SSometimes a disaster is so big that its own details are overlooked. In addition to the number of deaths and displacements in Gaza, the conflict has disproportionately affected women and girls. In a “cruel reversal” of the history of this conflict, the head of UN Women told the Associated Presswomen and children have suffered the brunt of the war.
The details are unfathomable. There are approximately 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and 40% of these pregnancies actually occur classified as high risk; 180 giving birth every day. The healthcare infrastructure has been all but obliterated. According to the charity Care: “There is no doctor, midwife or nurse to support women during labour. There is no pain medication, anesthesia or hygiene equipment when women give birth.” Babies are born on the ground in the wilderness, the umbilical cord is cut with whatever sharp object is available, and cans filled with hot water keep the newborn warm. Caesarean sections are performed, which are painful in the aftermath, even when medications are plentiful without any anesthesia not at all, by surgeons who have no water to wash their hands, let alone sterilize them, and no antibiotics for any resulting infections. In some cases, according to the Washington Post reporting, C-sections were executed about postmortem women.
As mother and child prevail in these impossible circumstances, they face displacement and hunger, while nursing painful tears, wounds and malnourished babies. Pregnant women in Gaza had to make the thirty kilometer journey from north to south. They arrive in conditions that, according to UNICEF, “exceed famine thresholds”, and which are of particular concern when it comes to the fate of tens of thousands of pregnant and lactating women, the majority of whom consuming only one or two types of food. Mothers do not have access to enough food and clean water to produce milk for their babies, and when formula is available in the camps of the displaced, finding clean water to boil and mix is a daily challenge. In December, one-month-old babies were born in the displaced persons camps never washed. “So many aspects of motherhood,” says A CNN report in November, “once routine, are now a matter of life and death.”
Those who survive these painful, unassisted births and the uncertainty that follows are the lucky ones. Just weeks after the war started, there were reports of miscarriages and stillbirths increased by 20%. With something like 85% of Gaza’s population As they are displaced and large numbers settle in camps, the true scale of the maternal mortality, infant mortality and pregnancy loss crisis is certainly greater than even reports from aid and news organizations suggest. But what girls and women have to go through doesn’t stop there.
A 5-square-kilometer tent camp in Rafah has been barred from aid, leaving residents without food, medical supplies, hygiene and sanitary products. Due to the lack of menstrual products, those who experience bleeding after childbirth and miscarriages, as well as women and girls who menstruate, suffer from parts to use of tent fabric, clothing and towel clippings, increasing the risk infection and toxic shock. There is one shower for every 2,000 people and one toilet for every 500.
It’s been shocking to be in the slipstream of mainstream feminist discourse these past few weeks as this all unfolds. Surreal for see how it runs around Barbie’s apparently insufficiently feminist Oscar nominations, to which Hillary Clinton herself contributed has expressed her objection calling for a ceasefire. Some of this is just human nature; our own context and culture determine our immediate priorities. But there are other impulses, uncomfortable to think about but difficult to ignore, that de-emphasize the particularly inhumane and urgent situation when it comes to the women and girls in Gaza.
Palestinian women are said to not share the kind of values that are being called to come to their aid. The fact that Gaza voted for Hamas 18 years ago has started prove that there is collective responsibility for the group’s actions on October 7 and that there are no innocents. In another impulse, the entire value system in Gaza is being questioned by addressing issues such as the lack of LGBTQ+ rights. In addition to reports of sexual violence during the Hamas attack, these are seen as factors that should destroy sympathy for those in Gaza and make them suspicious and join Hamas, with Israel being the party that shares liberal, progressive values . A New York Times respond letter The accusation by some American Ivy League students of Israel for the Hamas attack reflected this collapse. Did “the many followers of Hamas at Harvard and Columbia,” the letter asked, “not realize that Hamas is brutally persecuting the LGBTQ community in Gaza, subjugating women, and torturing and summarily executing dissidents?” The argument might as well simply be: they’re not like us, and they started it.
It is an argument that is a race to the bottom of humanity, which gives permission to smear an entire population with the worst crimes, and to abdicate the responsibility to think critically and empathetically about cultures and politics shaped through years of occupation, crisis and siege. . In the US, a voter is present on the news program Face the Nation said she was concerned about her reproductive rights, but that it would be “hypocritical” to use those concerns to justify voting for Joe Biden while supporting strikes and blockades on a population that have led to disastrous maternal experiences and outcomes. That kind of clarity seems like a lot to ask for right now, given the competing influences of parochialism, tribalism, and propaganda. But the details coming out of Gaza are so gripping, so brutal, that now may be the time to reflect on what progressive values, feminist or otherwise, really mean when they stop at the threshold of what is known.