Feminist Silences in the Face of Israel's Genocide Against the Palestinian People: A Call for Decolonial Praxis Against Complicity

Feminist scholarship has long been committed to advancing justice, challenging systemic inequalities, amplifying the voices of women and other marginalized groups, and fostering global solidarity. However, the ongoing genocide in Palestine exposes a troubling silence within the field, revealing a deeper systemic failure to confront colonial violence (see also, Aldossari 2025; Ajour 2025; Jabiri 2025).1 This silence is not merely the absence of speech; it represents an active political stance that legitimizes oppression and undermines feminism's foundational commitments to justice. It is a form of complicity that has tangible, gendered consequences, including reproductive harm and systemic dehumanization, as we elaborate here. We argue that the silence of feminist scholarship on Palestine constitutes a profound ethical and intellectual failure, and we call for an active engagement in decolonial praxis to realign feminist work with the principles of justice, solidarity, and resistance against all forms of systemic violence. This paper maintains that feminist silence on Palestine is not an isolated disregard but a reflection of broader ideological and institutional complicity within Western academia in general, and Western feminist scholarship in particular. Building on Spivak (1988), Jabiri (2024) argues that such silence functions as a form of settler-colonial epistemic violence—deliberately erasing Palestinian narratives, legitimizing colonial structures, and causing both symbolic and material harm. By failing to confront Israeli settler colonialism and the systemic violence inflicted upon Palestinians, Western feminism inadvertently sustains colonial oppression. This silence reinforces a “colonial common sense”—a framework that normalizes settler-colonial narratives and marginalizes Palestinian resistance within feminist discourse. The article further explores how this feminist silence is embedded within broader institutional complicity, particularly within Western academic institutions. Universities invest in companies tied to the Israeli military and suppress pro-Palestinian activism under the guise of academic neutrality or Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) policies. These actions demonstrate that feminist silence is not merely an individual failing but part of a systemic alignment with colonial power structures. This paper calls for a reinvigorated decolonial feminist praxis that confronts these systemic failures head-on. It argues for concrete actions such as divestment from institutions supporting settler-colonialism, amplifying Palestinian voices, and resisting institutional repression. In contrast to the inaction of many feminist scholars, student movements—such as the Gaza Solidarity Encampments and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement—offer powerful models of decolonial praxis. These movements bridge the gap between theory and action, highlighting the transformative potential of solidarity when it is translated into tangible resistance. Their activism underscores the ethical imperative for feminist scholars to move beyond performative gestures and engage in meaningful, decolonial action. Feminist scholarship has long been committed to advancing justice, challenging systemic inequalities, amplifying the voices of women and other marginalized groups, and fostering global solidarity. As Aldossari (2024) argues, modern feminism has often betrayed its foundation principles by remaining silent or complicit in narratives that dehumanize Palestinians, framing their struggle as a collateral or blaming cultural factors while ignoring the structural violence of colonization. Kynsilehto (2024) argues that feminist academic silence on genocide exposes contradiction in their decolonial and intersectional commitments. Kynsilehto explores the challenges of addressing settler colonialism, the role of feminist ethics of care and the impact of academic hierarchies on engaging with such crises. She calls for academics to actively oppose genocide and reconsider their basis to promote meaningful solidarity and transformative change. This betrayal has tangible, material consequences. The silence of feminist movements and scholars not only erases Palestinian suffering from academic and public discourse but also legitimizes the structures that perpetuate violence. Palestinian women and men endure intersectional violence that is both symbolic and physical. Women face reproductive harm, such as being forced to deliver babies without anesthesia under blockade conditions (Boukari et al. 2024), while men experience systematic dehumanization through the erasure of their familial roles—widowers and fathers left without families. Both men and women are subjected to sexual violence, with reports of Israeli gang rapes of Palestinian male detainees (Cordall 2024) and the kidnapping and rape of Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers (OHCHR 2024a, 2024b). These atrocities illustrate how colonial violence is not only an attack on individuals but also on the social fabric of Palestinian communities (Shoman 2025). This complicity allows for the normalization of gendered violence, including sexual violence and “reprocide” (Ross 2017)—the deliberate targeting of reproductive health and family structures. In