[WCUSP] Fwd: An open Letter to Critical Half on Silencing "Sister"......Please Post

[Odile Hugonot Haber]

I have written to Zeina Zaatari asking her what she would like us to do.
We could write a letter to Women for Women Int.and have it signed by members
I am awaiting her response.
Odile Hugonot Haber
____________________________________________________

> Please Distribute Widely
>
> 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
>
>
> Yousef
>
> Please visit
> http://wewillreturn.blogspot.com
>
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