Why Feminist Bioethicists Specifically Should be Vocal About The Destruction in Gaza

A guest essay from Dr. Zohar Lederman, Center for Medical Ethics and Law, The University of Hong Kong

The International Journal for Feminist Approaches to Bioethics’ (IJFAB) aims to increase attention to the social, economic, and environmental determinants of health. It represents at least to some extent feminist bioethics as a whole. While feminist bioethics is not practiced solely by non-male scholars, feminist bioethics feminist bioethics is committed to addressing the concerns of women as a traditionally vulnerable population that has been silenced and repressed across many societies throughout history, as well as other gender minorities. Feminist bioethics engages extensively with issues that non-feminist bioethics has tended to neglect: the moral value of relationships, caring, procreative ethics widely construed, epistemic injustice, etc. More generally, feminist bioethics aims to bring to the fore voices of other vulnerable populations that are often silenced. Feminist bioethicists have been comfortable combining their academic interests with political and social advocacy and activism, imbuing academic rigor with passion.

In this light, it is fair to say that in their professional capacity and by mostly being silent on Gaza, feminist bioethics has failed Palestinians in Gaza (and the West Bank, but here I will focus mainly on Gaza), particularly Palestinian women. This silence, in turn, amplifies the silencing of Palestinian women by Israel. If the political goal of feminist bioethics is indeed “of identifying and removing practices that discriminate against women and, in so doing, creating a more equal and just world for all,” it has done nothing of this sort for Palestinian women.

On World Bioethics Day, 2024, the editors of the IJFAB blog lamented the lack of engagement of bioethicists with bioethical issues associated with the genocide in Gaza. Several bioethics publications have been added since then, and both Bioethics and the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry have issued special issues on this topic (The Journal of Jewish Ethics is currently collating submissions for their own special issue on the topic, with participation of at least one bioethicist). There was also a workshop in Israel on bioethical issues arising from the genocide. In light of the near complete destruction of civic infrastructure in Gaza and the ongoing violence almost half a year following the so-called ceasefire in October 2025, however, their lament still stands.

One of the reasons given in the IJFAB blog post for feminist bioethics to get involved is its expertise and insight into epistemology, particularly issues of epistemic injustice, power, and the production and transfer of knowledge. Using the concepts of ethical loneliness and loneliness as lack of solidarity, bioethicists have indeed showed how even before October 7^th, 2023 Palestinians in Gaza, the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt), Israel, and the diaspora have often been stripped of their capacity as knowers who take part in humanity’s pool of knowledge, with their voices often being repressed, silenced and delegitimized..

The ongoing Israeli onslaught in Gaza is in many regards an onslaught against noncombatant women. A recent analysisin Ha’aretz newspaper lists the confirmed deaths in Gaza until the so-called ceasefire in October 2025. It only includes violent deaths as a direct result of military attacks and is thus an underestimation (a recent population-representative household survey that includes both violent and nonviolent deaths reveals much higher numbers). Out of 68,844 casualties overall, 30%, or 20,876, are women and girls, including 101-year-old Tamam El-Batash. This number also includes 35-year-old Hala Arafat, who was documented being buried alive under the rubbles of her home, and 5-year-old Hind Rajab, who waited for hours for an ambulance that never came and eventually died a terrible lonely death.

These 20,876 casualties are collateral damage, as no one argues that any of them were part of Hamas. The killings have persisted beyond October 2025: in January 2026 itself 524 Palestinians were killed and at least 318 injured. Specifically, 202 children and 89 women were killed between October 2025 and the end of February 2026.

Israel has used Artificial Intelligence systems to create thousands of targets across Gaza that were then engaged with virtually no human input, using 1-ton ‘dumb bombs’ that caused extensive destruction without much discrimination. It has also relaxed its military proportionality restraints, such that many more citizens could now be sacrificed to achieve a certain military objective. These have facilitated the mass targeting of residential neighborhoods and civilian objects, including schools and houses, which explains the high ratio of women and children to men murdered.

As of 31 January 2026, 171, 551 Palestinians in Gaza have been injured, many of whom women. Over 12,000 women and girls are experiencing long-term disabilities. Thousands of women are expected to face acute food insecurity in the Gaza Strip by April 2026. Access to healthcare is extremely limited, as only 18 of the 36 hospitals in Gaza are partially functioning.  This is particularly significant for prenatal care: Around 50000 women in Gaza are pregnant, with roughly 1400 requiring Cesarean section. At the same time, healthcare facilities offering sexual and reproductive healthcare services, specifically IVF clinics, have been destroyed or partially destroyed. More generally, according to the World Health Organization, “More than 500000 women of reproductive age lack access to essential services including antenatal care, postnatal care, family planning, and management of sexual transmitted infections.” And of course, women in Gaza lack safe housing, as most of them have been internally displaced and now live in tents in southern Gaza. This is what Sofia Calltorp, UN Women Chief of Humanitarian Action, said after returning from Gaza in November 2025: “Entire towns and neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Streets that once led to homes now lead to ruins. Everywhere we went, I met with women – In schools turned into shelters; in tents turned into safe spaces; in the ruins of their own homes.”

