to bomb iran, feminist-ly?

examining Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for Woman, Life, Freedom

“ZAN. ZENGEDI. AZADI.”  Woman. Life. Freedom.

Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu—War Criminal, Genocidaire, and the fan behind the flames of all-out war with the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI)—repeated the slogan of the Iranian Woman, Life, Freedom movement on Israeli national television this week. 

“It has never been weaker,” he says of the Iranian regime. “This is your opportunity to stand up and let your voices be heard.” “This,” of course, being the Israeli bombings currently being carried out in the Iranian capital of Tehran—a place where 10 million people call home. “As I said yesterday and many times before, Israel's fight is not against the Iranian people,” Netanyahu continues. “Our fight is against the murderous Islamic regime that oppresses and impoverishes you."

His use of Iranian women’s slogan in this conversation was strategic. Netanyahu is not speaking to the actual women and working people of Iran in this address, despite his convincing. He is signaling instead to:

• The diaspora Iranians, so desparate for whiteness they will sell their soul to Zionism; 

• Judeo-Christians across the West, who see Islamic fundamentalism as a "cultural issue," not a mirror to the extremism rising in their own communities; 

• All women—but especially Jewish and white women—suffering under economic, racial, and gender injustice daily in the United States.

He is telling these audiences: By supporting Israel, you have done your feminist duty. By supporting Israel, we will see regime change in Iran in your lifetime. By supporting Israel, you actualize Woman Life Freedom: the movement liberating Iranian women from the shackles of theocratic gender apartheid.

Allow me to be the Iranian bitch who pops that bubble for you.

Supporting Israel's aggressive bombardment of Tehran under the guise of a feminist win is nothing short of idiotic. Whether that looks like an individual’s social media sign-off or an entire country's continued involvement in military operations in Iran—*coughs* mine!—framing war as feminist tells me everything I need to know about the person behind the microphone.

The truth is, Netanyahu and the Israeli government's use of the human rights abuses experienced by the Iranian people is a bastardization. Even his invocation of the Persian, not the Kurdish, translation of the Woman Life Freedom slogan is also telling, if you know the history of the movement itself.

Luckily, I do.

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Jin Jîyan Azadî: A Kurdish Women’s Movement, rooted in Revolutionary Marxism

Iran’s 2022 uprising was ignited by the disappearance and murder of Jina "Mahsa" Amini, the Kurdish-Iranian 22-year-old abducted by Iran's morality police for "improper hijab.” This ignited protests across Iranian and global cities, with Iranian women publicly mourning Jina by cutting their hair and going unveiled in public. This moment comes after nearly 50 years under the regime of the Islamic Republic, where women are required by law to remain covered and veiled (preferably, wearing chador) in public space.

While violence by morality police is enacted against women of all backgrounds in Iran, Jina’s identity as a Kurd is important. Her name itself is important—Jina means “life-giving.” That’s why the slogan for said movement actually comes from the Kurdish language, which represents an oppressed (yet fierce) ethnic minority in Iran and throughout Kurdistan (the homeland of the Kurds, spanning Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey). 

The Kurdish people have experienced ethnic cleansing, persecution, genocide, occupation, and more at the hands of these governments—most especially the Iranian regime. It is this history of Kurdish oppression which necessitated the Kurdish People’s Defense Units: the Women’s and Men’s revolutionary forces within the YPG. While these units formally organized in the aughts, women and men alike have organized guerrilla campaigns to secure Kurdish land since the '90s. 

As I've written previously, the women fighters in these units were the subject of Western fantasy and obsession.¹ A "Middle Eastern" woman...without a head covering? Holding a machine gun, in army attire, and still has better eyebrows than me? It couldn't be!² The Western world (led by publications like National Geographic) became obsessed with this supposedly-secular and militarized version of a Middle Eastern woman, but they were generally uninterested in what she had to say. And in the cold of the Kurdish mountains, surrounded by comrades, the slogan in question was born: Jin. Jîyan. Azadî. Woman. Life. Freedom.

These words are not empty. Woman, Life, Freedom directly reflects Jineolojî: the feminist principle behind the Kurdish Resistance and the social structure of autonomous Rojava, created by the Kurdish resistance leader Öcalan (yes, a man, but stick with me here). In his eyes, “the first oppressed class, the first colony and nation are women’; therefore, the success of the Kurdish Resistance and the Kurdish people are contingent upon the status of its women. Especially considering the particular flavor of patriarchy which peppers the entire Mediterranean and Central-to-South-Asian region, this sort of outlook is extremely refreshing. And with Jineolojî came structural feminist success in Rojava—an autonomous state run on democratic confederalism, decentralization, gender equality, and cultural, ethnic, and religious pluralism. In this way, Kurdish feminism and the Jin, Jîyan, Azadî slogan reflect actual strategy: liberate women first, and all will fall into place.

