On April 30th, 2026, we held the 32nd session of our Political Economy Teach-in Series: “What’s Feminism Got to Do With It? Imperialism and Sexual Violence in Palestine” with Nada Elia.

This session examined the documented record of Israel occupation’s systematic pattern of sexual violence as a tool of discipline and torture against Palestinians. It situated this record within logics of settler colonialism to expose the hypocrisy of Global North feminism’s selective outrage for Palestinian women (and Muslim women generally), who are treated as subjects that have to be liberated from the Arab/Islamic patriarchy, but not from imperialism and occupation that shapes their lives daily.

Dr. Nada Elia is a Far Diaspora Palestinian scholar-activist, author or editor of six books including, most recently, Palestine and Feminist Liberation (2025) and Greater than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, inter/Nationalism, and Palestine (2021). Her next book, Falastiniyyat: A Century of Palestinian Feminisms, is forthcoming in October 2030. Nada is a member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective, and has previously served on the Steering Collectives of AWSA (the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association), RAWAN (the Radical Arab Women’s Activist Network), and INCITE! Feminists of Color against Violence. Nada is also a past president of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies and she is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at Western Washington University.

Our South Feminist Political Economy Teach-in Series aims to strengthen intergenerational dialogue and build a cross-regional feminist constituency. The series covers various topics to interrogate and strengthen understanding of issues shaping conditions in the Global South.

We have curated a special reading list of resources on the topic of this session, available on our South Feminist Knowledge Hub. It is designed to deepen your understanding of the themes and inspire meaningful discussion – featuring powerful contributions from authors and thinkers across the Global South.