Feminist Peacemakers in the Holy Land
When Rula Daood heard a woman in a Tel Aviv bakery say, “They deserve it. Let them all die,” she couldn’t stay silent. It was 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, and the newspaper on the counter showed the faces of Gazan children killed in Israeli airstrikes “Until then I had always remained silent, but I couldn’t anymore,” Daood recalled to her interviewer in the book Women Write Hope: Life Stories of Jewish and Arab Women Waging Peace Amidst War, co-edited by Ghadir Hani and Dror Rubin ($30, published with the support of a coalition of nonprofits including NCJW and Women Envision Hope).
“I was done being a second-class citizen,” said Daood. That confrontation, one of many transformative moments described in the anthology, changed the trajectory of Daood’s life. As a result of this exchange, Daood, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and one of 21 interviewees profiled in this compilation, would ultimately leave her career as a speech therapists and go on to become co-director of Standing Together, one of the leading organizations in Israel advocating for shared society, peace, justice, and equality.
Women Write Hope was developed with the help of Israeli anthropologist Prof. Amia Lieblich in memory of peace activist Vivian Silver, murdered in her kibbutz on October 7. In her memory it gathers the life stories of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian women—Israelis, Palestinians, citizens and non-citizens—who have devoted their lives to coexistence and equality. Each was interviewed by women trained by Lieblich herself in narrative methodology, producing a tapestry of voices that blend personal memory, political courage, and feminist vision.
Many of the women in Women Write Hope describe a moment when silence was no longer bearable. For some, it came as a public confrontation, like Rula Daood’s in the bakery. For others, it was the steady accumulation of everyday discrimination. Co-editor Ghadir Hani, one of the most powerful voices for peace and shared society in Israel today, remembers various moments of awakening during her youth in Akko. Both editor and interview subject in the book, Hani described the time she noticed that Jewish schools had new classrooms and clean bathrooms while Arab schools were overcrowded and neglected. “I realized there was discrimination and I wasn’t willing to accept it,” she says, and as a result, she organized a demonstration for equal rights. Like many of the Palestinian interviewees, she describes living with everyday racism. “Sometimes I would get on a bus and people would look at me and say, ‘Maybe she has a bomb,’” she recalled. “I would get off and cry my eyes out.”
She also described her feminist feistiness as a teenager, such as when her principal told her to delete critical lines from her graduation speech about the need for equality, but she delivered them anyway.
One of the book’s recurring insights is that peace begins within. Artist and filmmaker Kefaia Masarwa, whose award-winning film “Portrait” explores femicide and the cycle of violence, is a survivor of an attempted murder by her ex-husband; she told interviewer Orna Ashkenazi, “Some people say that the message ‘Peace Begins Within Me’ is just a slogan. But it isn’t for women like me… We don’t have inner peace.” Her words encapsulate a core theme of Women Write Hope: that the path to collective peace runs through inner healing, self-dignity, and mutual recognition.
Similarly, Dr. Yeela Ra’anan, an Israeli academic and director of the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages, talked about that process of inner change. “The main question I ask myself and others is whether we consider ourselves equal to others and not better than them.” Her reflection captures the emotional labor of equality. Peace, Women Write Hope suggests, is not only political but also personal: it requires unlearning superiority and rediscovering empathy.
At the same time, the real-world political work also often comes with a price, especially for women. Interviewees have been ostracized, labeled, threatened, and fired for their activism. Dr. Julia Chaitin, a social psychologist and peace researcher, told her interviewer, Tamar Shalit Barlev, about her social isolation in her close-knit kibbutz when she called for an end to war. In 2007 she posted a petition against the siege on Gaza in her kibbutz dining room. A few signed, most did not. But Chaitin persisted. Her experience is one of many painful encounters that interviewees described in the book.
The anthology also addresses the particular role of women in peacemaking. For Bedouin attorney and co-Director of Itach Maaki Women Lawyers for Social Justice Dr. Hanan El Sana feminism and peace activism are inseparable. Founder of the first women’s center in an unrecognized Bedouin village, she recalls being treated with suspicion at Israeli universities. Two decades later, she broke a symbolic barrier by becoming one of the first Arab speakers on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street during the 2023 protests against judicial overhaul. “At first there was fear,” she writes, “but I said, I’ve introduced a new voice.”
Many women see gender and social equality not as a separate issue from peace, but as the foundation of it. Women Write Hope is a much-needed chronicle of inspiring women who have dedicated their lives to doing what current male leaders seem to consider impossible. In a time when leaders insist there is “no partner for peace,” Women Write Hope proves otherwise. It is a testimony to the women who refuse to be enemies, and a reminder that true feminism, rooted in listening, equality, and care, is already a form of peacemaking.
Elana Sztokman is a writer and activist living in Israel. Her most recent book is In “My Jewish State: How I was trained in pro-Israel advocacy and learned to talk back to my culture, find my own humanity, and fight for peace.“