It's only logical that this feminist cry would be tacked onto the disappearance and murder of a Kurdish-Iranian woman, especially when at the hands of the Iranian regime. The use of Jin Jîyan Azadî in rebuking her murder is a direct call to her identity and language, and a political response to the Iranian government's interest in suppressing Kurdish existence. The Iranian government does so regularly through refusing to acknowledge Kurdish names, Kurdish customs, or Kurdish identity, all while systematically attacking their way of life and reducing their access to land.

Starting to see how hypocritical it'd be if Netanyahu acknowledged the Kurdish slogan?

“Regime change,” social media “diplomacy,” and other buzzwords!

As always, however, let's be fair about this. 

The Israeli military, in this week's propaganda slop, has been releasing dozens of messages in the Persian language. Persian is the dominant language in Iran (53% of Iranian nationals), and the Israeli government is clearly trying to reach powerful, privileged Iranians (who are more likely to speak Persian) in their messaging over Kurds, Azeris, or any working person in Iran. Even on TikTok, the Israeli (and Iranian, to my chagrin) people are doing this work on their behalf. 

@tatitatitati4lifeIsrael stand with the Iranian people against the IRGC #פוריו #פוריוישראל #persiantiktok #makeiranpersiaagain #iraniansstandwithisrael #fyp

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In the comments, Israelis and Israel supporters flood the comments of Iranians' posts, fleeing Tehran. "We love you guys!!! We want regime change just as much as you!! We will be together when this is all over!! #freeiran" These comments are exchanged behind iPhone screens, largely between wealthy, disengaged diaspora members who've rarely known war in their lives. Sympathetic buzzwords of "regime change," "Iranian women," and "Zan Zangedi Azadi" are being used to sell us something. In addition to yesterday’s Doomsday message to New York City, Netanyahu is using every tool at his disposal to enter the United States into a war with Iran. And, for whoever it works for, he's trying to sell it as a feminist project.

@danielleyablonka#freeiran 🇮🇷🙏🏼🇮🇱

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You might be pulling your hair out here. "But Jade," you groan, "How could anyone not see that bombing the very women resisting compulsory hijab daily in the streets of Tehran—the city where the most revolutionary activity has been happening—is the opposite of feminism." 

I agree. But here's the problem: they’ve done this before, many times. And it always works.

The “Oppressed Muslim Woman”

“...The women of Afghanistan and the women of the Middle East at large, they actually experienced [sic] true oppression. They actually experienced what happens when your nation doesn’t protect and defend freedom. But meanwhile, here in the United States, the greatest country on the face of the Earth, we just watched female Olympic athletes representing our country who felt that we had an oppressive nation, who received Nike and Subway endorsement deals for ragging on our great country that does ensure freedom and the protection of that freedom.” — Tomi Lahren, 2021

Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren shared the above statement on Fox & Friends in 2021, a week-morning television program on the conservative U.S. channel, Fox News. While the program covers everything from sports, to entertainment, to weather, the talking heads that day discussed the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Lahren, being the chosen “expert” brought in on the topic, used her platform to simultaneously frame all “Middle Eastern” women as victims of oppression while chiding American women for any feminist critique of the U.S. Empire. 

This quote encapsulates the myth of the “oppressed Muslim woman,” which Benjamin Netanyahu, Israelis and Israel supporters on TikTok, and Lahren alike use as supposed context for their conquests in the Muslim-majority world. This narrative not only neatly slots the women of the globe into “us” and “them,” but it also wields the less-relevant discourses of “culture” or individual expression (e.g. hijab use) in order to distract from conversation on imperialism, occupation, or systemic oppression. In one swift move, Lahren is able to silence both the American feminists and the Middle Eastern women she references in favor of “freedom,” bringing the focal point of the conversation right back to the might of American liberalism. In wartime moments like the one we’re living through now, the oppression of the homogenous “Muslim woman” is spotlighted as a good-enough, even feminist reason for military conquest. 

It was Lila Abu-Lughod’s germinal article, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others,” which famously problematized this narrative in 2002. Just as the United States invaded Afghanistan, Abu-Lughod drew a roadmap of the rhetorical intentions behind a phrase like “Muslim women need saving:” she reveals a purposeful movement away from the realities of colonialism and imperialism, instead toward the discussion of religio-cultural elements (mostly on the bodies of women) in order to find inherent, patriarchal fault in a Muslim-majority society, leaving the West to get off scot-free.

