I grew up in Jabalia refugee camp, listening to my mother’s stories about its resistance during the First Intifada, its resistance fighters, and its stubborn defiance of the colonial regime. Today, Jabalia is my only hope.

Genocide is Israel’s latest policy, alongside ethnic cleansing and apartheid, in its settler colonial project of eliminating the Palestinians.

Israel’s use of rape as an instrument of war is nothing new. What’s unique is that it has been at war with the Palestinians for 74 years.

Zionism has always used sexual violence as a primary tool to eliminate indigenous Palestinians, and maintain the Israeli settler-colonial regime.

Challenging patriarchal notions in Palestinian society is not a separate issue from ending Zionist settler-colonialism. In fact, it has been precisely through gender violence that the colonial project has thrived.