Women in Gaza, then, if they survive direct Israeli attacks, need to live with the loneliness of losing their families, friends, and other community members, and with the terrible realization that they cannot provide safe housing, potable water, and nutritious food for their children. Indeed, they realize that they cannot provide a better future for their children, and they tell us exactly what they need to reverse this trend:

“Everywhere, women told me the same things: They need the ceasefire to hold. They need food. They need cash assistance. They need winterization supplies, health services, and vital psychosocial support. They asked for work, for justice, for dignity, and for the restoration of their rights. They asked for their children to return to school.”

In light of this man-made destruction and unproportional harm of women, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel  has determined in March 2025, that Israel systematically used sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence to make current and future life in Gaza unbearable.

Feminist bioethicists can foster justice and stand with Palestinians in a myriad of ways, either as private citizens or professional ethicists working in their personal capacities or as the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB).

-       Donate to Palestinian women the material resources they need to regain their dignity and to restore justice and their rights, either directly or through aid organizations.

-       Protest against the current Israeli government through commercial boycotts, either directly, by boycotting products from Israeli settlements, or indirectly by boycotting commercial services that profit off the Israeli settlements such as Airbnb and Booking.com.

-       Pressure their own governments, especially those countries that have been supporting Israel militarily and financially to cut collaborations with Israel.

-       Enhance the voices of Palestinian women within academia and our own discipline, for instance by inviting them to share their stories and/or offer firsthand analyses of the ongoing violence in Gaza in conferences and in print. Palestinian women, in fact, have been on the forefront of resistance to the Israel occupation since its very beginning, espousing creative, mostly nonviolent means to stand and persevere in the face of repression and oppression.

-       Offer and help fund PhD studies and academic positions to Palestinian students and scholars to strengthen and assure future generations of female leaders, to enable them to return to Gaza as a storm.

-       Devote their own scholarly energy to health justice for Palestinian women, and hold to account those who either fail to mention the genocide in Gaza at the same time they call on bioethicists to pay more attention to war-related bioethical issues, or worse, those who maliciously depict a distorted reality.

For instance, they can rebuke Israeli bioethicists who claim that prior to October 7^th, 2023, “Gaza was lacking neither in human resources nor in funds,” so Hamas really had no reason to attack and Palestinians should not have complained. Already in 2017, Gaza was considered to be ‘unlivable.’ As late as September 2023, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory documented the grave living conditions in Gaza. Framing the blockade on Gaza as collective punishment, the Commission mentions the 142 Palestinians, including 14 boys and 5 women, whose bodies were being held by Israel, explicitly to function as bargaining chips. It detailed how the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has engaged in 5 major military campaigns in Gaza between 2006-2021 and additional multiple minor incursions before and after the 2005 disengagement. 34 such incursions occurred between January-August 2020 alone. Since 2008, these incursions have killed 2,749 civilians in Gaza, including 388 women, 240 girls and 606 boys, and injured 62,850. More than 52,000 houses were damaged. In addition to damage to body and structure, these attacks have led to the internal displacement of more than 600,000 people.

-       IJFAB itself should devote an issue to the suffering and injustices experienced by Palestinian women, as well as to their resistance. Such issue could engage either a specific pertinent topic such as feminist approaches to genocide or a specific feminist author who has contributed to genocide studies, justice, and the Palestinian question in general, e.g. Hannah Arendt. By eliciting compelling editorials (or blogs), IJFAB could also galvanize present and future bioethicists to integrate advocacy and activism in their scholarly work, and fight for what is right in both word and action.

-       FAB could formally denounce the continuing Israeli aggression. It is indeed shameful that no bioethics organization has publicly taken a stand thus far.

Feminist bioethicists have an obligation to unsilence the silenced voices of Palestinian women. Their professional commitments to justice, solidarity, and care towards the vulnerable would drive their activism, and their activism would in turn inform their academic work. But where is the line between scholarship and advocacy/ activism, and what is exactly doing ‘enough’ for Palestinians? The genocide in Gaza suggests that there might not be a line, and that no amount of work is enough.