchal and racist violence they produce, encourage, and legitimize. Together with all those from different countries, positions, and ethnic and religious backgrounds, we take a stand against genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, because, as the Iranian and Kurdish women make clear, there is no liberation that only knows how to say “I” and there is no freedom unless it is for all of us.
