ABSTRACT
This article interrogates the weaponization of feminist and LGBTQ+ discourse in justifying Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, examining how Western imperialist powers mobilize gender-based narratives to legitimize settler colonial violence. Drawing on decolonial feminist theory and Third World Marxism, the analysis reveals how Zionist settler colonialism operates through what I term “the occupation of gender by genocidal means.” The article theorizes the concept of “(un)gendering” to explain how US-led imperialism reduces Palestinian life through accumulation by waste, simultaneously casting Palestinians as dehumanized terrorist subspecies while deploying gendered scripts of colonial saviourism around “vulnerable” Arab women and LGBTQ+ individuals. The article critiques post-structuralist approaches, particularly Judith Butler’s “cohabitation” paradigm, for failing to address material structures of settler colonialism. In contrast, it highlights Palestinian anti-pinkwashing organizing and revolutionary feminist praxis, demonstrating how anti-imperialist feminism emerges from national liberation struggle itself.
