The Genocide in Gaza and the Dual Moral Framework of Feminist Solidarity

This paper interrogates the convergence of feminism, nationalism, and imperialism within the context of the genocide of Palestinians, a historical context that cannot be overlooked. More specifically, I wish to examine the convergence of Zionism and feminism within the context of mainstream feminism in the US and Iranian diaspora through a close reading of the media campaigns and websites of two major mainstream feminist organizations in the US: Feminist Majority and National Organization of women and several websites and TV stations of Iranian diasporic communities in the US and Europe. I argue that while the spectacle of the “liberated” woman versus “oppressed Muslim women” is as old as colonialism, since the genocide, it has taken new forms by staging a global dual moral framework. This form of feminism might be invested in neoliberal values, including individual freedoms, yet function as a form of imperialism. While a transnational feminist approach has criticized every other form of nationalism, the question of Palestine, its history of colonization, and the entanglement of feminism and Zionism remains to be explored further from a transnational perspective since the genocide in Gaza.