‘I am always anti-zionist. And never an antisemite. And always an anti-racist feminist against misogynist wars.’ – Zillah Eisenstein
At a time when the second year of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has ended, the FiLiA conference in Brighton highlighted deep schisms within a feminist movement committed to end violence against women and girls.
Southall Black Sisters (SBS) has unequivocally condemned the actions of both Hamas and the Israeli state. Yet when SBS’s Chair called on women at the FiLiA conference to stand against the genocide in Gaza, she was heckled and accused of anti-semitism. Very few women, mainly minoritised women, stood with her in solidarity with the Palestinian people. While she was being trolled on social media by women who were at the conference, FiLiA trustees asked our Chair to make a public statement distancing FiLiA from her call for solidarity with Palestine. It was a shocking denial of responsibility and a refusal to confront those responsible for the harm on the part of FiLiA.
SBS is a Black feminist, anti-racist organisation with a long history of confronting violence, racism and institutional betrayal. Only recently, our Executive Director was violently assaulted in a racist attack and then wrongly prosecuted, which should have made safeguarding for our members an absolute priority at FiLiA. Instead, SBS members and other Black feminists were left exposed to hostility and intimidation throughout the conference and at the Saturday night party. We had warned FiLiA in advance about the risks posed by the presence of women who had promised to disrupt the conference but the safeguarding measures proved inadequate. We came with victims-survivors of violence, migrant women and refugees who live with trauma and who believed they were entering a feminist space committed to safety, dignity and solidarity. Instead they witnessed harassment, racist comments and open intimidation from other attendees. It is in this environment that women felt empowered to attack SBS members on right-wing media platforms like GB News and UnHerd as anti-semites and Hamas apologists.
We therefore reassert without apology: solidarity with the Palestinian people is a feminist issue. It is incumbent on all of us to oppose genocide and apartheid, and to stand up for self-determination. Since October 2023, Israel has destroyed more than 80% of Gaza’s infrastructure – including water and energy supplies, hospitals and medical supplies, universities and schools – and over 70% of the homes and belongings of Gazan people. United Nations’ data confirms that more than 65,000 people have been killed – over 75% of those are women and children with some estimates putting the figure as high as 680,000 dead. Of these, 2600 people (mostly children) have been killed while seeking food at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites.
This atrocity has sparked the largest protests in UK history, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets – including Jewish blocs and Jewish feminist groups who refuse to hide behind their Jewish identity to remain silent in the face of genocide.
What we are witnessing today is not an aberration – it is the continuation of the Zionist settler-colonial project that began before the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the Nakba. As part of the Israeli government’s continuing policy to complete the displacement and prevent Palestinians from successfully establishing a homeland, they have promoted, encouraged and financed Hamas in order to sow division among the Palestinians, approving Qatari funding of Hamas to the tune of $30 million per month. When Hamas could no longer be contained by Israel as demonstrated by the 7th October breakout, the Israeli government has switched its support to criminal gangs to undermine Hamas.
Our grief and condemnation of Hamas atrocities against the Israeli people, including sexual violence against our Jewish sisters, on 7th October was framed by knowledge of the complicity of the Israeli state in the creation of Hamas and then rapidly overtaken by the disproportionate brutality of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians.
Southall Black Sisters has worked with FiLiA for many years, and has valued the platform it has provided for issues of racism, migration and religious fundamentalism, which is why the marginalisation of Palestine which was built into the structure of the event proved to be so shocking. Speakers were explicitly advised not to mention Palestine. The only session addressing the killing of Palestinian women was literally pushed into the corridors of the conference venue. The organisers of the session ‘Palestine liberation is a feminist issue’ were forced to hire a completely separate venue while a meeting of Zionist women was allowed to be held within the centre where women who respectfully expressed a contrary opinion were dragged out by security to the sound of aggressive and hate-filled cries of ‘Get her out’. Palestinian supporters at the conference faced multiple forms of racism: keffiyehs and the Palestinian flag (described as ‘divisive’ and ‘provocative’) were snatched from women who were branded rape deniers or Hamas supporters, subjected to verbal abuse and even physical assault.
Intersectional feminism demands that we confront multiple structures of power – racism, colonialism, religious supremacy and patriarchy. A feminism that refuses to name these forces, or only challenges them when politically convenient, is not intersectional; it is complicit. FiLiA’s statement reveals a refusal to confront racism and colonial violence framing it as a question of “different perspectives,” “divisions” and “hurt feelings.” Challenging male supremacy while ignoring Zionist violence, apartheid, and colonial domination is not feminism.
We call on FiLiA to:
We need feminist spaces that do not ask us to abandon our politics at the door. Until that is a reality, we will continue to speak out. Not for permission, but for liberation.
