COMMENTARY: By Eman Hillis

Displaced from my home in northern Gaza, I sit reading reports of the Iran war as my little sister, 6, struggles to walk across the room. Two months into the ceasefire, an Israeli soldier shot her in the head.

On my phone, a video of US politician Tommy Tuberville criticising the Iranian regime for “treating women like dogs” plays.

Another follows, showing Matt Schlapp suggesting the girls killed in a school bombing in Iran are better dead than living a “barbaric life”. To top it all, Israel celebrated International Women’s Day in Persian, posting an AI video of fake US, Israeli, and Iranian women frolicking together.

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Watching these statements and videos from Gaza, where women have been subjected to relentless violence throughout the more than two-year genocide, the sudden concern for women’s rights is difficult to take seriously.

I was among the hundreds of thousands of women displaced by Israel in Gaza. I experienced the suffering that Israel, backed by the US, subjected us to, and watched other women endure.

One month before the third US veto of a proposed ceasefire in Gaza, a sudden midnight strike hit the apartment next to where I was sheltering in Khan Younis. Human remains were scattered about — half of one man’s body was hanging on what had been a window on the seventh floor, the other half on a bus in the street.

No women were killed, but I watched them weep for loved ones, denied the chance to mourn them or even gather and bury the remains.

Fleeing women dragged children
The tanks then rushed in. Dozens of women, children, and men ran through the street — some women still weeping for those who had just been killed. Most of them dragged two or more children by the hand.

I was running with a woman who held a baby she had given birth to one week earlier, crying and gasping for breath. The tanks were advancing toward us, firing shells at a hospital nearby, while drones above us strafed us indiscriminately.

The violence did not stop with the killings and displacements. Israel made life even more miserable for women, without using missiles. It cut off water, then prohibited the entry of sanitary pads and painkillers, turning women’s periods into a living hell.

Israel’s policy of starving Gaza has raised miscarriage rates among women to 300 percent.

Israeli soldiers set dogs on Palestinian women, assaulted pregnant mothers, and threatened them with rape — all of this with US support and under the protection of six US vetoes.

“Terrorist organisations have brought disaster upon you,” was one of the most common statements that Israeli leaflets repeated in Gaza and Lebanon before launching a brutal attack on a certain area. The line was often followed by “for your safety, leave the place” or “the IDF has no intention of harming you”.

The language is moral and protective, suggesting the action about to follow is a “rescue mission,” not an act of war.

US uses similar rhetoric
The US has long used similar rhetoric to justify its political ambitions abroad. In Iraq, it claimed to be saving the international community from “weapons of mass destruction.”

It claimed to be saving civilians from oppression by “terrorist organisations” when it backed Israel in its wars against Palestine and Lebanon.

In Afghanistan, the US-led invasion was often justified from a “feminist” lens to “rescue” women oppressed by the Taliban.

Now, the same strategy is being deployed against Iran. Women’s rights are weaponised as a pretext for airstrikes, sanctions, and military invasion.

Hundreds of Iranian women, including pregnant mothers, have been killed in US and Israeli strikes. Hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed, displacing millions of women and their loved ones within the country.

This is not to suggest that Iranian women enjoy full rights in their country, but feminism cannot be achieved through bombs.

This US and Israeli rhetoric contradicts a fundamental principle of feminism. By assuming that women are unable to fight and speak up for their rights, they deny women’s right of self-determination.

Struggling to address women’s rights
Notably, the same governments that attempt to act as the “saviours” of women struggle to address women’s rights at home. Israel, which struggles to curb incidents of sexual harassment against women, has been commodifying female soldiers to garner public sympathy during the Gaza war.

Meanwhile, one in five women in the US has experienced completed or attempted rape in their lifetime.

For women who have lived through US and Israeli wars, claims of defending Iranian women ring hollow.

The blood of more than 16,000 Palestinian women killed during the two-year genocide has not yet dried, yet the US and Israel present themselves as the guardians of women’s rights.

Those who kill and oppress other women cannot claim to defend women’s rights elsewhere. True feminism cannot defend the humanity of women in one place and ignore it in another.

Eman Hillis is a Gaza-based journalist and fact-checker reporting on war and disinformation from the ground during Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This article was first published by The New Arab.

The arrest of the former top lawyer in the Israeli military for the leak of a video showing Israeli soldiers assaulting a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military prison has created a political and legal storm in Israel.

The Israeli government is accusing Military Advocate-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalm of “blood libel” against the Israeli army, of defaming Israeli soldiers, reports Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went as far as saying this was the “most dangerous assault” on Israel’s image since its establishment in 1948.

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Many in Israel are fearful that Netanyahu and his coalition partners will use this as a pretext to introduce the changes they want in the Israeli military and judiciary.

There is so much focus on the fact that this video — which was alleged to show a gang rape of a blindfolded Palestinian prisoner — was leaked, at the expense of discussing how this crime actually happened.

The UN says that these kinds of crimes are being committed in a systematic manner.

In one way, it’s a way to shift attention from the fact that these crimes are happening, by focusing on this woman and the fact that she leaked the video.

Five soldiers indicted
Middle East Eye reports that at least nine Israeli soldiers were questioned over the assault in late July, sparking widespread anger across Israel.

Only five were indicted for “severe abuse” of the detainee, but not for rape. The trial remains ongoing.

On Sunday, the accused soldiers called for the case to be dropped.

The Palestinian detainee shown in an alleged rape video leaked to the Israeli outlet Channel 12 last year has been returned to Gaza, news agencies report, citing a document from the military prosecutor’s office.

The fallout from the leak has led to the resignation and arrest of the Israeli army’s top lawyer, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, on suspicion of allowing the clip to become public.

Meanwhile, the Islamic bloc has condemned Israel’s proposed death penalty law as “discriminatory, legally untenable”.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a 57-nation bloc of Muslim-majority countries, dsaid the a draft law before the Israeli parliament that could impose the death penalty on those convicted of “terrorism”, a move critics say would legalise the execution of Palestinian prisoners.

‘Legally untenable’
In a statement posted on X, the OIC described the proposed law as “discriminatory and legally untenable”.

It added: “The OIC has urged the international community to fulfil its obligations in halting all violations perpetrated by the Israeli occupation and to extend international protective measures for the Palestinian people.”

The bill has been forwarded by the far-right and internationally sanctioned Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and is backed by Netanyahu.

The head of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has described the bill to introduce the death penalty for Palestinian “terrorism” suspects as a crime against humanity.

Former UK minister regrets silence over Palestinian nurse’s death, calls Israeli actions ‘murder’

A former Conservative minister in the United Kingdom has accused Netanyahu’s government of killing a young Palestinian nurse.

Alistair Burt, who served as Middle East minister in Theresa May’s government, told the UK newspaper The Independent he now regretted staying silent when 21-year-old medic Razan al-Najjar was fatally shot while treating wounded protesters near Gaza’s border in 2018.

Burt said Najjar had been “clearly targeted and murdered”, adding that Israel’s pledges to investigate such incidents were “bogus” attempts to “cover up killings”.