Radical Palestinian Women in the Struggle for Liberation

Almost three years into an unprecedented slaughter of Palestinians with mostly US- provided weapons wielded by a military that insists on its morality while its conscripts post videos showing the murder of children and the defiling of their homes and families, the Palestinian resistance hangs on. Although one would be hard-pressed to find evidence of this fact in most western media, the truth is that it is the resistance in its official and unofficial forms that continues to help the Palestinian people survive the relentless onslaught of the occupying military. This can mean anything from distributing food to staging armed guerrilla attacks on Israeli forces and their mercenary gangs. It can also mean protesting the mistreatment of Palestinian hostages in Israeli jails and prison camps and the publication of news and commentary regarding the ongoing struggle in Gaza and the West Bank.

The slaughter of Palestinians has been an ongoing element of the Israeli occupation and expansion since before the creation of the Israeli state in 1947. It wasn’t until the outbreak of major hostilities in October 2023, however, that most US residents took note of this history. After the attacks by Palestinian forces on October 7, 2023 many westerners were quick to express their abhorrence at those attacks; attacks which Israel hoped would provide its military with western popular support for the intensification of its decades-long campaign of murder, maiming and land theft. To Tel Aviv’s delight, that support was immediate and seemed to be massive. However, by the end of the year 2023, the support was weakening as Israel continued its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and stepped up its theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank. According to UNICEF, the Israeli military was responsible for the deaths of over 22, 000 Palestinians in Gaza—a number that included more than 5000 children. Meanwhile, over five hundred Palestinians living in the West Bank were killed in 2023, making it the deadliest year ever for Palestinians there. As the year 2024 continued into 2025, the Israeli operations turned genocidal and several of its rulers were charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and more by the International Criminal Court. Furthermore, the occupation itself was declared a violation of international law and Tel Aviv was ordered to end it, while those governments which funded it were told to cease their funding. Nothing changed.

For those round the world who have observed the ongoing occupation and studied its history, the lack of action against Israel and its collaborators in DC, London, Berlin and elsewhere is no surprise. It’s an unfortunate and important truth that Israel is an important part of the imperial world system enforced by Washington and its client states. The genocide of a population seen to be in the way of that system’s domination and expansion is just another price the oppressed must pay. The reaction of those in the western world became a question of morality. In the United States, perhaps nowhere was this clearer than on college and university campuses where students risked lives, careers, and freedom to protest the genocide while administrators, media, police and trustees attacked the protests, often with great violence. Most faculty, meanwhile, sat on the sidelines like too many of their fellow citizens; citizens who quietly ignored (or even excused) the Biden administration’s full support of Israel’s mass murder project.

If there was anything positive that came out of the Gaza genocide, it was the recognition by millions of the Palestinian resistance; its rootedness in the population of Palestine was finally acknowledged and embraced by millions of people in the homelands of the empire. Its existence in the hearts, bodies and souls of the Palestinian people impressed those in the west whose life experience had never included community on such a scale, much less communal resistance to an overwhelming oppressor like that of the US-Israeli axis. That knowledge upset the imperial apple cart. Some of its subjects refused to comply. It was revealed that resistance was a way of life for those who are oppressed and for those who support them. This was possible even within restrictions imposed by culture and faith, age and gender.

A recently published book titled Everything We Thought Was Beautiful: Interviews with Radical Palestinian Women proves this. Edited by the Shoal Collective, an independent co-operative of writers and researchers writing for social justice, this collection of interviews spans the years 2015-2025 and includes interviews with Palestinian women in Gaza, the West Bank, “Israel” and throughout the diaspora. The interviews took place over email, via phone calls and in person. There are educators, physicians, journalists, and organizers. Some focus on the land and at least one is a disability rights organizer. Others work on the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement while others work in the ruins of hospitals and the tents of the displaced. Their politics tend to lean left, with some identifying as anarchist. They understand the patriarchal society they live in and do their best to work with its restrictions while simultaneously expanding its boundaries towards a reality where women and girls are recognized as full human beings.

These stories are tales of arrests and death, air raids and hunger, frustration and despair. They are also tales of courage, resistance and solidarity. While it’s a recognized fact that women are crucial to the Palestinian resistance in roles that are considered traditional, this book makes it clear that their participation goes beyond such roles. This fact is a memorable part of their history—consider PFLP fighter Leila Khaled—and Everything We Thought Was Beautiful updates this truth by bringing these brief and important interviews to the reading public.

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