Abu-Lughod draws particular issue with a speech made by Laura Bush ahead of the U.S. invasion, which qualified the military intervention by discussing the perceived oppression of Muslim women and girls. “Instead of political and historical explanations, experts were being asked to give religio-cultural ones. Instead of questions that might lead to the exploration of global interconnections, we were offered ones that worked to artificially divide the world into separate spheres--recreating an imaginative geography of West versus East, us versus Muslims, cultures in which First Ladies give speeches versus others where women shuffle around silently in burqas.”³ Abu-Lughod saw this speech as a purposeful prevention of “serious exploration of the roots and the nature of human suffering in this part of the world.”⁴

She also stresses that this narrative is used in order to bring White women into agreement with nationalist and imperialist projects performed by the United States. This plays upon the “global sisterhood” often touted in whitestream feminist spaces, which is approached as less of a practice and more of a ruse. Sisterhood often looks more like White paternalism, as in the case of Laura Bush.

In Bush’s remarks, “her speech reinforced chasmic divides, primarily between the "civilized people throughout the world" whose hearts break for the women and children of Afghanistan,” but “most revealingly, the speech enlisted women to justify American bombing and intervention in Afghanistan and to make a case for the "War on Terrorism" of which it was allegedly a part.”⁵ Two decades later, the liberal concept of “women’s freedom”—fulfilled via individual choices, bodily politics, or voting rights—continues to dominate comparative feminist discourse. In the case of Tomi Lahren, zero consideration is paid to the impacts of war and occupation on the Muslim women they purport to speak for; they must be very individually strong to withstand their cultural imprisonment, as women like Lahren would have you believe. The only solution to liberate them, it seems, is the destruction of the culture itself. Bush, famously, concurred with this point: "Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes,” she said. “They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment... The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women."⁶ Surely, that would turn out exactly as promised by the United States.

Now, doesn’t all of this sound a bit too familiar? Didn’t we just hear identical arguments in support of a world war with Iran—this time, out the mouth of the globe’s #1 Genocidaire?

If Iran Bad, Why Not Destroy Permanently? (An Idiot’s Logic)

Muslim women from across the ummah experience this kind of violent homogenization and reduction into stereotypes. However, Iranian women particularly are often caught in the crossfire of comparative feminist discourse—so much so that it’s been memed.⁷

(More on Charli XCX here.)

The quickness with which life changed for Iranian women has been the subject of American and broader Western fascination since the 1979 Revolution. However, like the images of Kurdish revolutionaries, this interest only goes skin-deep. 

Rather than seeing the rise of the IRI as the result of a religio-nationalist project—similar to many of the Christofascist regimes spanning the West, arguably including the United States—it is blamed on “culture.” The Iranian people then look primitive in comparison, and Westerners are granted distance from the political factors which lead to a Revolution like that in 1979 Iran. Instead, books and films like Not Without My Daughter (1987/2001) and Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003) became the subject of American fascination. The audiences consuming these pieces of media—though entertaining, and often created with good intent—then treat the real experiences of Iranian women as a sort of true crime. This further distances American society from the conditions under which such a theocracy could rise, and fuels the “us vs. them,” “East vs. West,” Class of Civilizations narrative taking us to war, right now. 

What does this have to do with Israel, though?

Let me provide a personal example. 

I had the pleasure about a year ago of being, essentially, subtweeted in the Times of Israel. (I guess it's like they say: The true award for a journalist is not a Pulitzer.) 

The person writing about me, most likely, did not realize she was criticizing the political principles of an Iranian American woman. She did, however, provide me with a fascinating example of exactly how Iranian women's plight is used by the West. It’s meant to distract from organizing here at home while providing a cart blanche for war, occupation, and genocide in "the Middle East." 

Below reads her quote, in reference to a nonprofit calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and a free Palestine:

The invocation of Woman (not en, AN!!!) Life Freedom made me laugh in horror, in the same way I did yesterday, standing a foot from my TV while watching Al Jazeera. Some lady I didn’t know spent her time was criticizing a young woman who’d been the first to bring the local abortion fund (in all its 30-year history) to Iranian cultural celebrations in her city. I had designed merchandise, social media graphics, even event programming specifically honoring the Woman Life Freedom movement—including the slogan in its rightful Kurdish. I dutifully stood in the cold for Yalda and Norooz, speaking with mothers and teenagers alike about Plan B. I had raised money for abortion access by speaking with Iranian American community members—those who immediately saw the similarities between Woman Life Freedom and the fight for abortion rights in the states. 

And while I was doing this community work, a Jewish American woman—far from the violence of the Iranian regime—invoked my name, my reputation, and the feminist uprising in Iran to defend the Israeli genocide in Gaza...in the Times of Israel. To denounce taking a feminist stand against…genocide. It was offensive to me, it was offensive to the Iranian women and men who have died to protest in the streets, and it was offensive to the Free Palestine movement. Lest we forget, the genocide of Palestinians (not least, the Nakba) is the impetus for all of this. The Gazans killed daily while in line for food have been blurred among Israel and the United States’ many, many distractions.

With his ceaseless calls for world war with Iran, Netanyahu has essentially pulled the same narrative trick as this bored woman—just on a much more horrifying scale. 

