Giving birth to a settlement: Maternal Thinking and Political Action of Jewish Women on the West Bank

On October 27, 1991, a Jewish woman named Rachel Drouk, a settler in the West Bank, was killed by Palestinian Intifada fighters. Twenty-five women spontaneously gathered at the site of the murder and held a vigil—a vigil that eventually developed into a protest settlement. The women, all of whom were married mothers, presented their initiative in maternal narratives: grounds, motives, and justifications for the act, and targets and anticipations were all related to the practice of care. This article conducts an artificial dialogue between the women's discourse and Ruddick's theory of maternal thinking, enabling deconstruction of the former and a critique of the theory of care.