The struggle of Afro-Palestinian Shaden Mousa Qous, a 22-year-old artist, activist and aspiring lawyer from Jerusalem, is one of many cases which has been ignored, writes Shahd Abusalama.
We cannot let women’s history month pass us by without centring the stories of Palestinian women. Despite being systematically silenced by Israel through defamation, imprisonment, and even assassination, they have long been marginalised, even by mainstream Western feminism.
The struggle of Afro-Palestinian Shaden Mousa Qous, a 22-year-old artist, activist and aspiring lawyer from Jerusalem, is one of many cases which has been ignored.
In early January, just weeks before graduating from her Law degree from Birzeit University, Shaden was abducted by Israeli undercover police from her neighbourhood in Jerusalem’s Old City.
She was dragged to an interrogation then was put under house arrest for five days. However, after four days the Israeli Occupation Forces ransacked Shaden’s home, confiscating her phone and laptop and imprisoned her on charges of alleged incitement against Israel on social media.
She is no stranger to Israel’s tactics of imprisonment; her father Mousa and uncles are amongst over a million Palestinian men, women and children imprisoned since 1948. Palestinians are automatically tried at Israeli military courts where justice is unattainable as judges and persecutors are soldiers.
Shaden was due to finally be put on trial on 9 February, but that morning, her family home had caught on fire, killing her father.
As a prominent journalist, activist and executive director of the African Community Society in Jerusalem’s Old City, this loss hit many even beyond Palestine.
To add to the horrific loss Shaden had experienced, she was not released in time for her father’s burial. She was released later that day with expensive bail conditions.
Collective punishment
Since 7 October 2023, Israel has escalated its policies of collective punishment, mass surveillance and arrests across the occupied territories, even going to the extent of policing people’s emotions.
Expressions of sympathy for Gaza’s martyrs and survivors on social media are banned, while the army terrorises neighbourhoods and families of prisoners ahead of their release, restricting gatherings and criminalising joy.
Whilst mainstream Western media dedicated extensive coverage to Israeli hostages through dramatic storytelling that emphasises their personal suffering in Hamas captivity, Palestinian detainees like Shaden are not afforded the same empathy.
Western feminists who repeated Israel’s fabrication of rape claims, failed to condemn the well-documented record of torture and sexual abuse against Palestinian women, children and men in Israeli prisons. This is despite alarming reports by various local, international and even Israeli human rights organisations.
Like most Palestinian political prisoners, Shaden’s refusal to be silent about Israel’s crimes, and her political activity, is the very reason she has been targeted. Born in 2002 as Israel escalated collective repressive measures during the Second Intifada, she quickly followed in her father’s steps, becoming a prominent advocate for justice in Palestine.
Shaden has also been vocal about the occupation’s tactics of ethnic cleansing that fit into its expansionist plans, which she aptly explained in a recent interview with AlJazeera: “Israel’s ultimate goal is to create a disunited and fragmented Palestinian people,” in order to displace them and facilitate conquering Palestinian territories.
The artist and activist has highlighted how afro-Palestinians are an integral part of Jerusalem’s unique social fabric, which Israel has long targeted through land grabs, home demolitions, and revocations of residency cards.
Her legal background has also made her a central voice in challenging the international community for enabling the longstanding settler-colonial domination, and denying the Palestinians their legitimate right to resist, as enshrined in international law.
If not for colonial borders
Just weeks before her arrest and the death of her father, I spent an evening with Shaden in Barcelona, where my family has been temporarily displaced to from Gaza.
My friend Sharaf DarZaid had informed me of his visit with dancers from El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe, which Shaden was a part of. I insisted on hosting them for dinner, knowing how much it would mean to my family to receive visitors from Palestine.
Our meeting was a testament to the cruel realities Palestinians endure, making such encounters far easier outside our own homeland.
In a world without colonial borders, Shaden and I would have undoubtedly met in Palestine, if not through Sharaf and our shared passion for Dabke, then through our families.
Unlike us, our parents’ generation were able to travel between different Palestinian cities. A 45-minute drive separated Gaza from Jerusalem, a journey now severed by Israel’s ID System and tightening matrix of control since 1987.
As soon as Shaden mentioned her origins, my mum excitedly recognised her family. Zahra, Shaden’s paternal aunt, was one of my mum’s best friends. They met in 1983 soon after finishing high school at Al-Makassed Hospital of Jerusalem, where they trained as nurses for four years and became inseparable. Thanks to Zahra, my mum became a frequent visitor to Jerusalem’s African Community quarter where she enjoyed her family’s generous hospitality.
Unsurprisingly, the joyous encounter quickly prompted a video-call between Zahra and my mum.
Despite Israel’s deliberate fragmentation of the Palestinians, they never lost touch. My mum kept pictures of their time in our photo albums, at least until our home was set on fire and flattened during Israel’s genocide.
My mum also recounted the time we visited their home in the summer of 2000, when she secured a 3-day permit for me and my two older siblings. It was our first and only family visit to Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Despite being hardly nine years-old, I still have vivid memories of their home, the tasty chocolate Zahra offered us, and the terrifying sight of Israeli soldiers at Bab al-Majlis gate near their home.
Hope despite the chains
I can still hear Shaden beautifully singing, Cast Off Your Sandals, Moses, a resistance song by Rula Azar that I repeatedly played since her return from Barcelona. I later discovered she sang it continuously at Al-Maskobiyya Detention Centre, declaring, “They may imprison my body but never my soul”.
Whilst Shaden is expecting her next trial to take place on 26 March, there is no guarantee that her imprisonment won’t haunt her for years to come, like countless others.
Despite her ordeal, Shaden exemplifies Palestinian Sumud. She lives and fights by the conviction that “people are born free and equal,” the cornerstone of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Yet, unfortunately for her and oppressed communities worldwide, Western elites—including self-proclaimed feminists—fail to uphold this belief.
True feminism requires us to oppose gendered violence, settler-colonialism, and indigenous dispossession everywhere. Though, the demand for freedom, justice and equality for Palestinians like Shaden, should be universally recognised as simply being human.
Crucially, we must recognise that Israel’s carceral apartheid regime can’t end without dismantling its illegal occupation of Palestine.
Until then, it is on all of us to eradicate this exceptionalism that has denied Palestinians their basic rights for generations.
Shahd Abusalama is a Palestinian author, artist and scholar activist, based in Barcelona. In 2025, her book “Between Reality and Documentary” was published by Bloomsbury and SOAS Palestine Studies, exploring historical representations of Gaza in colonial, humanitarian and Palestinian documentary films. Her blog ‘Palestine from My Eyes’ was published by Lorusso Editore in ltaly in 2013. She co-founded Hawiyya Dance Company which showcases Palestine’s folkloric Dabke and music to international audiences.
Follow her on Twitter: @ShahdAbusalama
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