Beyond the Body Count: Gender, Disability, and the Settler Colonial Logic of Genocide in Gaza

This paper examines the genocide in Gaza as a critical site for theorizing the intersection of settler colonialism, disability, and gender. It advances the premise that settler colonialism is a structure, not an event, manifesting through ongoing processes of erasure, dispossession, and bodily governance. Moving beyond frameworks that quantify violence solely through death tolls, the paper argues that the Zionist settler colonial regime enacts genocide through mechanisms of disablement that are deeply gendered.

Drawing on decolonial disability research and Native feminist theories, this paper highlights how Palestinian women with disabilities face compounded forms of violence while underscoring the urgency of dismantling settler colonial structures that produce disability as a strategy of elimination. The paper further affirms the necessity of decolonizing disability studies, positioning Palestinian liberation as integral to disability justice and offering insights that extend beyond the Palestinian context to global struggles against ableist, gendered, and settler colonial violence.