A Feminist Practice of Bearing Witness to Genocide
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4413359 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Loubna Qutami (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 531-533 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Feminist Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0046-3663 • E-ISSN: 2153-3873 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/fem.2023.a915923 |
| OpenAlex | W4390017125, W4390283590 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
A Feminist Practice of Bearing Witness to Genocide Loubna Qutami (bio) what does it mean to bear witness to the staggering loss of life and unimaginable carnage unfolding in the besieged Gaza Strip? And how might the act of bearing witness lend itself to a practice of transnational feminist solidarity? Since October 7th, the Israeli state has waged a genocidal war on Palestinian life in the besieged Gaza Strip—proudly boasting that within the first six days alone, it had dropped 6000 bombs on Gaza.1 As of November 24, over 40,000 tons of explosives2 had rained from the skies onto Gaza—surpassing in force, damage, and lasting impacts to the strength of two nuclear bombs.3 The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports that 20,031 Palestinians have been martyred—at least 18,460 of whom are civilians, including 4,112 women and 8,176 children.4 More children were killed in Gaza within the first three weeks of bombardment than in all other armed conflicts combined since 2019.5 The highest age group of those killed have been five-year-olds. Thousands more—unaccounted for in these numbers—are expected to have already perished due to widespread starvation and dehydration or remain entombed under the rubble of destroyed buildings unaccounted for in the final death tally. [End Page 531] Herein lies the painful reckoning: that the death toll in the Gaza Strip surpasses the number of the approximate 15,000 Palestinians killed during the Nakba campaign of 1947–1949. The 1.7 million people who have been displaced in this genocide surpasses the 750,000 Palestinians forcibly expelled during the 1948 Nakba, when Zionists vehemently worked to usurp and clear the land to establish the basis of its settler-colonial enterprise.6 Even if the bombing stops today, the catastrophic environmental and health ramifications of this war on Gaza will still yield hundreds of thousands of premature Palestinian deaths and a structure of harm that will live on for generations. Like the 1948 Nakba, this genocide holds the power to shift the course of history. Bearing witness to it gives us the power to determine how it is remembered. To bear witness to genocide is to record what is rendered unspeakable. The Israeli imposed telecommunications and media blackouts in the Gaza Strip have been matched by a relentless propaganda campaign promoted by Western journalists, governments, and our very own educational institutions that have worked vehemently to erase the truth and obscure the relations of colonial domination between the Israeli state and its Palestinian subjects. So that in the end, in the act of witnessing the bodies of Palestinians explode to pieces, or the images of fetuses and babies pulled from under the rubble, or of the wounded forced to flee south in the thousands, or hundreds of thousands of buildings destroyed, or in knowing that over fifty entire families have been completely wiped from the Gaza Civil registry, we are asked to grieve, and mourn, and remember the perpetrators: our colonizers. A feminist practice of bearing witness means understanding that violence and power work as deeply on the mind and soul as they do on the body and land. And to shield the mind and soul—to protect it from this violence—requires a militant and tenacious dedication to affirming truth. Bearing witness means we open our eyes despite the pain it causes. It is to see and hear those whose lives and homes are on the line, and to refuse to allow all those who mutilate the truth to bludgeon us into silence, intimidate us into complicity, beat the humanity out of us, or to normalize the notion that Palestinian life is disposable or justified. [End Page 532] To bear witness is to speak truth to power and to hold onto truth—defiantly—just as Palestinians are holding their ground in the Gaza Strip as the earth vanishes beneath them. History suggests that this is the difference between bearing witness to a genocide and cannibalizing its victims. A feminist practice of bearing witness means we defiantly record, remember, survive, and resist. [End Page 533] Loubna Qutami loubna qutami is an assistant professor in the Department
Ancient history · Armenian · Bearing (navigation) · Criminology · Gaza strip · Genocide · Palestine · Political science · Sociology · Solidarity · Witness · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East Politics and Society
| Citations per year | 1.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |