How did Brighton Women’s Centre Celebrate International Women’s Day?

By Banning Parents for Palestine after Zionist objections. Presumably the Death of 25,000 women & children in Gaza isn’t enough

Genocide in Gaza through the eyes of Israeli soldiers

On 5 November 2023 Anita Patel wrote a guest blog Women’s Place UK : Whitewashing Zionism. Anita wrote, in reference to their statement of 28^th October “Israel & Palestine – Peace, Equality, Freedom, Justice”, that it was:

an evasive and impossible fudge, between advocates of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide on the one hand, and a people who are fighting for their survival on the other.  The statement frames the attack on Gaza as a conflict between two equivalent hostile parties, failing to distinguish the oppressor and the oppressed, and making the same demands of both those parties, on the grounds that all the women involved share the same experience of war.  It is as though Israeli women were not part of the oppressor and Palestinian women were not part of the oppressed people.

Brighton Women's Centre

BWC has provided a good example of how this statement has been interpreted by radical and liberal/bourgeois feminists when they banned Parents for Palestine from having a stall at their celebrations in Brighton Dome.

I understand that it was Zionist Lobby group, UK Lawyers for Israel, which in December 2019, brought the far-right settler NGO Regavim to Britain, that objected. As Israel’s +972 Magazine wrote ‘Why are British Jews opening their doors to far-right settler groups?’

Daniel Berke - LFI and Tommy Robinson's solicitor

UKLFI  is a far-right Zionist organisation. Listed among its Directors is Daniel Berke, lawyer for Tommy Robinson. As the film below makes clear he is politically close to Robinson. Berke was also the solicitor for Jonathan Hoffman, the link person between British fascists and far-right Zionists.

Regavim was founded in 2006 by Bezalel Smotrich, the then leader of the far-right National Union party. Smotrich calls himself a “proud homophobe” and is an open fascist. Today Smotrich is Israel’s Finance Minister and the Gauleiter of the West Bank.

In February this Judeo-Nazi called for the ‘wiping out’ of the Palestinian  town of Huwara where the settlers had staged a pogrom.

Others involved in alleging ‘anti-Semitism’ and support for Hamas were Sussex Friends of Israel and its alter-ego the Sussex Representative Council.

I have written before on the theme of Zionist Feminism in articles such as

Ahed Tamimi Exposes the Refusal of Western Feminism to Come to Terms with Zionism and Imperialism and

How Identity Politics Turned the Victims of Sabra & Chatilla into the Antisemitic Oppressors of Zionist Feminists - A Reply to Erica Burman

BWC not only refused to talk to P4P about the allegations, they refused to disclose who had made the allegations or what they were. Instead they just went ahead and cancelled P4P’s stall.

This is the kind of ‘justice’ that Palestinians receive in the West Bank where you can be detained without trial (Administrative Detention) without knowing who has made the allegations or what those allegations are. So well done BWC. You are certainly good Zionists.

What BWC did was to cave in to the supporters of genocide in Gaza taking their side. BWC has always been a nest of right-wing radical and Zionist feminism and so it’s no surprise that they were happy to cover for the supporters of Israel.

When I was Secretary of the local Anti-Nazi League 40 years ago I wrote to them suggesting that we work together in combating the National Front which was active in Brighton at that time. Their response was that since fascists and anti-fascists were men they were going to abstain!

In practice BWC has been abstaining from the fight against racism and fascism ever since. Now they have taken it a step further and openly declared their sympathies with those who are perpetrating genocide in Gaza.

🚨Harrowing scenes document the moment Israeli soldiers execute elderly civilian inside a home west of #Gaza City. pic.twitter.com/jZCv0v1nN8

— Nour Naim| نُور (@NourNaim88) March 8, 2024

Little Boy Describing the Execution of his Parents

According to the UN’s Office of  Human Rights

Palestinian women and girls have reportedly been arbitrarily executed in Gaza, often together with family members, including their children, according to information received. “We are shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge, or while fleeing. Some of them were reportedly holding white pieces of cloth when they were killed by the Israeli army or affiliated forces,” the experts said.

The experts expressed serious concern about the arbitrary detention of hundreds of Palestinian women and girls, including human rights defenders, journalists and humanitarian workers, in Gaza and the West Bank since 7 October. Many have reportedly been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, denied menstruation pads, food and medicine, and severely beaten. On at least one occasion, Palestinian women detained in Gaza were allegedly kept in a cage in the rain and cold, without food.

The Guardian reported on 22 February that there was evidence of at least two cases of rape of Palestinian women captives, alongside other cases of sexual humiliation and threats of rape. Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said the true extent of sexual violence could be significantly higher.

In 2020 Save the Children reported that:

Palestinian children in the Israel military detention system face physical and emotional abuse, with four out of five (86%) of them being beaten, and 69% strip-searched, according to new research by Save the Children. Nearly half (42%) are injured at the point of arrest, including gunshot wounds and broken bones. Some report violence of a sexual nature and some are transferred to court or between detention centres in small cages, the child rights organisation said. 

Palestinian women and children are also being starved to death by Israel.  Reports of sexual abuse and violence against women by Israeli soldiers are rife, which is not surprising since the Chief Military Rabbi of Israel, Eyal Karim has ruled that rape is permitted in war.

The haunted face of a 10 year old who died of starvation

In answer to a question on the religious website Kipa when asked if soldiers were permitted to rape women during war. Karim replied that, as part of maintaining fitness for the army and the soldiers' morale during fighting, it is permitted to

"breach" the walls of modesty and "satisfy the evil inclination by lying with attractive Gentile women against their will, out of consideration for the difficulties faced by the soldiers and for overall success."

