It Is Our Belief That Palestine is a Feminist Issue...

Authors

  • David Lloyd University of California Riverside

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22024/UniKent/03/fal.107

Keywords:

Palestine, feminism, reproduction, settler colonialism, biopower, boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)

Abstract

To date, apparently, no major Western women’s or feminist organization has declared its solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.  This introduction argues that the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation and for rights, justice and equality is a fundamentally feminist issue.  It is so both on the grounds of the traditions of international solidarity that have been central to feminisms that are also anti-racist and anti-imperialist and because Israel’s occupation and legalized system of discrimination targets the reproduction of Palestinian life in the fullest sense, not only as biological life but also in the larger sense of the social and cultural.  The paper concludes by arguing that the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel is a crucial intervention which, in consistency with feminist theory and practice, feminists internationally should endorse and act upon.

Author Biography

David Lloyd, University of California Riverside

David Lloyd is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, and a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.  He has published numerous articles on Palestine and Israel, including “In the Long Shadow of the Settler: On Israeli and US Colonialisms”, written with Laura Pulido, in Audrea Lim, ed, The Case for Sanctions Against Israel (London: Verso Press, 2012) and “Settler Colonialism and the State of Exception: The Example of Israel/Palestine” in The Journal of Settler Colonial Studies 2.1 (2012) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648826#.U2F5I9xBlCg.  He has also published with Malini Johar Schueller an essay on the rationale for the academic boycott of Israel in the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom http://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/journal-academic-freedom/volume-4#response.  Lloyd works primarily on Irish culture and on postcolonial and cultural theory. His most recent book is Irish Culture and Colonial Modernity: The Transformation of Oral Space (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

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Published

2014-05-02

How to Cite

Lloyd, D. (2014). It Is Our Belief That Palestine is a Feminist Issue. Feminists@law, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.22024/UniKent/03/fal.107

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2014)

Section

BDS as a Feminist Issue

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