Agon Karakashi

They plan. And Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners ~ Qur'an 8:30

[Dr. Simon @goddek]

🚨🇮🇱 I CAN‘T STAND THIS PROPAGANDA ANYMORE.

Yes, I’m glad that Israeli hostages have been freed. And just as glad that Palestinian prisoners have been released. But a few things need to be made clear:

FIRST: It’s absurd that Israelis are called “hostages” while Palestinians are labeled “prisoners.” That’s propaganda. It’s the same thing: human beings who’ve had their freedom taken away, on both sides.

SECOND: The released Israeli hostages appear well-fed, smiling, not a single kilo lost. Clearly treated well under the circumstances. In contrast, the Palestinian prisoners look like they’ve just walked out of a death camp: emaciated, scarred, aged by years of abuse. Tortured. And no one talks about it.

THIRD: Everywhere I read: “Hamas killed all the women, only men were released.” That’s simply a lie. A malicious one. The women who were still alive had already been released in earlier exchange deals. But facts don’t matter when it’s time to push the next hate-driven narrative for $7000.

FOURTH: Everyone talks about a handful of Israeli hostages, but no one mentions the tens of thousands of Palestinian hostages abducted by Israel. Many of them children. Imprisoned without charges, without trial.

FIFTH: And no one talks about the tens of thousands of civilians killed in Israel’s genocide.

SIXTH: While the ‘ceasefire’ (it’s just a matter of time until Israel breaks it again) is being celebrated, radical Israeli settlers are still violently stealing land in the West Bank; with full impunity. They break international law daily, and no one seems to care.

SEVENTH: Politicians across the world are shamelessly cucking for Israel, offering blind support while refusing to even mention the crimes committed in Gaza, the ongoing apartheid in the West Bank, or the endless aggression toward neighboring countries.

EIGHTH: The same governments and media that claim to stand for human rights, international law, and “never again” are now either silent or fully complicit: funding, arming, and excusing an apartheid regime in real time. When Palestinian lives are dehumanized, erased, and bombed into dust, suddenly all those values vanish

So no, I will not take part in this propaganda. I will not whitewash Israel’s crimes.

And yes, I still stand by my words: A STATE LIKE ISRAEL SHOULD NOT EXIST.

[Brandon Stanton @humansofny]

“When I entered Gaza the Israeli military had a rule: I was only allowed to bring in three kilos of food. As I was weighing out protein bars, trying to get under the limit, I said to my husband: ‘How sinister is this?’ I’m a humanitarian aid worker. Why would there even be a limit on food? I’ve worked in many places with extreme hunger, but what’s so jarring in this context is how cruel it is, how deliberate. I was in Gaza for two months; there’s no way to describe the horror of what’s happening. And I say this as a pediatric ICU doctor who sees children die as part of my work. Among our own staff we have doctors and nurses who are trying to treat patients while hungry, exhausted. They’re living in tents. Some of them have lost fifteen, twenty members of their families. In the hospital there are kids maimed by airstrikes: missing arms, missing legs, third degree burns. Often there’s not enough pain medication. But the children are not screaming about the pain, they’re screaming: ‘I’m hungry! I’m hungry!” I hate to only focus on the kids, because nobody should be starving. But the kids, it just haunts you in a different way. When my two months were finished, I didn’t want to leave. It’s a feeling I haven’t experienced in nearly twenty years of humanitarian assignments. But I felt ashamed. Ashamed to leave my Palestinian colleagues, who were some of the most beautiful and compassionate people that I’ve ever met. I was ashamed as an American, as a human being, that we’ve been unable to stop something that is so clearly a genocide. I remember when our bus pulled out of the buffer zone. Out the window on one side I could see Rafah, which was nothing but rubble. On the other side was lush, green Israel. When we exited the gate, the first thing I saw was a group of Israeli soldiers, sitting at a table, eating lunch. I’ve never felt so nauseous seeing a table full of food.”