What Feminism Loses

No war with Iran is a feminist position. No war with Iran is a humanitarian position. No war with Iran, if you purport to care about the Iranian people, is the only possible position to take. Gender liberation in Iran has not and will not be an immediate process, just like it has not and will not in the United States.

But the good news is: it’s already been happening. In the streets of Tehran—again, where the Israeli military has focused its targets, and where Donald Trump has demanded a full evacuation and unconditional surrender—women's hair can be seen.

@staywithjude#tehran #fashiontok

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Now, I refuse to treat the above TikTok casually. While, to Americans, this may appear nonchalant, the shirzanān / شير زنان (lion women) in these images are risking life, limb, and liberty to appear unveiled in the public space. Their defiance of the regime serves as an individual act of resistance—one far braver than any “protest” (read: organized ‘both-sides’ rally, controlled and operated by the Metropolitan Police Department) I’ve attended at the Supreme Court.

And following months and years of such protests—and the deaths of even more women, girls, men, and boys who dared to unveil or defy the regime using protest, song, journalism, or art—unveiled women are now more common (and more protected by passersby in the face of morality police) in Iranian society.⁸ Young Iranian women are more likely to remain single for longer and move out on their own.⁹ Iranian women’s hair is actually visible on Iranian streets, especially in Tehran. Girls sing, yell, call out to their sisters on crowded public transit and in busy airports. Elder chadoris offer exhausted smiles of support. It’s dangerous, of course, but there’s safety in numbers. Those numbers are growing.

The people-led gender revolution in Iran is working, but it needs time. As the cars stream out of Tehran and social media users share heartbreaking photos of their last glimpses of their apartments, I'm left to wonder if the Woman Life Freedom movement will be going with them. Of course, the bedrock of this movement is in Kurdistan, and in Jina's home region. But it is in the capital city where activists, artists, and everyday people can push the boundaries of the regime further than anywhere else. It's from Tehran that many of the images of the uprising were first released. It's in Tehran that artists create installations, paste guerrilla art, and tack up leftist and feminist propaganda.¹⁰ It is Tehran which, for the last three years, has given the breath of life to the Woman Life Freedom movement. Tehran has been a site of hope. Now the near-million Iranians inhabiting the capital city are fleeing the terror inflicted by Israel and the United States, with nowhere else to go.

If Benjamin Netanyahu continues to sell his bombardment of the Iranian capital as part of Woman Life Freedom—and if Iranians, Americans, and Israelis alike believe him—then the only person left to cry the slogan of Kurdish-Iranian resistance will be him. 

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A free Palestine and a free Iran are fundamentally intertwined. Woman Life Freedom / Jin Jîyan Azadî / Zan Zengedi Azadi / Donna Vita Liberta. 

• Donate to the UNRWA to directly support Gazans;

• Donate to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund;

• Donate to the International Rescue Committee, helping refugees from Gaza, to Sudan, to Iran, to Ukraine; 

• Follow the Global March to Gaza;

• Support the Palestinian Feminist Collective;

• Read this article on the current plans for “regime change” in Iran;

• Support these Iranian creators:

  • @yesMaamz: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjW7dGCs/

  • @Yeganeh: https://www.tiktok.com/@littleyeg/video/7515471342460865835?_r=1&_t=ZT-8xLVsWLUvqn

  • @fatemeow: https://www.tiktok.com/@ffatemehh/video/7516244577813056798?_r=1&_t=ZT-8xMpDk5GeEw

  • @ashwhyy: https://www.tiktok.com/@ashwhyy/video/7515574791311478062?_r=1&_t=ZT-8xMp9B2NLs7 (full disclosure I don’t know if she’s Iranian but she’s cool so follow her regardless)

  • @dellara: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTj7kxMFs/

• And something light-hearted, because it’s impossible for an Iranian woman to not go baddie mode:

  • https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTj7k5dX1/

1. Şi̇mşek, Bahar and Joost Jongerden. “Gender Revolution in Rojava: The Voices beyond Tabloid Geopolitics.” Geopolitics 26 (2018): 1028.

2. Yes it could! We will eat you up every time. :)

3. Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2013. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 785.

4. Ibid: 784.

5. Ibid.

6. Laura Bush. 2002. “Mrs. Bush's Remarks on International Women's Day at the United Nations.” Office of the First Lady, George W. Bush White House Archive. New York.

7. Thank you Koob for sourcing this meme from the dredges of the X account I am now locked out of!

8. Afary, Janet. 2022. “From Bedrooms to Streets: The Rise of a New Generation of Independent Iranian Women.” Freedom of Thought Journal 11: 1-28.

9. Ibid.

10. Karimi, Pamela. 2024. Woman, Art, Freedom: Artists and Street Politics in Iran. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.