The philosophical literature on “western” representations of Muslims and Arabs often focuses on colonial feminism as it has been mobilized in the past, in the longue durée of Orientalist racism. Yet colonial/imperialist feminism has continued to shape the stereotypes that stick to Arabs and Muslims in the present. My argument is that colonial feminism makes use of ambient norms—acceptable within a particular “western” societal context and epoch—to rephrase under different guise, bypassing past critiques and expected pushback. I look to the thorny case of the “mass rape” charges, levelled by Israel against Hamas and Palestinian resistance, to examine how colonial feminism has rephrased itself today. I examine one part of the argument presented by colonial feminists for why such rape charges should be accepted at face value, effectively silencing critical voices and demands for independent investigation. This is what I will call the “argument from universality,” paradoxically used by liberal supporters and critics of Israel. Rape, so the argument goes, has always been a “weapon of war”; this “conflict” is no different. Critical-race and decolonial feminists who question this universalism (as with all universal claims about gender oppression) are portrayed as anti-feminist “denialists.” While, at the surface, this seems to be about believing women (a reapplication of “me too”), it becomes a way to adjudicate feminist credentials and alliances and to rupture kinship and solidarity with Palestinian men. The argument that rape is always a weapon of war normalizes rape as a quotidian part of military action. It renders both sides equivalent, removing the ability to make value judgements. But only one side benefits from such equivalence, since it renders ordinary—and beneath outrage—the actions of those who wield power; it normalizes the colonial violence that structures the status quo, and thus Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians. Yet in the case of Palestinian fighters, the charge of rape is compounded with allegations of mutilation, sadism, and beheading. This serves to put them beyond the pale—casting them as not only rapists but inhuman monsters. It is for this reason that the testimonies repeated in the media are exorbitant in their cruelty, with gruesome Islamophobic stereotypes. The rape charge becomes a tool used not only to demonize any resistance, but to dehumanize Palestinian men in general. It comes as no surprise that this narrative of the terrorist-rapist correlates to the timing of intensification in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

I will unpack the use of contemporary Western discourses around sexual violence in colonial feminist efforts to undermine critical analysis of the claim that Hamas committed systematic rape on October 7. How can we, as decolonial feminist academics, critically respond to these allegations without undermining broader movements for survivors of rape and sexual assault? I argue that to date attempts to navigate this line have at times been messy. For example, in responding to the original claims of systematic rape published in the New York Times, many feminist scholars clung to the fact that the Times report had not produced a single 'survivor' as witness. Had the Times produced a single rape survivor, so the claim went, as feminists we would believe them- but they had not. As anti-imperialist feminists acknowledging the long histories of the fraudulent rape charge used as a weapon of racial/colonial violence, however, I contend that we cannot afford to uncritically believe those who claim to be survivors of sexual violence. At the same time, in responding to Israel's weaponization of the rape charge we must refuse to reproduce assumptions that can be, and are, weaponized against genuine survivors of sexual violence. For example, many critical responses to claims in the New York Times report have pointed to relatively minor inconsistencies in witness reports as evidence of their lack of credibility. Yet we know that it is not abnormal for traumatized people to offer shifting and fragmented accounts (within limits- which I will explore). More broadly, I ask what it means for feminist commitments to creating safe spaces, delivering trauma-informed care and supporting survivors of sexual assault to be used in support of Israeli settler colonial violence today. How can we adamantly refuse this appropriation without discarding these commitments altogether? What might it mean to be 'trauma-informed' or committed to survivors in the context of Palestine today?

Western colonialism has weaponised concern for women (native or colonial) in order to justify and legitimize its projects of violence, up to and including genocide since at least the 18th century. Even older has been the fascination with the sexuality of the ‘barbarian’ and ‘savage’ Others of Europe, again in service of shoring up ideas of race and racial supremacy that went alongside the colonial project. Since Muslims were the Other of European Enlightenment thought in the 18th century much of this Orientalism was focused on Muslims, especially the aspect of sexual fetishization. Many scholars have traced this history and discourse, and also traced the crucial role played by white feminists in supporting imperialism/colonialism from the 19th century onwards. I will bring in a discussion of how the War of Terror gave new life to already-existing and always gendered anti-Muslim racist discourse, mobilizing new forms of savior/colonial/imperialist feminism to justify violence against Arabs and Muslims. I will also discuss the role played by liberal (and even ‘leftist’ feminists) both in the Global North and the Global South in manufacturing consent for violence against those deemed uniquely misogynist and homophobic. I will discuss the current Israeli attempt to weaponise concern for women victims of sexual violence in conflict as being part and parcel of this long trajectory of imperialist/colonial feminism and its increasingly cynical deployment by states which relies on deeply held and incredibly mainstream forms of gendered racism against Arabs and Muslims. This gendered racism explains the form that sexual humiliation and sexual violence has taken by US/NATO forces in the War of Terror and by Israel in its 75+ years of occupation and in the current genocide. It explains the hypersexualization of Israeli women soldiers in IOF propaganda material and Israeli soldiers’ obsessive focus on the sex lives of Palestinians.