Guest contribution by Deanna Othman
When I imagine the struggle for Palestine, it always has a female face.
No, I don’t imagine Yasser Arafat. Or Mahmoud Abbas. Or Khaled Mashaal. The symbol of the Palestinian struggle, in my eyes, is always a woman.
Maybe she doesn’t have a famous name. Or a recognizable face. She hasn’t sat at a negotiating table and certainly hasn’t shaken hands with any dignitaries. But her efforts will be the tipping point for the Palestinian struggle to cast off the shackles of occupation.
Palestinian women are by no means meek. Our grandmothers have related to us tales of hardships endured and adversity suffered that we can scarcely imagine—tales of exile, abuse, loss of loved ones and affliction, all somehow connected to the ravages of occupation. Whether they continued to live under duress, or migrated to other countries in search of a better future for their families, the scars of suffering remain etched into their existence.
It is this constant weathering of their souls, this creation of an indefatigable will to preserve and flourish, this defiance in the face of a cruel occupier, which has been passed from one generation of women to the next.
Nowhere did I witness this more clearly than in my visit to Gaza in September 2010. [Read more...]
A street vendor’s food stand reads “From Tahrir Square, Egypt, to Liberty Park, New York”. Students attending the National Students for Justice (SJP) Conference joined the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park.
Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh and Mahmood Mamdani address the audience during the SJP Conference’s opening and keynote address at Columbia Univeristy.
Mahmood Mamdani details Israel’s apartheid policies during the keynote address for the first ever National SJP Conference. 
‘Dear women of the world’: A letter about gender inequity, Palestine, and general empowerment
Guest contribution by Bayan Founas
Dear women of the world,
I write to you today as a plea for help. You see I have a friend that needs our help as fellow sisters. Her name is Palestine. An oppressor has occupied her for 64 years now. His name is Israel. Now let me tell you about the awfully familiar relationship between these two.
Palestine calls me everyday to recount the abuses she is suffering. She’s too scared to live in her own home in fear of the constant domestic violence she faces from Israel everyday. Someone told me she always wears long sleeves to cover the bruises on her arms, but we all know Israel is the perpetrator in tearing out her olive trees.
She tried explaining to me that she couldn’t simply sit and talk to him about it, so instead she tried defending herself. This hasn’t proved successful considering he’s been cheating by working out everyday at the gym, automatically making him stronger. His gym is called the United States. It has great reviews, providing the best workout guaranteed for life. Although his gym trainer knows he’s been using his muscles inhumanely, the trainer doesn’t seem to mind. The gym continued to train him even when they heard about the incident in the winter of 2008 when Israel punched Palestine so hard in the stomach she spit out over 1,400 pints of blood! You’d think any gym in its right mind would cancel its client’s membership but this one had no choice since it was being cut at the throat by Israel’s best friend, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). I asked Palestine her advice on how to cut ties between them; she said two words: Occupy AIPAC. [Read more...]