Contact: feminists.justice.palestine@gmail.com

As the Israel settler colonial genocidal onslaught against Gaza and the rest of Palestine continues, we reaffirm our unwavering solidarity with, and radical anticolonial support for, the Palestinian people and their ongoing resistance. We denounce the US and other Western imperialist states, and the corporate media that have shamelessly provided the cover, rationalization and unconditional support for the Israeli state terror and emboldened its deliberate and systematic war to erase Palestine.

Twenty days of unrelenting bombardment, mass arrests, massacres, starvation, deprivation of medicine, fuel, clean drinking water, and shortage of hospital supplies have left Palestinians with 7,028 killed, 18,482 injured, and more than 140 families massacred according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

In view of this horrific genocide and the refusal of NWSA leadership to rise to the occasion, Feminists for Justice in and for Palestine (F4JP) is withdrawing from and will not participate in the 2023 NWSA conference. This means that we will NOT sponsor nor be associated with any plenary, teach-in or any other on- or off-site activity at the 2023 conference in Baltimore, MD. We are horrified that NWSA leadership is seeking to gender- and sexual-wash its failure to be accountable and transparent about their egregious violations of the BDS resolution that expresses unwavering solidarity with Palestine and commitment to the call of Palestinian civil society for imposing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the state of Israel. For background and historical context, please read our previous statement here.

Our reason for withdrawing from the conference is primarily due to the decision by NWSA president Dr. Karsonya "Kaye" Wise Whitehead to travel to settler Israel on a Christian Zionist normalization trip in 2022. Dr. Whitehead’s trip crossed the academic picket line and clearly violated the 2015 NWSA resolution committing to solidarity with the Palestinian people and the movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). Since that violation, the NWSA has insisted upon and even surpassed the cover up of its President’s violations, despite F4JP’s persistent internal efforts to remedy these violations via a public call for accountability. Such feminist accountability would include an honest, public account of why Dr. Whitehead broke the academic picket line; this has yet to happen. Also disturbing are other statements issued by Dr. Whitehead, including a July 13, 2023 statement falsely conflating opposition to Zionism and Palestinians’ freedom struggle with the racist ideology and practice of antisemitism. It stated, “Our mission then and now is to further the development of women's studies throughout the world through open dialogue and communication. We promote freedom from sexism, racism, homophobia, antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and from all suppressive ideologies and institutions.” It seemed that NWSA leadership was endorsing the IHRA definition of antisemitism, thus legitimizing the smearing and criminalization of the Palestinian struggle against the colonial ideology of Zionism as a form of hatred, racism and racial discrimination, a smearing that is contradictory to the very spirit and praxis of the Palestinian anti-colonial movement, including feminist and queer Palestinian activists.

We have been forced to issue this second statement on the NWSA leadership’s betrayal of Palestine solidarity in view of its October 11, 2023 statement. We are extremely troubled that even in its most recent statement, NWSA has failed to reflect on or respond to the gravity and urgency of the genocide in Gaza. Once again, NWSA’s ongoing neoliberal erosion of the politics and praxis of feminist solidarity with and in Palestine is being performed before our eyes. The October 11th statement amply illustrates why we have repeatedly objected to and taken issue with the Association’s failures of solidarity.

Feminists for Justice In/For Palestine (F4JP) originally formed as a mobilizing space for the NWSA 2015 historic statement on Palestine, and as an interest group following the 2015 annual meeting. In lieu of offering programming at the NWSA this year, we will hold an Open Classroom teach-in series starting with an emergency teach-in on the genocide in Gaza in collaboration with Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice, AMED Studies Open Classroom Series and other programs and department. We will host Palestinian feminists from different geographies of Palestinian dispossession, colonized contexts, and siege, to make up for NWSA’s lack of accountability. As Feminists for Justice in and for Palestine, we will cover the cost of translation to ensure that Palestinian feminists and queer activists who are at the center of our study, pedagogy, and discussions, are not hindered by the hegemony of English, a colonial neoliberal medium that is inherently exclusionary. We have always sought to expand the teaching and curriculum of Palestine and anti-Zionist studies to all academic curricula and community education and we were expecting NWSA to implement such a vision with us, not against us. We invite all feminists committed to justice in/for Palestine to participate in this teach-in series that will start on Wednesday, November 15th, ask your department, program or community organization to co-sponsor it, and bring along students and community members.

We also invite you to sign on to our statement committing to never cross the BDS academic picket line but to reaffirm your commitment to the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) goals and international movement, according to our 2015 resolution. Our statement goes over/explains why we refused to allow the hostile take over, tokenization and neoliberalization of Palestine solidarity, the Palestinian struggle, feminist solidarity by NWSA or any other party. As best described by the Mohawk feminist scholar, Audra Simpson, the notion of "refusal" means the refusal of the terms and conditions set by repressive structures, including those set forth by the enablers of settler colonialism, in this case, the enablers of Israeli settler colonialism. This refusal should not be confused with "disengagement."

As Audre Lorde stated in her 1981 keynote presentation at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference, "I cannot hide my anger to spare you [or NWSA] guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action... For guilt is only yet another form of objectification. Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity." (The Uses of Anger 1981)

The movements we are part of, BDS, the academic boycott (which is growing rapidly now), and Palestine solidarity much more broadly–as well as feminism writ large–all imply crucial ethical frameworks for our actions. We must center decolonial feminist praxis, and remain committed to the values of our movements – including honesty, accountability and repair for harm – without which decolonization, feminism and justice are stripped of all meaning. Our commitment to Palestine and transnational feminist solidarity remains unwavering. We ask the NWSA to respond to our anger with accountability. We ask that everyone responds to this urgent moment in Palestine with the unconditional solidarity and decolonial feminist praxis that it demands.