An Open Letter to the Editors and Staff of Critical Half (A Publication of Women for Women International) on Silencing Their 'Sisters'
On July 17, 2007 I received a letter from Cerise Glen, the Managing Editor of Critical Half indicating that Critical Half would like to publish an article titled Letter to Gaza and Resistance in Lebanon that had been published formerly by The Coalition for Bodily and Sexual Rights in Muslim Societies and Women for Women's Human Rights in Turkey (http://www.wwhr. org/yayin_ 3.php?detay= 23 ). The Coalition had submitted the whole collection to Critical Half and the editors selected the piece I wrote. The editor mentioned that this piece "tells a very important story that needs to be shared with others." The welcome letter they sent discussed the three-step review process which included a first-round board member reviews, followed by a second round of "another review of your article that focuses on style, grammar, and syntax," and finally "the third step, your article will be proofread for a final time, and the corrected document will be sent to you for your final approval." Unlike most academic journals, a contract indicating the above mentioned process, the issue the article will be published in, and a copyright release were included at the onset of the agreement. Unlike chapter or contract publications, the process did not mention a final approval to be had by Critical Half and its editors.
To be very honest, I was surprised of the initial decision by Critical Half staff to include this article. Knowing well the political angle that is often presented in Women for Women International which generally tended to steer away from anything potentially critical of Israel , I was naïve to think perhaps there was a desire to engage with the issues at hand. Women for Women International states that it works to support women in countries of severe conflict situations and wars. Nonetheless, WWI has never worked or attempted to work with Palestinian, Lebanese or Syrian women who had been living under occupation and war for many, many years.
Perhaps I was driven by some political naïveté, or perhaps I thought that it is time for the audience of this organization to hear the all too often silenced voices of women from Lebanon and Palestine . As such I decided I would make every effort to work with the editors and improve the piece adding necessary footnotes, references, and explanations to the points I was making. I made every effort to respond to the editors' comments and suggestions in part because I believed that it would be a good chance for the audience of this journal, a relatively sheltered and privileged one, to hear the echo of women's voices from Lebanon in mine. I was not interested in any personal gain or professional credit, given that the article had already been published and Critical Half is not a scholarly journal.
The second-round of comments that were supposed to focus on style, syntax, and grammar included suggestions to articulate certain arguments more clearly with support and evidence in order not to alienate the audience. One of the editor's comments stated: "De-politicize the opening paragraph. This can be done with more neutral language so part of the audience isn't offended." To be honest this comment infuriated me. The article was about people's lives under war conditions. It had witness narratives from under the rubble and the bombs. It started out with a letter that I wrote while in southern Lebanon hiding from F-16 warplanes and battleships. The letter was a statement of solidarity and disgust at the international community's reaction or for that matter in-action regarding the daily killings and siege of our sisters in Gaza .
How in the world could a war situation be depoliticized? Doesn't that sound like an oxymoron? Why should I, at the receiving end of this violence for over 30 years, be asked to depoliticize my article, to actively misrepresent my point of view, and to worry about "offending" part of an audience? One could only conclude that the comment was about removing any criticism of Israel . The only part of an audience that would or could be offended is one that supports Israel 's wars on Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians. Not only that, this comment is about silencing the voices of women that this esteemed organization and journal is supposedly amplifying to the Western world in order to raise money to support.
The statements I made in the first paragraph had already been made by numerous commentators, analysts, and scholars in Israel and in the Western world. It discussed Israel 's pretext to the war and the fact that the plan of this all-out attack had been in the works for a while. These statements were not heard as often in the US , which is another point that I make throughout the article and thus the need for writings like mine that introduce the view from the ground from under the rubble. Critical Half then actively attempts to follow-suite of the US popular media being criticized in the article prioritizes supporters of this war, by silencing my voice. This does lead one to conclude that Critical Half is afraid of the reaction it may get given the support that Israel receives in this country and thus the larger audience. It seems to me that the Journal thought that speaking truth would offend "parts of the audience." It seems to me that offending a whole population and its women who have already lived under and witnessed wars since 1948 was an okay "collateral damage" that the Journal was willing to inflict in exchange for financial support. Critical Half folks were not worried about offending the 1200 and rising civilians who died in this war (50 Percent of whom were women and children and 34 percent were children under 12 years old). They were not worried about offending the one million internally displaced who had to flee from their homes and lived in schools and on the streets for over 34 days during the war and that about half of those are still with no homes and no schools more than a year later. It seems that they were more worried about their financial situation, the risk of losing funding, than they were about supporting women victims of war. And whereas I acknowledge that financial considerations are not a joke in the ability to provide support, nonetheless it cannot be used as an oppressive tool to silence not only my voice but that of all the women represented in it.
Even though I was furious, yet my response was tamer indicating that: "this is not a neutral piece by any means and I would not want to de-politicize anything as the whole article is political; removing this language will offend other parts of the audience, so I stand by it as is." I actively worked on the other comments for clarification and send in the edited piece. The response was swift with no conversation or discussion, a simple rejection to publish the piece due to "At this stage, it does not seem likely that we will be able to reconcile your reservations about making the required changes to the article with our need to have the changes made, both of which are valid positions".
In the Forgotten-Ism ( http://www.incite- national. org/issues/ warinfo/forgotte n_ism.pdf), Arab American Feminists discussed the ways in which Zionism operates to silence any criticism of Israel in a variety of ways including ignoring and excluding our voices. Other strategies include demonizing Arab women, throwing the anti-Semitism charge at every critique presented of Israel as a silencing mechanism, and isolating activists away from their natural allies. The process of silencing and exclusion by feminist circles in the US , by publications and conferences, has become all too common practice. Scholars are being targeted in their universities and in their livelihood by campaigns to deny them tenure and publications. Women and women activists in and from my region have been actively silenced and not only by patriarchal structures, but by western feminists and institutions and by wars and colonial ventures for a very long time.
As Arab and Arab American feminists, we have struggled to get our voices across and we will continue to scream out until your ears are deafened and your tactics are obsolete.
If you are interested in reading the updated version of the article in question, please visit the National Council of Arab Americans Website at: www.arab-american. net or http://arab- american. net/War%20and% 20Women.pdf.
Zeina Zaatari, PhD
Arab Feminist living in the US
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