Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging

16. Arabiya Made Invisible: Between Marginalization of Agency and Silencing of Dissent

174 16 Arabiya Made Invisible Between Marginalization of Agency and Silencing of Dissent Noura Erakat This piece describes the process of exercising one’s agency as a Palestinian law student– activist while confronting narrow stereotypes concerning Arab and Muslim women’s identity, on the one hand, and being dismissed as a radical anti-Zionist, on the other. “I thought you were Latina.” “Why?” “Because you’re loud and outspoken. Girl, you’ve got attitude.” “Lucy, you just described most Arab women.” “I always thought Arab women were demure and submissive. Besides, your hair is wild.” “No one’s as loud as my mama, and she wears hijab. Wait, and besides, not all Arabs are Muslims, Lucy.” . . . Lucy is an African American woman. She was a fellow student at Berkeley Law School at the University of California. Her remarks characterizing Arab women as a subjugated community within the Arab world are certainly not exceptional. Were they exceptional, perhaps the Bush administration could not have used the liberation of western Asian women as a justification for war against Afghanistan and Iraq so flippantly. Perhaps large U.S.-based feminist organizations would have challenged the simplistic notion that veiling oneself is a form of oppression rather than endorsing such notions in their support for war.1 Instead, the sweeping characterization of Arab women as an oppressed population is as widely accepted as it is commonly made. While major feminist groups and U.S. political pundits justify war against sovereign nations in the name of women’s liberation, the women whom they Arabiya Made Invisible | 175 purportedly seek to liberate are made invisible to mainstream North American audiences. Such invisibility contributes to the consistent assumption that I am Latina. And whereas I do not take issue with “looking Latina,” as an Arab woman, or Arabiya, I do take issue with “being Latina.” My characterization as non-Arab because of my “wild hair” and outspoken nature reinforces stereotypical images of Arab women as Muslim and the image that all Muslim women are veiled and oppressed. The marginalization of Arab women as passive agents incapable of their own liberation is exacerbated by the counternotion that those Arab women who support Palestinian self-determination are anti-Semitic and therefore incredulous. The equation of anti-Semitism to anti-Zionism is systematically used as a silencing tactic. Anti-Semitism refers to the historic oppression and vilification of Jews that led to such tragedies as the Nazi-engineered Holocaust. Zionism is the theoretical notion that global Jewry should have a homeland, and in its practical application, Zionism has meant the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Israel’s establishment necessitated an ethnic-cleansing project that destroyed 450 Palestinian villages and displaced 750,000 indigenous Palestinians. Moreover, Zionism demands that a Jewish majority be maintained in historic Palestine. However, naturally in the region, the Palestinian population within Israel will outnumber the Jewish population.2 Therefore, in order to maintain its demographic balance, Israel’s Jewish majority must be engineered. Within Israel today, there are 4.6 million Jewish citizens, 1.3 million Palestinian Christian and Muslim citizens of Israel, and 0.5 million citizens who are neither Jewish nor Palestinian . Israel explicitly privileges its Jewish citizens over its non-Jewish citizens by implementing de jure and de facto policies. Consider that within the Israeli legal system, there are twenty discriminatory laws, seventeen of which are discriminatory on their face in that they relate only to the rights of Jews in Israel or alternatively abridge the rights of Palestinian Israelis. Moreover, it maintains that Palestinians should be transferred to neighboring Arab nations.3 To drive out Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and to control the water and land resources in the territories, Israel also maintains a belligerent military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Anti-Zionism therefore refers to the opposition of the establishment of a Jewish state that seeks to maintain a Jewish majority, even if contrived, and privileges its Jewish citizens, at the expense of pluralist and egalitarian principles, in historic Palestine. By equating anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, pro-Israeli advocates silence dissent in places of public discourse, including on university campuses. In the first instance, my identity as a strong Arab woman is marginalized as an agent of my own liberation, and in the second, I am silenced as a pro-Palestinian 176 | Activist Communities political activist. This...