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What is a movement if there is no one standing behind it? What is a goal if it's not being pursued? These are the questions that beg to be answered. They're existential and claustrophobic, pushing people to observe and search for the answer. In my case, I believe that a movement is something that transcends numbers. It is something that provides purpose in the sense that it evokes hope. With hope comes the fight for change, and the goals at hand end up being pursued in no time.

All of this to say that the Sustainable Development Goal of Gender Equality is one that used to never be recognized, seen as laughable and never truly attainable. However, with some hard work and some elbow grease, it has now pinned itself as one of the major goals set in place to make the world a much more peaceful area to be in-- to make it, as said in the title, sustainable.

With such a goal left to be chased after, there is an abundance of movements that follow after. Each movement fights for a different weak spot within gender equality, whether it be for men and their masculinity, for women of all races and sexualities in the United States, or for women and men outside of the country that are left within global clutches. One of those movements is the Palestine Anti-Violence Feminist movement, which exists to fight against the injustices committed against women in Palestine due to the lack of protections for them set in place. This lack stems from a skewed outlook on gender equality, which isn't seen as something sustainable within Israel, which controls Palestine and occupies them. This movement sheds light on feminism within such a small community, and how even these smaller groupings of people who face discrimination contribute to the larger problem at hand. Not only this, but it urges the importance of global feminism and anti-violence movements that exist all over the world to try and protect women within any area.

How does the Palestine Anti-Violence Feminist Movement work? Where does it stand? What has it done? These are the questions I hope to answer, and to do it, I also hope to examine and tie in the idea of Collective Action, which is vital to the longevity of the movement, what it stands for, and how it meets the larger goal of Gender Equality.

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Competillo, L. T. I. J. (2016, July 19). Events designed to promote community spirit. ithacajournal.com. https://eu.ithacajournal.com/story/news/local/2016/07/1

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This column serves as a means to explain the theory of Collective Action. It stands to explain what it means, what it does, how it is implemented across the board, and the differences between Self Interest, the Individual, and Community.

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Collective action is when a group of people with a likeminded goal come together and complete actions to help fulfill their goal as a means of achieving the same objective. Collective action theory is the theory that by coming together, something can be achieved more efficiently than if it was done by the individual instead. These both intertwine, being the theory and the action itself standing side by side.

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This theory is mainly implemented and seen within society and politics. In the article titled Collective Action and Rational Choice: Place, Community, and the Limits to Individual Self-Interest by Byron Miller, Miller sheds light on how collective action's effects on the political sphere have deemed it seen as "problematic" because it evokes events such as community led protests and makes the individual seem negligent to societal needs, which makes it hard for one to not want to participate within their community, thus making life a little more difficult for politicians and the government who rely on individuality and the idea of self-interest. (Miller, 23-24)

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Vulk Coop. (2018, September 20). Logic of Collective Action in Four Minutes [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rchT42duN8

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Why Collective Action JUST Makes Sense! 

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Why Collective Action JUST Makes Sense! 

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Logic of Collective Action in Four Minutes

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Self interest, in simple terms, can be viewed as it is said. It is when someone works in the interest of themselves without taking the larger picture into account. Community is the opposite-- community is the larger picture, when people care about other people and work in the interest of the people. These two conflict because the ideals are not shared. Within self-interest, the ideals coincide with concepts like self-preservation, which is how the individual protects themselves by only caring about themselves, and self-sustainability, which is when the individual does enough for themselves to get by with no regard for others. Community, again, does the opposite of these actions. Community stands to break the mold, creating spaces for open communication, vulnerability, willingness to band together, and-- ultimately-- change.

This is a vital discussion to be had because it shows the sheer importance of collective action. While the individual and their needs are important, it is also crucial to not get lost in the idea of self-interest. Collective action fills in these gaps that self-interest creates. When we put this in the perspective of Gender Equality, we can come to see where the self-interest started, where it ended, and where collective action had picked up in its stead. Within a paternalistic world that is ran by primarily men who only look out for the self-interest of themselves, women have to pick up the lack and come together collectively to work and undo the sheer amount of masculine individuality that is put into place.

