As part of the Australian Women’s History Network’s broader commitment to advocacy, the AWHN National Convenors proclaim our solidarity with the Palestinian people and add our voice to calls for immediate ceasefire and an end to decades of violence, occupation, and displacement.
Globally, women of colour have demanded greater action from feminist activists and scholars, especially regarding the Israeli regime’s assaults upon Palestinian women’s rights. In making this statement, we heed their call.
The Australian Women’s History Network is an organisation committed to scholarship and advocacy on issues that relate to feminist, gender, and women’s history. Among our members are historians whose research specialities include war, violence, genocide, colonialism, apartheid, slavery, displacement, migration, health, and international law. The AWHN National Convenors refuse to be silent on matters about which our members have deep historical knowledge and understanding. The violence in Gaza is gendered, and these histories are happening now.
Moreover, as feminist scholars living and working on First Nations Countries in a settler-colony that has been built through dispossession, we feel a duty to speak publicly about the violence in Gaza. We have been horrified to witness the genocidal violence that has included a process of sophicide and scholasticide, which the Palestinian Feminist Collective describes as “the deliberate annihilation of Indigenous knowledge traditions and the physical destruction of centers of knowledge.”
We also affirm the right to protest and the commitment to academic freedom within our universities. The AWHN National Convenors denounce the intimidation directed towards Palestinian academics and threats made to the academic freedom of those who support a Free Palestine. In Australia, these campaigns have targeted decolonial feminist scholars, including the attacks on author, academic, and activist Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah.
The AWHN National Convenors call on all AWHN members and other feminist scholars and historians to follow the students’ lead by supporting divestment and cutting ties with Israeli universities and institutions. As part of a broader need for universities to be anti-racist, we also call for the rejection of anti-Palestinian racism and for the support of Palestinian students and academics. We encourage all AWHN members and other academics to support boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. This is our responsibility, as we are called upon by Palestinian academics and universities to do so.
Australian Women’s History Network National Convenors
The AWHN National Convenors support the students’ protests, the statements about a Free Palestine from the National Tertiary Education Union, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and the Aboriginal Legal Service, and the critical work of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network and the Jewish Council of Australia, among other organisations.
AWHN members are signatories to significant statements published by Overland:
- Statement from historians in Australia in solidarity with Palestine;
- Statement of solidarity with Palestine from academics in Australian universities;
- Statement of solidarity with Randa Abdel-Fattah;
- “The students must be defended, the university reimagined”: a letter from Australia’s university academics and professional staff; and
- Statement from 11 Palestine solidarity encampments: Students for Palestine Australia.
We thank the Australian Women’s History Network members and supporters who have generously given their time and knowledge to share their feedback about this statement.