the case of Palestine, Israel's genocidal acts extend beyond immediate physical destruction, into deeply personal realms of health, bodily autonomy, and dignity, affecting every aspect of Palestinian life (Shoman 2025). This impacts on future generations by denying Palestinians the ability to reproduce and maintain familial and social continuity (Khouri 2024; Repo 2024). Women disproportionately bear the burdens of this violence, undergoing C-sections and surgeries without anesthetics while caring for infants in dire conditions, often without access to clean water or sanitation. Medical practitioners report unprecedented challenges, with infants born into environments where survival is nearly impossible. The tragic deaths of five infants at Alnaser Hospital, who starved to death after being left alone for weeks, exemplify the harrowing reality of reprocide (Goodwin et al. 2023). Feminist scholars must interrogate their complicity in narratives that marginalize oppressed, colonized communities and recommit to a feminism that centers the experiences of those affected by systemic structural violence. Addressing the genocide in Palestine requires reclaiming feminism's transformative potential by bridging the gap between theory and practice. Silence in the face of atrocities is not neutrality—it is complicity. The credibility of the feminist movement depends on its willingness to confront power, challenge injustice, and stand in solidarity with all women facing violence, including those surviving the unimaginable conditions in Gaza. As Ajour (2024) has previously written, “As a Palestinian with a family in Gaza: I Don't Want Sympathy. I Want Solidarity”; real solidarity entails opposing systems that perpetuate violence against Palestinians, challenging political agendas, resisting colonial narratives, and prioritizing justice over political interests. True solidarity demands a critical examination of settler colonialism, active resistance against genocidal violence, and unwavering support for Palestinian rights and self-determination. Al-Hardan highlights the presence of “hidden and unethical material and analytical research practices” in the study of Palestinian refugees within Western academia. She argues that this research “is only possible because of sanctioned epistemologies in academic institutions that treat colonized and stateless peoples as “others,” to be consumed as objects of knowledge” (Al-Hardan 2014, 69). In much of Western feminist research, and beyond, Palestine is framed through the “Israel-Palestine” lens. This framing has not only become so entrenched but also is now an accepted condition for speaking, teaching, and writing about Palestine. It is a practice that reflects a “sanctioned epistemology” where the colonizer and colonized are treated as equivalent, enabling the continuation of settler colonial violence and discourse. To understand the depth of feminist silence on Palestine—especially in the context of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza—it is essential to examine how this silence is linked to the framing of Palestine in ways that do not challenge or resist imperialist power structures in Western academia. This silence functions as epistemic violence within academic institutions. Spivak (1988) defines epistemic violence as the distortion or erasure of the lived experiences of oppressed communities through knowledge production. In the case of Palestine, this violence is evident in how the situation is framed as a mere “dispute” or “contentious issue,” reducing the Nakba of 1948 to just another perspective. This is not an intellectual oversight, as it serves to distort historical realities and normalize settler-colonial violence. By presenting the Palestinian struggle as something open to contestation and equivalence with their colonizers, this framing dehumanizes Palestinians and obscures the brutal realities of settler-colonialism (Jabiri 2024). The position of equivalence, which treats the colonizer and colonized as equal, often emphasizes neutrality and the “scientific” nature of research. This perspective ignores the material harm caused by knowledge production and the ethical responsibility researchers have to acknowledge the violence their work can perpetuate. While some forms of racism are recognized within Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) frameworks in the UK's higher institutions, systemic racism against Palestinians is often normalized. For instance, in the UK, researchers—including Palestinians—are encouraged to frame their work using the “Israel-Palestine” lens to avoid being labeled subjective, a framing that is unimaginable in the study of other oppressed groups, such as survivors of sexual violence or the Holocaust. Positionality is a central concept in feminist and postcolonial thought, referring to how power, privilege, and identity intersect to shape the production of knowledge and determine whose voices are amplified or silenced. Researchers are never neutral; their political affiliations shape how knowledge is produced (Said 2004) and whose experiences are validated. Many scholars, particularly in the West, operate from institutional positions that are deeply entangled with imperialism, colonialism, and Zionism. Feminists have long advocated for research that acknowledges positionality and recognizes people as experts of their own lives. However, this approach is often overlooked