-------------------------------------------------------

Aqsa Durrani is a pediatric doctor and board member of Doctors Without Borders USA, with nearly twenty years of experience in humanitarian projects. During our interview Aqsa repeatedly expressed a desire to center the voices of her Palestinian colleagues. To this end I’ve spent the past week collecting stories from the Palestinian staff of Doctors Without Borders in Gaza. I will be sharing these stories over the next several days. I’m so grateful for the time that these people gave me; they were sleepless, hungry, traumatized, and often working 24-hour shifts. Because of the unreliable internet connection their images are sometimes grainy. Their words, however, will be crystal clear.

[Ghassan Abu Sitta, Chair of Conflict Medicine AUB @GhassanAbuSitt1]

Gone is a genocidal president too hypocritical to admit it. And in comes a genocidal president who wears it as a badge of honor.

[Agon Karakashi @AgonKarakashi]

@xdNiBoR @varunkhurana99 Maybe is similar to mine? Im doing :8888

[Abby Martin @AbbyMartin]

I’m out! Free Palestine!

[kos_data @kos_data]

🚨 Albanian engineer Mira Murati has been appointed as the interim CEO of OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT.

Previously, she held the position of Chief Technology Officer at the company.

She was born in Vlore, Albania.

[United Nations @UN]

Babies are #NotATarget.

Schools are #NotATarget.

Children are #NotATarget.

Civilians are #NotATarget.

Hospitals are #NotATarget.

Humanitarians are #NotATarget.

Healthcare workers are #NotATarget.

They must be protected.

At all times.

Everywhere.

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

It is incredible that those who refuse to call for Israel to stop killing Palestinian children, call for a peaceful demo to be stopped in London.
Because they find the march "offensive", but they don't find the killing of Palestinian infants offensive.

[𝙀𝙠𝙧𝙚𝙢 𝘼𝙑𝘿𝙄𝙐 @ekrem971]

"Sikur Allahu t’i dënonte njerëzit për shkak të mbrapshtive të tyre, nuk do të linte asgjë të gjallë në Tokë. Por Ai i lë ata deri në një afat të caktuar dhe, kur atyre u vjen afati, ata nuk mund ta shtyjnë atë e as ta shpejtojnë, qoftë edhe për një çast."

(Nahl, 61)

[non aesthetic things @PicturesFoIder]

❤️

[Agon Karakashi @AgonKarakashi]

@PiersUncensored @Byoussef @piersmorgan @TalkTV

[Sam Parker 🇺🇲 @SamParkerSenate]

Stump a ziônist using this one weird trick:

https://t.co/TZTJ9dWpj4

[Eddie Deen @TheDeenShow]

“When they are told, “Do not spread corruption in the land,” they reply, “We are only peace-makers!”Indeed, it is they who are the corruptors, but they fail to perceive it.” Quran 2:11

[Agon Karakashi @AgonKarakashi]

@BenMFreeman Horrifying is the Israel genocide agains Palestinians.

This is humanity.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

It shocks me that I keep coming across in my threads variations of the following tweet:

"The Palestinians have it within them to rise up against Hamas to free themselves. Or Hamas can willingly surrender. Two real choices there."

This view isn’t just being promoted in bad faith by Israeli apologists. It seems to resonate with ordinary people who presumably know very little about the histories either of Palestine or of settler colonial movements such as the Zionist movement that founded Israel.

So let’s delve briefly into both.

First, settler colonial movements are distinguished from standard colonialism – like British rule in India – by the fact that the settler population wishes not just to steal the native population’s resources but to replace the native population itself.

There are lots of examples of this: European settlers dispossessed native peoples in what we today call the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, for example.

The definition of genocide in international law exactly describes what those Europeans did to the local population: mass killings; inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of all or part of the native community; preventing births within the local population; and forcibly transferring native children to the settler population.

European settlers who today call themselves Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders never had to account for their crimes against those native peoples. Which possibly explains how commonplace the tweet above is – and why European countries and their settler colonial outgrowths are today lining up againt the rest of the world to support Israel as it intensifies industrial genocide in Gaza.

The truth is the “western” world order was built on genocide. Israel is just following in a long tradition.

