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Article Excerpt
Abstract: With images of conflict in Israel and Palestine, it is important to recognize women's continuing efforts for peace, of groups such as Israeli Women in Black and the coalition of groups standing in solidarity with them. Feminist standpoint theory together with critical rhetorical analysis offers an approach for mapping epistemology that acknowledges the role of' language in the development of experiences. At the same time, this combination avoids the tendency to essentialize the experiences of women and the concepts of ethnicity and religion, which helps answer the question: Is Women in Black a model for global feminist peace action?
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"Two Peoples; Two States" is a slogan that mostpeople will recognize. It refers to the desire for peaceful coexistence between two independent states: Israel and Palestine. As we watch news reports in 2003 of suicide bombings in cafes and supermarkets and military incursions into refugee camps, as we listen to calls for political reform and re-engagement in the political peace negotiations process, we wonder if a solution is possible. Many people agree that a two-state solution is the only long-term option. The difficulty, now as it was years ago, is how to engage in meaningful negotiations given all the continuing violence and mistrust.
It was not that long ago, however, that a two-state solution was not a common view. A defining moment came in December 1987 when the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising, began. Sharoni (1993) contends that the intifada "represented a crucial juncture in the political involvement of women in Israel. Exclusively female (and largely feminist) peace groups burst on the scene, initiating activities that had two major goals: to mobilize public opinion in Israel and abroad against the occupation, and to build bridges of solidarity with Palestinian women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip" (p. 22). A number of different groups emerged, with different agendas and tactics. Women in Black became the largest and most well known of the peace groups in Israel and internationally. Within a few weeks of the beginning of the intifada in 1987, Israeli Jewish women began holding vigils protesting Israeli occupation policies in the Palestinian territories (Shadmi, 2000). They dressed in black and stood silently holding signs, which read, in Hebrew and English, such things as "End the Occupation." At many of the vigils they passed out flyers, which concluded with "We call on all women to join us in our staunch, persistent and non-violent protest" (cited in Helman & Rapoport, 1997, p. 686). U.S. Jewish women, in particular, heard the call for all women to join in protest.
In April 1988, the Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (JWCEO) formed. They began to hold protest vigils on Friday afternoons in front of the offices of the Presidents of major Jewish Organizations at 515 Park Avenue. (1)
In an era of economic, financial, technological, and media globalization, marked by international conferences on women (most recently in Beijing in 1995), we need to consider carefully what activism means in a time of globalized feminism (Weinbaum in Joseph, Ramamurthy & Weinbaum, 2000). Is Women in Black a model for global feminist action? What barriers and pitfalls to global feminist action does this case study illuminate? We might be prompted to answer "yes" to the first question when we 'recognize the proliferation of women's peace groups modeled after Israeli Women in Black, that have emerged throughout the United States (from Women in Black in San Francisco to the Hannah Arendt Lesbian Peace Patrol in Minneapolis to Women in Black in Burlington, Vermont to the JWCEO in New York) and throughout the world (including England, Italy, Yugoslavia, and the Netherlands). (2) Yet, we need to examine not only the similarities but also the differences in international efforts, as Scott (1992) explains:
Making visible the experience of a different group exposes the existence of repressive mechanisms, but not their inner workings or logics; we know that difference exists, but we don't understand it as constituted relationally. For that we need to attend to the historical processes that, through discourse, position subjects and produce their experiences. It is not individuals who have experience, but subjects who are constituted through experience. (pp. 25-26)
When groups seek others to join "their staunch, persistent and non-violent protests," multiple interpretations of these efforts can become problematic. We see their experiences as both different from and similar to ours, and risk seeing that which is visible as all there is.
A focus on discourse (3) is critical for mapping out the underlying strategies through which women engaged in global feminist action constitute themselves and others. In this essay, I argue that feminist standpoint theory together with critical rhetorical analysis offers an approach for mapping epistemology in a manner that acknowledges the role of language in the development of experiences. At the same time, this combination avoids the tendency to essentialize the experiences of women and the concepts of ethnicity and religion. The coalition of women's peace networks (4) standing in solidarity with Israeli Women in Black provides...
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