in research on Palestine. Feminists in privileged positions within Western academia frequently fail to interrogate how their institutions and governments are complicit in imperialism and Zionism. While intersectionality theoretically supports solidarity among oppressed groups, true solidarity requires taking a clear anti-colonial stance. The refusal to do so allows feminists to maintain institutional security while Palestinians endure material violence. By distancing themselves from the political implications of their work, researchers allow harmful narratives to persist and silence to continue. The relationship between positionality and solidarity underscores how one's position impacts not only knowledge production but also the lived experiences of those being researched. Unfortunately, this connection is often neglected in discussions of research ethics, creating an environment where epistemic violence against Palestinians can thrive. For ethical research on Palestine, scholars must actively confront these issues, ensuring their positions do not reinforce harmful narratives or perpetuate silence on settler-colonial violence. This requires a commitment to an anti-colonial stance, unconditional solidarity, accountability, and an ethics of justice that centers the lived experiences of those enduring settler-colonial violence. Focusing solely on the “scientific” contributions of research while disregarding the material consequences of knowledge production fails to address the real harm caused by academic scholarship. The ethical implications of this position extend beyond Palestine, challenging the very foundation of who is entrusted with knowledge production in the study of marginalized or oppressed communities. If feminist scholarship, and the broader academic community, fail to confront their complicity in the ongoing oppression of Palestinians, how can we trust the knowledge they produce in any other context? Another important aspect of positionality, beyond what was discussed in the earlier section, is that feminists should reflect upon their positionality within Western academic institutions. Western academic institutions are deeply embedded in racial capitalism, funding and sustaining colonial violence through investments in military industries and partnerships with Israeli universities (Bhopal 2024; Stein 2022; Wilder 2013). With regards to Israeli settler colonialism, universities have financial investments and research partnerships that directly support settler-colonial structures. Many Western universities invest in companies, such as Hewlett Packard, Cisco Systems and Caterpillar, all of which are implicated in Israel's military occupation and systemic oppression of Palestinians (Boxstein 2020; Divest USS, n.d.). Beyond investments, universities collaborate with arms manufacturers like BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, whose weapons are central to the settler colonial state of Israeli military's operations (Corderoy and Stockwell 2023; LSESU Palestine Society 2024; Sheffield Campus Coalition for Palestine 2024; Warwick Student-Staff Solidarity Network 2024). There are also a considerable number of research partnerships between universities in Europe and Israel, facilitated by the inclusion of Israel in EU scientific research funds, such as Horizon 2020 (European Union 2021). As Palestinians have long argued and Maya Wind's recent book details, Israeli universities have been integral to Israel's domination over the Palestinian people (Wind 2024). Since October 2023, Israeli universities have also provided vital support for Israel's genocidal war (Sen 2024a). Western universities do not merely fund colonialism; they also reproduce and enforce its ideological frameworks. This is evident in the way they police expressions of solidarity with Palestinians, curtail academic freedom, and silence critique of Israeli apartheid and genocide. This ideological complicity becomes apparent when examining how academic institutions handle expressions of solidarity, freedom of expression, and research collaborations in relation to different international crises. The responses of Western universities to events in Palestine can be sharply contrasted with their reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Whereas, many Western universities publicly announced their solidarity with Ukrainians and swiftly moved to end any cooperation with Russian universities (Cliburn 2022; Nicholson 2022), in the case of Palestine, these same universities have not only been largely silent but have actively moved to suppress solidarity movements. Despite their legal obligations to uphold academic freedom and freedom of expression, as cornerstones of scholarly inquiry as well as democracy more broadly, universities have pursued a range of actions and policies that serve to stifle activism in solidarity with Palestinians and even to regulate academic discussions of These the police to student with police to subjected to legal action, for and to events events in Palestine in some have even events from as well as in some and 2024a, 2024; et al. 2024; 2024; 2024; 2024). This underscores the structural within about the of institutional racism and the of principles like academic In we have even universities policies and in to and that against Israeli genocide and 2025; the of has also been to and and who 2023; 2024). 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