Shedding a light on the Palestine Anti-Violence Feminist Movement, we can see these same patterns. Israel is abundant with self-interest, which is why they are even occupying Palestine in the first place and trying to take over the state. This effects everyone, but has a bigger effect on women due to the prejudice that is already in place from the lack of global Gender Equality, hence why women themselves have to collectively come together under the name of feminism to fight against injustice and violence within Palestine enacted against these groups of women.

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Gender Equality is extremely hard to define. At its simplest form, it means what it says. Equality across the board for any gender, which means that everyone is treated the same and given the same opportunities without prejudice. It can mean many things, however, despite the simple definition. For some groups, it can mean freedom and liberation, and for others it can mean progression. Sometimes gender equality can be defined as education, due to the patriarchal nature of the world. This column exists to explain Gender Equality and why it is so vital to the sustainability of the world we live in today.

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Feminism is a key factor in the fight for gender equality and in achieving it. Feminism, in basic terms, is the activism for women's rights. However, not all women evaluate feminism and gender equality the same, nor is feminism shown the same across the board due to the differences in the rights that women have in different parts of the world, which only furthers the gap between equality and inequality.

As it stands, it was not until recently that women had even understood the wrong that comes with being the biggest victims in domestic violence due to how normalized violence is against women. Women, as summarized by Charles Kurzman and others in Women's Assessment of Gender Equality, have a hard time understanding that everything within the patriarchy works against them due to decades of "degradation" and "normalization." (Kurzman, 2019) Furthermore, it is said that women cannot understand the concept of freedom and that they do not work within their best interest because they have never been allowed to explore what their best interest is. While in an American lens this is starting to shift and look a lot better for women, the same cannot be said for other areas, especially Palestine while under Israeli occupancy.

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The Palestine Anti-Violence Feminist Movement, as described, exists as a means to "end the widespread-- and in some cases legally sanctioned-- impunity for violence against women, sexual and gender-based violence, and femicide in Palestine." It came to the surface after the horrors that came with the violence against women such as Suha al-Deek and only gained more waves after the brutal murder of Israa Ghrayeb.

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History of Feminism and Violence: Understanding Why The Movement Exists

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History of Feminism and Violence: Understanding Why The Movement Exists

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Activism for Palestinian women dates all the way back to the 1920s, which means that the fight against injustice had been before occupation times, before the upraise of Zionism, and before the PAVFM had even came into light. The original anti-violence movement was called El-Fanar which existed to stop femicide, where women would be killed in mass to preserve a family's honor due to not being seen as the "perfect woman." (Abdulhadi, pg. 649-650)

Another example of activism for Palestinian women predating the PAVFM is in 1965 just two years before the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The General Union of Palestinian Women (known as the GUPW) was formed with the same beliefs in mind, changing the word womanhood and redefining it in the midst of political strife and change. (Abdulhadi, pg. 654)

After Israeli occupation in 1967, occupants were trying to reverse the clock for women, trying to revert and push the "submissive" and "perfect" woman image back into the heads of the Palestinian people and other Israeli occupants, which diminishes the redefinitions of womanhood that had been slowly coming into light after time. An example of this was the treatment of Palestinian women as prisoners. Israeli occupants who interrogated them had threatened acts of violence such as rape or exposure of the nude body to the woman's brothers/fathers if there is no compliance. Their reasoning was that a submissive woman is more liked, which had erased most of the hard work put in place before occupation, causing there to be a new era of discrimination and violence. (Abdulhadi, pg. 655)

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As stated above, activism and a fight to change had pre-existed the PAVFM. Collective action can actually be seen in the earlier years such as the 1920s-1960s due to the extremely complex socio-economic and relations that Palestine had with the rest of the world, especially Israel before occupation. Collective action was influenced by pre-existing problems such as a gender hierarchy, the local conditions of women, and the international changes (such as the ones mentioned above talking about womanhood and feminism after occupation) that caused further complications.

