purplewashing palestine
Purplewashing is the process in which the state appeals to women’s rights to propagate harmful agendas. isra-l employs purplewashing to craft a state-controlled narrative of gender equality for the international community and the U.S. such as women’s inclusion in the military, but their settler colonial practices towards Palestinian women do not reflect this faux liberal jargon. There is a purposeful focus on ‘sexy’ propaganda, like the IOF sponsored IG account “Hot IDF Girls” and photo spread in Maxim magazine titled “women of the isra-li defense forces,” as part of a government sponsored push to evoke a sexier depiction of isra-l to American males age 18-38, strategically focusing on men in a country that has given it more than $150 billion in aid, most of which was military assistance. While the IOF proclaims its women soldiers are empowered, in 2020, there were 1,542 sexual assault complaints filed (mostly from women), including 26 cases of rape, 391 obscene acts, and 92 cases of distributing photos and videos, yet only 31 indictments were filed. isra-l’s gender equality agenda doesn’t truly include Palestinian women. IOF soldiers and isra-li intelligence frequently perpetrate sexual violence against Palestinian women. Many Palestinian women prisoners are subjected to sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of isra-li intelligence officers while they’re imprisoned. Policymakers have gone so far as to release public statements promoting physical and sexual gender-based violence against Palestinian women. Meanwhile, isra-l continues to tout itself as a feminist safe haven in the Middle East, claiming that settler women’s mandatory participation in the IOF -- the main perpetrator of Isra-li state violence against Palestinians — is empowering and liberating. In the context of the Middle East and North Africa, purple-washing rhetoric often plays on tropes of civilized Europeans and Americans rescuing Muslim women from their oppressive surroundings. isra-l frequently asserts that isra-li women are empowered and equal to isra-li men whereas Palestinian women are oppressed and need to be saved from Palestinian men. These tropes are rooted in racism and Orientalism -- an imperialist philosophy that upholds white supremacy by stereotyping, exoticizing, and generalizing Middle Eastern communities and which frames the region as fundamentally misogynistic. isra-l has demonstrated that they are only willing to show solidarity with women when those women are of a certain ethnic identity, thus reinforcing the ethno-supremacy complex of zionism. isra-l’s faux feminism is hypocritical and exclusionary; it is an obstruction to the liberation of Palestinian women as it attempts to wax over the fundamental way in which Palestinian women’s struggle for freedom is intrinsically tied to the abolition of Zionism.
S O U R C E S
We are grateful to the works of Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA (2022), Purple-Washing: isra-l’s Faux Feminism Through the Lens of Medical Apartheid, Fem Magazine; Jennifer Case (Mar 6), Purplewashing in Representation and Messaging; Arabizi Translations; Julie Sergel (n.d.) Redefining the isra-li defense force feminine side, Jewish Post; Anna Ahronheim (2022), Out of 1,542 IDF sexual assault complaints, just 31 indictments filed, The Jerusalem Post; Congressional Research Service (2023), US Foreign Aid to isra-l; direct excerpts of which informed the content for this blog post.
