Intersectionality of Gender, Ethnicity, and Religion Against Political Prisoners the Last Days of Hannah Senesh and Laila Qasim

Abstract

Hannah Senesh and Laila Qasim were two political activists, one Jewish and the other Kurdish, whose identities were manipulated by previous regimes in the early and late twentieth centuries: the Nazi and the Iraqi governments. As a result, the narratives of these women have been recounted in terms of historical incidents. In this article, however, we seek to examine the factors behind Senesh and Qasim’s imprisonment and death sentences through philosophical lenses and literary theories – intersectionality (Kimberlé Crenshaw), women’s identity (Simone de Beauvoir), sexual politics (Kate Millett) and subaltern discourse (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak). We also highlight the theoretical aspects and present the manufactured political ideologies from different ethnic and religious backgrounds that constructed gender identities in the context of these women. Our close reading of these issues shows the existential aspect and also the constructed ideologies that discriminated against women and led to these women being placed behind bars.