However, with that in mind, some recent examples include the fight against the injustices that have spurred within Palestine recently, such as the murder of Israa Ghrayeb. After her brutal murder, which was deemed as an "honor killing," -- which are killings designated to preserve honor within the family by getting rid of whatever or whoever is staining the name (in this case, it was Israa according to the family-- a light had been shone on the rising cases of violence in the past couple years inflicted by the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Collective action has been taken by not only the women of Palestine, but by other groups such as the Global Fund for Women (who had created the PAVFM) and even the United Nations has spoken out about the "lack of implementation" of gender equality laws put in place within Palestine to protect these women.

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All in all, gender equality is vital to making sure the world is a sustainable place for all people from different walks of life. This narrative does not and never has excluded women, yet women seem to be left out more often than not due to the paternalistic and patriarchal way of the world. Regardless, there are aids to this and it all begins with the people. The Palestine Anti-Violence Feminist Movement is only the beginning for the women of Palestine, and it is a movement that inspires women from other occupied states to be able to stand on their own two feet because they have global funding, support, and awareness to back them up.

Collective action theory is more than a theory, it is a means to an end. Collective action stands to test the limits of community, of how far a group can go with their collective mindset to help meet goals that the individual could only dream of getting to. The goal is simple, but the movements within are complex, making the road ahead a bumpy one. Despite this, feminist solidarity and the decolonization of feminism are some of the first steps that can be taken to lead these women, especially those suffering from injustice and violence in the state of Palestine, to liberation and freedom.

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This column, to completely conclude the project, is the reference column. In this column, all that is here is a direct click to the Works Cited document that has every source used within this project besides the images and youtube links, which are cited underneath.

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The Importance of Global Feminism Movements

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The Importance of Global Feminism Movements

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To continue from the point above, it is vital to shed a light on Global Feminism or what is known as Intersectional Feminism, which is Feminism that exists to bring importance to matters outside of North America that concern Women's Rights due to the fact that not all women across the board as equal either. This process of bringing women from all over the world up into the spotlight is called "decolonizing" feminism, which is an approach that opens up avenues for intersectional feminism and feminists to shift the normative implications of violence and injustice against women. This, in turn, allows women to become more open about feminism and explore what womanhood means to them, even if they are in a state, country, or demographic that frowns upon such a thing. They can do this because they are fought for and seen at the collective level.

The Palestine Anti-Violence Feminist movement exists as a part of this vein. It is important because it fights for a minority of women that are not typically seen when talks of feminism come up. When many think of feminism, they think of the feminism that America has, where women's rights are not looked as down upon as they are in other place-- America, while not perfect, has more opportunities for women than places like Palestine, which had never really created open spaces in the first place and had been cut off once occupied by Israeli rule. To be able to have some breathing room, the PAVFM has to exist to fight for them, to bring awareness and spread knowledge-- to gain help and support from all corners of the world.

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TRT World. (2019, September 17). The untold story of ‘honour killings’: Why was Israa Ghrayeb murdered? YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ohRz-v-ut8

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The untold story of ‘honour killings’: Why was Israa Ghrayeb murdered?

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Feminist Solidarity and Collective Action

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Feminist Solidarity and Collective Action

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Feminist solidarity and collective action, to say the least, are two peas in a pod. They strength each other and coincide with one another to enact change and enable women to support and uplift one another. In the article titled Introduction, Feminist Solidarity and Collective Action, Caroline Sweetman says that feminist solidarity at the collective scale "strengthens the power of women to challenge gender-based violence, abuse, marginalization, and poverty." (Sweetman, pg 219) This, in and of itself, shows just how important collective action is when we take a look at the Palestine Anti-Violence Feminist Movement.