Palestine and Feminist Liberation

by Nada Elia

How can we explain that Israel, despite its genocidal attacks in Gaza and its violation of international law, remains immune to criticism? Why do many feminists in the Global North, so quick to denounce the impact of "Islamic fundamentalism" on Palestinian women, remain silent when it comes to decrying the gendered impact of Israeli apartheid in Palestine?

In Palestine and Feminist Liberation, Palestinian scholar-activist Nada Elia argues that Palestinian women, far from being powerless and submissive, have long played an important role in resisting their people’s dispossession, first by the British Mandate, then by Israel. Elia discusses the challenges diaspora Palestinian feminists face when organizing on Turtle Island, where the dominant discourse has long upheld the Zionist narrative, steeped in Orientalism and anti-Palestinian racism. She articulates a vision for liberation grounded in Indigenous feminism, with its focus on collective empowerment, rather than individual advancement.

Genres: History

95 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 18, 2025

About the author

Nada Elia is a diaspora Palestinian, born in Baghdad, Iraq, and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, where she grew up and worked as a journalist during the (un)Civil War, before coming to the US for her PhD. Nada currently teaches Global and Gender Studies at Antioch University Seattle, where she coordinates the Global Studies area of concentration. Nada is a member of the Organizing Committee of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and has spoken around the country about academic boycott as a means to achieve the currently non-existent academic freedom in the US, Israel, and Palestine.

A scholar-activist, Elia is past president of AMEWS, the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies, and currently serves on the steering collective of The Critical Ethnic Studies Association. She also serves, or has served, on a number of local grassroots activist organizations. She is a founding member of RAWAN (the Radical Arab Women’s Activist Network); a former representative to the United Nations of AWSA (the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association); a member of the Defense of Civil Rights in Academia; and a former member of the steering collective of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, where she co-chaired of the Anti-Militarism, and Anti-Occupation taskforce.

Nada’s publications on grassroots resistance, gender dynamics, and transnational solidarity have appeared in various progressive alternative media venues, from the Electronic Intifada to Left Turn and Make/Shift magazine, as well as some of the most prestigious academic journals (World Literature Today, Callaloo, Journal of the National Women’s Studies Association, and others). More recently, she is devoting her time and energy to promoting and explaining the academic and cultural boycott as strategies to end Israel’s violations of international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people in ’48, ‘67, and the global diaspora.

Reviews

[Nichole · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short, but thorough exploration of feminism and Palestine. What is feminist liberation and how is it achieved? What aspects of liberation movements are talked about, condemned, ignored? Who is ignored during libration movements? Who decides what feminism is acceptable and not? Which feminists are silencing the Palestinian cause?

This exposes western feminism for the violence it is, and not just western feminism including white feminists but feminists of color as well; What she calls imperialist and colonial feminism. A movement supposedly for women’s rights yet cannot rally around the Palestinian cause or its women, unless it is on their terms. What are their terms? To see Palestinian, or Arab, women as victims. Not as victims of settler colonialism, but as victims of their own people, their own religion. For decades Arab and Palestinian women have tried to gather the feminist movement around the Palestinian cause, for they know that Palestinian liberation is also liberation for women and queer people.

It also discusses the women’s role in liberation. Nada Elia highlights stories of courageous and strong Palestinian women who stepped up to live against the violent settler colonial zionist project. She shows us how movements encapsulate so much more than what gets talked about widely.

The only disappointment from this book I have is the putting down of armed resistance as not feminist. To that, I counter, what about Commandante Romona? Is she not a feminist who led a movement for her peoples’ dignity with the use of weapons? Is Leila Khaled not a feminist because she hijacked a plane? The author seems to imply so as she compares Leila Khaled to a woman who started an orphanage. So, this was not clear to me from the author.

I also find it extremely unnecessary to say that armed resistance has not achieved any lasting victories. This feels like a slap in the face to all martyrs who have given their lives for the liberation of Palestine and well as those who are still fighting. Meanwhile praising those who have asked the US gov’t for more rights for Palestinians, what lasting victories has that brought on?

This is a good starting point to study what intersectional feminism can look like. It is un/learning what you have been told to believe, it is un/learning your discriminations, it is un/learning supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism.

thank you to the publisher and net galley for a copy of this book to review.

[Rhiley Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Edelweiss For the E-ARC! This E-ARC was sent to me in exchange for an honest review.

I have added several books by Nada Elia to my TBR since finishing this one of her's.
This small but determined work forces you to contemplate (all) feminism, what parts of a liberation movement are blatantly overlooked or revered, what makes a religion more than a belief. The stories the author shares from Palestinian women, the way she's not afraid to discuss her beliefs and opinions (Though I didn't agree with all of them), the courage she has to call out colonialism and religion and feminism as a movement (And all the wrong it's done through the years as a movement)-She has passion and resilience.
Despite being so so short, this piece hit in ways that most 500 page works can't begin to. It had more than history and facts, it had feeling.
Above all, Free Palestine. I will be reading more from this author.

[Maxine · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Palestine and Feminist Liberation, Nada Elia shows how anti-colonial struggles are or should be an important part of feminist liberation. She points out how western feminists have, too long, treated feminist liberation as tied to individual freedom to succeed and ignored the need to tie it to collective struggles of women under colonialism. They have ignored the realities of Palestinian women or seen it as the result of their religion rather than deliberate Israeli policies and have overlooked the crucial role Palestinian women have played in the resistance. In this short book, Elia provides the reader with very well-researched, cogent, and accessible arguments why feminist liberation cannot be achieved until it includes the struggles of and solidarity with colonized women.

Thanks to Netgalley and Literary Press Group of Canada for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review