Where is the Mizrahi–Palestinian border zone? Interrogating feminist transnationalism through the bounds of the lived

Abstract

Gloria Anzaldúa describes the border as an “open wound where the Third World grates against the First and bleeds. And before a scab forms, it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country – a border culture”. She proposes that this “third country” is where South/South feminist coalitions are possible without the mediation of US–European feminism. For Anzaldúa, the border zone between transnational “hyphens” connotes fluidity and movement across boundaries. In the case of Euro-Israel, the volatile gender/race/nation South/South coalition among subaltern Arabs is forced upon both Mizrahi women and Palestinian women who have Israeli citizenship. These women do not want to be in this “third country”, which emerges from the dispossession of their lands, languages, and cultures. But they are stuck.