Heba,
We’ve never met.
And, it must be quite odd for a stranger, a writer, to write you an open letter.
More than three thousand miles away from the United Kingdom in a local mainstay in my suburb of Boston, I can feel the look of the man next to me wonder quietly, why is this girl tearing up at this bar right now?
A mixture of emotions, quite honestly.
My phone has pinged a news alert that after seventy two days, you’ve ended your hunger strike. Every four or five hours, I made sure to do a news check, just in case. In the moment you ended your strike, an array of relief, joy and as an activist, confliction.
As I kept watchful eye on you from America, the eldest daughter, older sister in me thought often about if I knew you personally, what I might do or say. Part of me would whisper words of encouragement, perseverance and ancestral memory, part of me might try to force a massive platter of mansaf on you.
While often forgotten, women have played a significant role in hunger strikes as a tactic of nonviolent resistance. In fact, force feeding was introduced in prisons by the British government after suffragette Marion Dunlop’s ninety one hour fast and later became part of the resistance policy of suffragettes in both Britain and America. Across the Levant, hunger strikes have become heavily associated with Palestinian prisoners imprisoned by Israel with a mass hunger strike of about 1600-2000 prisoners being carried out in 2012. Scholar Malaka Shwaikh, in their paper analyzing the gendered element of hunger strikes, Women’s Experiences in Colonial Prisons: Engendering Hunger Strikes, asserts that hunger strikes adopted by women, particularly for the Palestinian cause or by imprisoned Palestinian women activists, have been more successful than those undertaken by men. The author expands on what we call necroresistance; where bodies forced into subjugation themselves become sites of resistance within the limited options available to them.
Women across the Levant have undertaken hunger strikes under various circumstances. In 1970, while difficult to find historical sources, women in Jordan undertook a hunger strike outside the Red Cross during Black September. In 2013, female prisoners at Adra Prison in Damascus, Syria launched a hunger strike to protest improper due process. They were handled with batons and electric sticks. Of course, hunger strikes have been a hallmark of Palestinian resistance against Israeli oppression, occupation, apartheid and detention with significant gains being helmed by women prisoners. In 1970 for instance, female prisoners at Neve Tirtza launched a nine day hunger strike for an end to the routine beating of prisoners, the end of solitary confinement and access to sanitary products from the Red Cross. In 1984, women prisoners led another hunger strike at Neve, as mixed gender hunger strikes spread across the imprisoned Palestinian population on the eve of the first intifada in 1987. As decades went on so did women’s involvement in hunger strikes up until today. In late summer of 2025, more than sixty Palestinian women went on hunger strike in the West Bank village of Umm al-Khair, demanding justice and the returning of the body of Odeh Hadalin.
Beyond women historically being at the forefront of hunger strikes what can never be lost, is the profound cultural statement being made when a woman, especially an Arab woman chooses to undertake withholding food from themselves. In our culture food is strongly tied to womanhood. We are raised to be caretakers, nourishers, sisters, wives, mothers, daughters around food. Food becomes a central place of gathering – and the role of women surrounding it deeply embedded within our families, communities and culture. To reject food for a prolonged period of time, is to simultaneously reject the cultural learning that emphasizes women as custodians and bearers related to food.
Culturally, since children this becomes so deeply ingrained in us. We are taught to believe that as women, our inherent value is tied to how we interact with the vehicle of food. When we actively, by choice, reject food, we as women are making the conscious choice to “lower” our “cultural value” as assigned to us. This extends beyond the rejection of the materialism of food. Prolonged periods without food can impact among other physical things, the long term ability to conceive. Achieving motherhood, another core tenet in the “womanhood” society and culture have raised us in, becomes another focal point in the cultural nuance of women undertaking hunger strikes. As the body begins to physically change and react to lack of food, other elements associated with woman and girlhood come into play. We are taught feminine presentation from a young age, as this begins to deteriorate, same as rejecting food for a prolonged period, by inherency, we are choosing to consciously lower our assigned aesthetic cultural value.
Rejecting these elements of culture is no light decision. Rejecting them to resist imperial governments and transgressions against the most basic of human rights, at the same time, one could argue, seems like an easy decision. As much as rejecting food and physical aesthetic reject structural patriarchy, this is precisely what makes it so powerful. In another breath, the culture has taught us, through history and women before us, that resistance, in all forms, but especially in the form of hunger strikes, is part of our culture as women.
And, I’m left to think that if I were truly your older sister, I would remind you that in your undertaking of a hunger strike, you are upholding the generations of women before us who used their bodies as sites of resistance when there were no options left. As much as I would want to break mansaf with you, I simultaneously applaud the heart I’m told has physically shrunk, but has expanded to hold the weight of the world and Gaza. Despite my worry, despite being an activist now, there was a time I was terrified to reject the culture in any way, shape or form. Afraid to decline food in someone’s home, afraid to look less than perfect — and here, in your strike, you have embodied the essence of Arab womanhood. I can only thank you, for your steadfast conviction, for setting such a deep example, that I have been forced to ask myself questions about my own conviction. You personify the legacy of resistance within the heritage of the women of the Levant. I can only hope, one day, to be half the woman you are.
Note: Activist Heba Muraisi went on hunger strike for 73 days in protest following her and seven other activists’ arrest for protesting against and breaking into a lab belonging to Elbit Systems, the Israeli military and weapons contractor. The activists’ demands include bail and the right to fair trial, as she and her fellow activists were facing a lengthy pre-trial detention, and removing the ban of Palestine Action, with the British government designated as a “terrorist organization,” thus criminalizing all activists. Muraisi and her fellow hunger striker, Kamran Ahmed, ended their hunger strike on January 14, 2026 after the UK decided not to award Elbit Systems a British defense ministry contract.
Jess A
Jess is Mexican American / Arab heritage writer, poet and human rights activist from South Texas. She has been published by the International Human Rights Arts Festival, Missing Perspectives and Radical Catalysts Journal among others. She is nominated for a 2025 PEN / Pushcart prize and holds a masters in international conflict resolution from Brandeis. Her work focuses on intergenerational trayuma and genocide.
