Dr. Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh

writer. scholar. activist

[Mondoweiss @Mondoweiss]

Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

BREAKING: Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian-born green card holder and student at Columbia University, deeply involved in pro-Palestinian activism, has been arrested by HSI agents in Vermont in the middle of his appointment to become a U.S. citizen.

Madawi grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where his childhood was shaped by the Second Intifada. He experienced significant personal losses, including the death of his best friend during a confrontation with Israeli soldiers when he was 10 years old.

He later studied computer engineering at Birzeit University in Palestine (2008–2014) before enrolling at Columbia University in New York, where he pursued studies in philosophy at the School of General Studies.

At Columbia, he has organized protests and events addressing the Israeli genocide. Madawi has also emphasized empathy and dialogue as pathways to justice and peace. He has participated in initiatives fostering cross-cultural understanding between Palestinians and Israelis on campus.

Video below👇🏼

[Dr. Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh @ShokoofehR]

I asked @deepseek_ai what authoritarianism is and it told me "that's beyond [its] scope" and suggested we should "talk about something else." But I don't really want to talk about something else. #ArtificialIntelligence

[Dr. Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh @ShokoofehR]

I can't put into words how scary this is. I also want those interviewees to know that the first ppl to stand up for white supremacist antisemitism will be those of us standing up for Palestine. Because we know none of us are free until all of us are free.

[Dr. Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh @ShokoofehR]

I wrote a review of the propaganda @october8thefilm for @Mondoweiss. Even w/ all the money and people they had behind it, it's illogical and sloppy it is. There's smthng that I didn't write about that's been troubling me. 🧵 https://t.co/8p37LTA5el

[Dr. Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh @ShokoofehR]

The safer Jewish ppl feel here, the less likely they are to fight the USA and wkn Israel's military lifeline. Israel sells Zionism as a savior for Jewish ppl while actively conditioning them to strngthn the pillars that support v violent antisemitism in the USA: white nationalism

[Dr. Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh @ShokoofehR]

There is such intense societal pressure on us to be something MORE than "just mothers" alongside being (almost obsessively) caring about every single experience & feeling & behavior our child has. As if it isn't enough to raise our species day in and day out.

[Dr. Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh @ShokoofehR]

Every so often I think (again) abt how hard motherhood (however you identify as doing that work) is harder now more than ever.

[Nathan Goldwag 🇺🇦 @GoldwagNathan]

The reason every story on this makes sure to reference her ethnicity in the headline is to make sure that you know that you don't have to actually get upset.

[Mosab Abu Toha @MosabAbuToha]

My letter to the 2024 Athens World Poetry Festival after canceling my invitation:

Dear Sir/Madam,

This is Mosab Abu Toha and this email is about the shocking news that my invitation to take part in the 2024 Athens World Poetry Festival got canceled. This news was relayed to me via Dino on Facebook messenger.
I got the official invitation from Irini Papakyriakou, Artistic Director of the 10th AWPF, in February 2024 before Marie-Laure got it touch about the logistics of traveling to and staying in Athens during the Festival. There was no mention in the letter of including an israeli poet in my event. This can never be expected to take place, especially during such a horrific time for me and my people.
I respect Dino as a friend and as a publisher of my book in Greek, but I think I deserve an official letter from you as an organizer of the festival, the same way I got an official letter inviting me. My participation in a world festival shall never be contingent upon the presence an israeli guest with me. There is no logic about this, to bring a poet from a country that destroyed my home, kidnapped and tortured me, killed my friends and students, and unashamedly continues to do so. It’s against poetry to prevent a poet like me from sharing the story of me and of my people during such dark times.
Instead of providing the stage for poets who can speak about the destruction of their homeland over 76 years, instead of inviting poets who wrote poems about their wounds and their experiences of being displaced, kidnapped, and later exiled, you are disinviting a voice that has been screaming verse under the rubble of his house, under gunfire, while blindfolded and handcuffed, and while weeping for his suffering and bleeding family and friends and neighbors for more than nine months.
You have insulted poetry. You have insulted your festival. You have insulted humanity.

Mosab Abu Toha

P.S.

I have just seen your Facebook post. So the israeli poet canceled her participation and then you canceled mine, as if my poetry has no meaning except when read next to her?
And then, do you know that she was born in Yaffa, the city from which my four grandparents were expelled from in 1948. I should be born there. My father and mother and siblings too.
I should be writing about Yaffa’s oranges and not about the rubble of my home in Gaza or about my wounds and pain.
Maybe I wouldn’t be the poet the world needs to hear.

[Zach Schonfeld @zzzzaaaacccchhh]

In 40 years, Columbia will probably preserve transcripts of these WKCR broadcasts as a testament to the school's "rich tradition of activism"

[🥨 @marisapk]

I am watching a toddler die on a table in a field hospital in Rafah with half her face blown apart while listening to college students fight tears reporting on a police assault on their campus for protesting that, and I feel like I am losing my fucking mind.

[Joey Scott @joeyneverjoe]

Pro-Israel protester throws another firework *into* the encampment where people are. LAPD helicopter overhead.

[vivafalastin 🇵🇸 @vivafalastin]

ccny campus magazine livestream is genuinely incredible, they’re reading out police badge numbers + names and getting people in the chat to search complaints filed against them, then reading the complaints back out loud to the cops 😭

[Emma Mateo @emm_mateo]

A huge well done to the amazing student journalists @WKCRFM radio for keeping the community informed amidst the chaos, and sharing info about the protests when there was a clear effort to keep people away from what was happening.
7/

[Writers Against the War on Gaza @wawog_now]

@Princeton Hassan Sayed, a fifth year PhD candidate in economics, and Achinthya Sivalingan, a SPIA MPA second year, have been arrested, evicted, and permanently banned from the @Princeton campus, thereby preventing them from finishing their degrees.