Arab women
[:en]International Women’s Day: Weaving a common future[:]
[:en] Anyone who visited Sindyanna of Galilee in Kafr Qana
08/03/2017
[:en] Anyone who visited Sindyanna of Galilee in Kafr Qana
[:en]The Community Center, Baqa al-Gharbia, 8 March, 2016. “Woman is
An outstanding gathering organized by WAC-Maan and Sindyanna of the Galilee marked International Women’s Day at the Baqa Al-Gharbiyye community center on March 7, 2015.
Women in white, Jews and Arabs, and like-minded men, marched together along Ben Tsion Boulevard from King George street to the corner of Rothschild Boulevard and HaBima Theater. There was a lot of energy, with calls shouted out to the rhythm given by Asma Aghbarieh-Zahalka of Daam on the megaphone. She shouted: “chauvinism” and the marchers answer “irhal” (“go away” in Arabic). “Exploitation of working women – irhal, sexual assault – irhal, military strikes – irhal”… The Boulevard is too short, it turns out, for real protest. (“Irhal”, in Arabic, you may recall, is the word Egyptian protesters shouted out, calling Mubarak to leave.)
One after another, in the spirit of the social activists of the beginning of the last century, they stepped up onto the wooden crate on the side of Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard and cried out for a better future.
On March 8, International Women’s Day, we will organize and take to the streets to raise women’s struggles for justice on the public agenda.
The streets of Tel Aviv could not remain indifferent to the energy of dozens of working and unemployed women, both Jewish and Arab, who marched along a central chic boulevard on International Women’s Day 2011. As they marched, the women shouted slogans in Hebrew and Arabic calling for fair employment, condemning unemployment and poverty, expressing solidarity with the social workers (who have been in an ongoing labor dispute), and demanding both “bread and roses.”
In these very days, marking 100 years of Women’s International Day, a new chapter is being written in history by millions of women and men in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere. We salute the workers who first raised the banner of revolt in Egypt in 2008, who persisted and who now see the fruit of their sacrifices. This is the springtime of the peoples in the Arab world, opening a gateway of hope for all. At last we may dare to believe that we can determine our destinies, securing the right to live and work in dignity.
