The silence of Western feminists on the slaughter of Palestinian women and girls in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military is deafening. According to a 2025 United Nations report, it is estimated that over 28,000 women and girls have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces since 7th October 2023. This equates to approximately one woman or girl killed every hour. This figure is derived using both direct reporting and a methodology from The Lancet that estimates underreported deaths – about 41% undercounting.
Over the years, many Western feminists have made it their business to speak out on women’s rights in the Middle East, e.g., the Yazidi crisis, education for Afghan girls, Iranian women’s hair related protests, etc. But there is one obvious caveat when it comes to the Middle East, the exclusion of Palestinian women. Women and girls in Gaza and the West Bank are being subjected to the most inhumane, cruel and undignified circumstances that exceed that of the Nakba of 1948. Since October 7th 2023, it has been reported that many Palestinian women have been denied proper gynecological medication and care – some are forced to give birth without treatment whilst others undergo cesarean sections without anesthesia due to Israel’s crippling blockade. Many have given birth at militarised (apartheid) checkpoints – refused entry into hospitals without justification by young reservists with the authority to decide if Palestinian mothers and their infants get to live or die. Where is the outrage from Western feminists? Those who were so passionate to declare the burka and hijab (female Muslim religious attire) as oppressive – those vocal about the cultural issue of honour killings in parts of Africa and the Middle East. The latter of course is a very serious problem that need addressing, but the message from Western feminists is clear: the “threat” of Muslim, African and Arab men only is to be taken seriously, while the crimes of Israeli and Western men against Palestinian women and girls are ignored. I remember reading several articles about the awful Taliban restricting education for girls and women in Afghanistan. Well, in Gaza, if you’re a girl you can’t go to school for a number of reasons: 1. there are no schools left in Gaza, 2. it is impossible to learn when you’re being starved to death, and 3. you’re dead. Courtesy of the IDF.
In my opinion, the inconvenience of the Palestinian woman renders the feminist movement today ineffective bordering on useless – selective outrage will undermine any organisation. Feminism, in the case of the Palestinian woman, does not do what it was designed to do, i.e., protect and dignify all women, regardless of colour, creed, religion, etc. One thing should be clear from the 100s of articles since October 2023 – those that deliberately omit the disaster Gazan women are facing – that in the eyes of Western feminists, some women are more equal than others. Since October 7th, we have heard many painful stories about the suffering of Israeli women at the hands of Hamas, but we have yet to see Western media outlets humanise Palestinian women. We are often presented with dialogues and discussions framed in an “equal sides-ism” context but the reality is this – an engineered perspective by Western outlets, one inclined towards a whitewashed Israeli narrative and not the painful truth, that women and girls in Gaza are fair game. Moreover, some white liberal feminists still unconsciously operate within a racist or Islamophobic framework, and their message often reinforces systemic prejudices about European, secular, or Israeli lives having more value than Arab, African, Palestinian or Muslim lives.
So while Western feminists loudly condemn the Taliban or Iran’s morality police, they often avoid addressing Israel’s bombing of homes, schools, and hospitals – maternity and pediatric spaces have not been spared. Also, the deaths of pregnant women, the deaths of many infants in Gaza as a consequence of Israel’s barbaric blockade and engineered famine, and the use of sexual violence by soldiers or settlers in Gaza and the West Bank. The silence of Western feminists is not neutral, it actively protects Israeli political and military structures that cause harm and death to Palestinian women. True feminism is not selective. It cannot champion the rights of Iranian women fighting for bodily autonomy while ignoring Palestinian women dying under Israeli occupation. If feminism is to be meaningful again, it must be anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and grounded in solidarity.