The next National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) annual meeting features a plenary session that reflects the feminist movement's “Stalinized and Palestinianized,” agenda, according to veteran feminist Prof. Phyllis Chesler.
The plenary session at the NWSA meeting, which is to take place in San Juan, Puerto Rico on November 13-16, is titled: “The Imperial Politics of Nation-States: U.S., Israel, and Palestine.” The speakers are Brandeis graduate Angela Davis, the well-known (former) communist, former associate of the Black Panther Party, and recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize, writes Chesler in an article featured on Arutz Sheva.
She will be followed by Dr. Islah Jad of Birzeit University, whose work “does not seem to focus on honor killings, honor related violence, forced marriage, forced face veiling, polygamy, arranged marriage, feminist development under an Islamist totalitarian and apartheid regime—all burning issues in the 'West Bank' and in Gaza,” notes Chesler. Instead, some of her articles are titled: 'The Conundrums of Post-Oslo Palestine: Gendering Palestinian Citizenship' and 'Islamist Women of Hamas: Between Nationalism and Feminism.'
Balancing out Dr. Jad will be a Jewish speaker, Rebecca Wilkomerson, executive director of the infamous anti-Israel “peace” group, the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). “This is a U.S. based organization which views itself as the 'Jewish wing' of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement,” explains Chesler.
According to the NGO Monitor, the JVP has “actively promoted the central dimensions of the political warfare strategy against Israel which was adopted at the 2001 Durban NGO Forum. This ‘Durban strategy’ includes the tactics of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), a sustained campaign of demonization such as accusations of ‘apartheid’ and ‘racism,’ and support of a ‘Palestinian right of return’ with the ultimate goal of dismantling Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”
Board members of JVP include Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Tony Kushner. In 2013, even the Anti-Defamation League declared the JVP “one of the top ten anti-Israel groups,” along with CODEPINK (with whom JVP works), and the Students for Justice in Palestine.
“From 2000 on, every feminist group that I’ve been on has been inundated with petitions against Israel and with anti-Zionist propaganda. The Internet atmosphere has been highly charged, tense, hostile, and heart-breaking, and the discussions have been decidedly unfriendly toward anyone who dares to question this exact party line. It’s almost as if the feminist world has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the PLO,” Chesler writes.