Spare Rib was a prominent feminist magazine that ran from 1972 through to 1993. After a twenty year absence it is to be relaunched this month. This presents an ideal opportunity to reproduce highlights of an article written by Roisín Boyd and based on conversations with Nidal, a Lebanese woman, Randa, a Palestinian woman, and Aliza Khan, an Israeli woman. The article was published in Spare Rib, issue 121, August 1982, pp.22-23.
Women Speak Out Against Zionism
‘If a woman calls herself feminist she should consciously call herself anti-Zionist’
Nidal: There is an enormous difference between being Jewish and being Zionist, The main idea behind Zionism is that all the Jews should gather together and form a nation, because they are in danger from the ‘non-Jews’, what they call Gentiles. Which is so similar to the Nazi ideology that the Jews should not be with the Gentiles…..
Aliza: Zionism….was created by European Jews who used anti-semitism for their own interests. Its aim was never to fight anti-semitism, moreover it saw anti-semitism as its best ally…..After the second World War, Zionist leaders used to say that Jewish people should thank Hitler because without him, the state of Israel would never have been created. If we are concerned about anti-semitism we must fight Zionism. To be anti-Zionist is to be anti-imperialist, and to be against the fact that Zionism (and the founding of the state of Israel) caused Palestinians to be refugees…..
Nidal: If you dare call yourself a Palestinian in Israel you would get five years in jail….
Aliza: …. The kibbutzim are male dominated and many produce military equipment. Woman work mainly in the kitchens and do the ‘normal’ jobs that woman always do. If a woman calls herself a feminist she should consciously call herself anti-Zionist….
Aliza: What Israel is doing now in the Lebanon is nothing new but an extreme part of its nature. Killing people, barbarically, children, women, with poisoned gas and cluster bombs. It’s hard to imagine how human beings can do this. My mother, who emigrated to Israel from Germany, rang me two weeks ago and said that she is broken hearted because what Israel is doing now is what the Nazis did to her….Women must come together against [Zionism] because our sisters are being murdered….. I am calling you sisters, to come together against the holocaust of the Palestinian and Lebanese people. There is no way we can sit quietly and do nothing about it.
In the months that followed, Spare Rib went on to publish an article “Woman Against Zionism” that suggested Jews were answerable for what Israel was doing in Lebanon. The magazine received more than forty letters from women opposed to the expressed views. The editorial collective refused to publish them.