It is no surprise that the sisters of BWC have, given the choice, chosen to side with those who have forced Palestinian women to have caesarean sections without anaesthetic, who are deprived of basics hygiene such as sanitary towels, wipes and above all, of food. To these racist harridans, Palestinian women are lesser human beings compared to their White counterparts.

The fact that BWC lied when it said in a statement that it had offered to speak to P4P when it hadn’t and then accepted the allegations from the Zionists at face value demonstrates beyond doubt where their sympathies lie.

The Zionist Apologists for Rape & Violence Against Women

Radical feminism has always given cover to imperialism, be it in Ireland or Palestine so we shouldn’t be surprised. The darlings of American feminists – Betty Friedan, Letty Pogrebin and Andrea Dworkin – were all Zionists. American feminism has until recently, and under the pressure of Black Lives Matter and third world women, been a bastion of support for imperialist ventures.  For example Susan Nossel. former head of Amnesty USA justified the Afghan war with feminist arguments.

Feminism as a western movement has, by its very nature, viewed society as primarily divided into men and women. Race and class has been largely absent from Western feminist narratives and it is no accident that the racist trollops of Brighton Women Centre have come to dominate the women’s movement and feminism.

Western feminists such as Betty Friedan fought hard against Palestinian demands for liberation and in practice what was called second wave  feminism ended up in the right-wing feminism of the ‘Blair babes’ who voted overwhelmingly in Parliament for the Iraq War in 2003.

The election of 100 Labour Women MPs in 1997 resulted in a situation where 25% of women MPs (mostly old-style socialists like Alice Mahon) voted against the war compared to 40% of male MPs. So much for the sexist idea that women are more peaceful.

In more recent years it has been female Zionist  MPs such as Margaret Hodge, Louise Ellman, Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth who led the ‘anti-Semitism’ fight against Jeremy Corbyn and the left in the Labour Party.

The Zionist counter-picket

This is why on Saturday March 9 we held a silent picket of the IWT celebrations at the Dome. Opposite us were a group of Zionist women chanting ‘Rape is not Resistance’.  Their message was that the break-out from Gaza on October 7 had been an orgy of rape.

Dabke at Womens Day Celebrations

Allegations of systematic rape have been the main narrative of the Israeli state in order to demonise Hamas and justify its genocide in Gaza. BWC has gone along with this false narrative. It has been comprehensively debunked.

Palestine Solidarity Lobby

However allegations of rape have always been the stock-in-trade of racists and imperialists against indigenous people from Southern Africa ‘the black peril’ to the lynch mobs of the Deep South. Indeed allegations of rape and sexual assault were common to Nazi propaganda against German Jews. So it’s no surprise that Brighton Womens Centre has adopted this narrative.

URGENT!
Further to the disgraceful decision by @BTNWomensCentre & @brightdome to cancel a stall celebrating Palestinian women for #InternationalWomensDay, Parents 4 Palestine are calling for local people to join them in solidarity to protest.
From 10am outside #Brighton Dome. pic.twitter.com/QXIdDO4FrJ

— Brighton PSC (@BrightonPSC) March 9, 2024

On Saturday March 8^th Palestine solidarity activists and other anti-racists therefore held a silent demonstration outside the Dome. Opposite us was a small band of Zionists chanting ‘rape is not resistance’ thereby playing into this deeply racist trope.

Ironically when a woman went up to them to say that she was a victim of rape and she found their demonstration upsetting and disturbing a male Zionist told her that she should be raped again.   It was reported to the Police but the man in question was protected by the Zionist women thus demonstrating that their concern was not rape but support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The  2 men suspected of telling a woman she should be raped again

People may wish to consider whether a demonstration should be held outside BWC to highlight their complicity in support for genocide but in the meantime you might wish to contact these racists feminists at admin@womenscentre.org.uk.

There was an interesting discussion on Mumsnet in the Feminism thread on BWC’s cancellation of P4P’s stall.

Brighton Women’s Centre cancelled a stall celebrating Palestinian women for #IWD

Fortitudinal · 09/03/2024 12:06

What the fuck? Brighton Women’s Centre and the Dome cancelled this stall at the last minute. How can they possibly justify this? It’s heartbreaking.

Brighton Women’s Centre is a captured male-including organisation now anyway. A long way from its fantastic beginnings as a truly feminist space.

Cynical, corporate-controlled bullshit.

TodayIsNotMyDay · 09/03/2024 14:38

White / Imperial feminism strikes again.

The ”we stand for ALL women” has always been bullshit, but it has been a true mask off during this genocide.

WhereAreWeNow · 09/03/2024 17:41

What reason did they give? That seems really weird.

fakeprofile · 09/03/2024 17:42

What is going on in Brighton?? The blatant misogyny on display in recent years has been shocking

Fortitudinal · 09/03/2024 18:26

I know. I don’t know if they gave any reasoning at all. I suppose in a cowardly bid to avoid anything ‘controversial’ with regards to Israel/Gaza?

It’s fucked up.

TodayIsNotMyDay · Yesterday 12:59

It’s fucked up.

It truly is.

How can someone keep a straight face and claim to support women if they don’t support all women?

The women and girls are going through the worst anyone possibly could*.

I think this IWD has turned into Valentine’s Day #2, it’s mostly just another day to buy stuff and some chant about being strong woman, without any actual substance.

 (*I do not mean to make this into a competition who has it worst)

ssd · Yesterday 13:09

That is really not on.

And that is right. What Brighton Women’s Centre has done is really not on.

Tony Greenstein