Settler colonial movements do not always end up committing genocide. In South Africa, a heavily outnumbered settler colonial population came to an “accommodation” with the native population: apartheid. The white group took all the resources and privileges. The black group was allowed to live but only in ghettoes and squalor.

In such circumstances, peace is possible only when the settler colonial project is abandoned, power is shared and resources distributed more equitably. This happened, imperfectly, with the fall of apartheid.

The final model for a settler colonial population is to drive the native population over the border, in an act of ethnic cleansing. This was Israel’s preferred option in 1948 and again in 1967, when it decided to expand its borders by occupying remaining Palestinian lands in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

The Palestinians in Gaza are an object lesson in the various ways a native population can be abused by a settler colonial movement.

Most are refugees or descended from refugees from Israel’s ethnic cleansing operations of 1948. In other words, their family homes are in what we today call Israel. They were driven off their lands into a tiny enclave, to be ruled for the next 19 years by Egypt.

When Israel seized Gaza during the 1967 war, it had to fall back on the second settler colonising option: apartheid. So it turned the enclave into an open-air prison, or – if we’re going to be more honest – a long-term concentration camp.

Gaza was a larger – and, with Israel’s 16-year siege, increasingly much harsher – version of the townships that held the native black populations in apartheid South Africa.

What we are seeing now is Israel finally recognising that the apartheid model has failed to subdue the Palestinians’ desire for freedom and dignity.

Unlike white South Africa, Israel is not looking for peace and reconciliation. It is revisiting other settler colonial options.

In the current attack on Gaza, it is implementing a mixed model: genocide for those who remain in Gaza, ethnic cleansing for those who can get out (assuming Egypt finally relents and opens its borders).

None of that has anything to do with Hamas. The most one can say is that Hamas’ resistance has forced Israel’s hand. It has had to abandon its siege-apartheid model – the long term imprisonment of a population with no resources, no freedom of movement, no clean water, no jobs.

Instead, it has returned to the tried-and-tested formulas of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Hamas is a symptom of the decades of trauma Palestinians in Gaza have been through, not the cause of that trauma.

Palestinians overthrowing Hamas, or Hamas surrendering, would not turn Gaza into a Dubai-on-the-Mediterranean. Palestinians there would still be prisoners, though possibly allowed slightly better conditions.

If you doubt that, look to the West Bank, which is ruled not by Hamas but by the supine Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas. He calls security cooperation with Israel – suppressing on Israel’s behalf the Palestinians' craving for freedom – a “sacred” duty. His biggest aspiration is a diplomatic solution that creates a severely circumscribed Palestinian mini-state.

If Israel can’t allow freedom to the West Bank under Abbas, how is it ever going to give freedom to tiny Gaza, even without Hamas, after the United Nations declared the enclave as fundamentally “uninhabitable” in 2020?

Israel could never allow the Palestinians out of their Gaza prison because their rapid growth in numbers is seen as a threat to Israel’s Jewish majority.

Remember: settler colonial populations are there to replace the native population, not to make peace with them, not to shares resources, not to give them their freedom.

Israel is doing the only thing it knows how to do. And as long as the West is cheerleading, that includes genocide.

[Agon Karakashi @AgonKarakashi]

@CraigMurrayOrg That Al Jazeera documentary is one of the best investigative journalism.

[𝙀𝙠𝙧𝙚𝙢 𝘼𝙑𝘿𝙄𝙐 @ekrem971]

Ne trishtohemi vetëm nga pamjet, ndërsa ata nuk kanë luksin ti kalojnë ato faqe.
Ne psherëtijmë e rrotullohemi në komoditet, ndërsa ata nuk kanë frymë as për ofshama.
Mëshirën Tënde, Zot kërkojmë, se njerëzimi ka mbetur pa të!

[Agon Karakashi @AgonKarakashi]

@piersmorgan The way you are portraying current situation, everything started on oct 7, which is not true.

[Agon Karakashi @AgonKarakashi]

@piersmorgan Lets we first condemn Israel then, for the past 75 years, killing, displacement & land theft, esp. for the last 16 years for making Gaza an open air prison. Let us first condemn Israel for it, then we can condemning Hamas for Oct 07, and Israel for the genocide that its doing.