A rebuttal to Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd : Valley Vision

Recently, writer and social activist Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd wrote about Palestine and Israel. According to him, the “war” began only when Hamas attacked Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023. Without questioning the Israeli settlers and the act of occupation, Ilaiyya started advocating the Israeli occupation of Palestine through blame shifting.

In his article, he writes, ‘The glory of Israel can be seen everywhere in the rich green production fields. They turned deserts into productive lands. The people of Palestine, who are suffering from poverty, are not seen in the semi-cultivated fields of the desert. We do not see a woman in their farmlands. Israeli women, like Indian Shudra and Dalit women, work all the time.’ This statement indicates the intellectual dishonesty and misrepresentation of facts by creating a false narrative of comparing Indigenous Dalit and Tribal women with settler Israeli women. This creates a feeling of alienation between the land of Palestine and the native Palestinian women who have been protesting and protecting their land and trees from the settlers Israelis since 1917 at the cost of their lives.

In India, we have a long history of how our tribal women fought and are still fighting for the protection of forests in a variety of ways, such as the Chipko movement, Tharu Aadivasi Mahila Mazdoor Kisan Manch, Baiga Chak women, and so on. They patrol the forests to save trees from felling and protect resources according to the lists they prepared during the meetings of women of several villages. Similarly, Palestinian women, the daughters of Palestine land, are involved in protecting their trees and fighting to preserve their culture decades before the birth of Israeli settlers colonies in Palestine. A report of the Conflict and Environment Observatory (‘Tree planting as resistance in Palestine’) says Palestinian women planted 5,000 olive and citrus trees as part of a women’s empowerment program in the Gaza Strip in 2019.

The Israeli occupation enforces a militarized “buffer zone” on 40% of the Gaza Strip’s fertile land. Years of bombings destroyed not only the agricultural infrastructure but also killed farmers for planting trees. Million Tree Campaign (MTC) shows that for over 70 years, the Israeli forces have been uprooting, burning, and stealing millions of olive and other fruit-bearing trees from Palestine land. Thus, MTC in Palestine is working to achieve the right to food and will set an example of how agriculture can advance political justice with the slogan, “They uproot a tree, we replant ten.”

In 1901, the Jewish National Fund started a Zionist project of planting pine trees against the ‘Palestinian Olives’ to create a European-looking landscape. The Palestinian olive,  agronomically as well as culturally different from pines, becomes the brutal target of the state of Israel and Jewish Israeli settlers. Israel’s massive uprooting of Olive Orchards by the Jewish settlers not only shows the sense of control over Palestinian land but also on Palestinian Olive identity and culture. 

If we talk about agriculture in Palestine, the Israeli military has destroyed more than 65 square kilometres of farms and orchards in Gaza, which is 38% of the total land area   ‘Ecocide in Gaza’. This ecological destruction by the state of Israel is not only intended towards the occupation of land but also changing of native identity of land through various means of environmental apartheid practices. To detract attention from uprooting Olive trees and abuses of human rights, Israel engages in ‘greenwashing’, promoting itself as an eco-friendly country even as its policies and actions cause tremendous harm to the environment and Palestinians. This exploitation of the environment and control over land and natural resources has been central to building, sustaining and developing Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise. The future climate change projections for the occupied Palestine territory entail an increase in annual temperatures and a decline in rainfall by Israeli policies toward the land and agriculture.

A documentary released where, Naila and The Uprising, a Just Vision documentary, narrates the story of the fearless community of women at the forefronts of the 1980s first Intifada. Palestinian women in their everyday lives not only participated but also provided leadership assistance in different ways throughout the long-running Palestinian resistance movement against settler forces. Their active participation through collective action movements by sidelining the limitations of society shows their natural tendency to fight against injustices. Palestinian women’s committees are not only fighting for their land and trees but also for the lives of the disabled, elderly, children, and newborns through social work. 

Hence, this misrepresentation of Palestinian women and simply ignoring their struggle and sacrifices because of their Muslim women’s identity is nothing but Orientalism. Edward Said in his groundbreaking work “Orientalism” (1978), presented a critique of Western intellectuals, as they are the sole spokesman for Orients through writings and speeches. Orientalism makes assumptions about gender as well, where Oriental women are double inferior through the intersection of women and Orient but in this case Muslim as well. 

Hena Naaz is a student of Political Science at the University of Hyderabad.