dangshen

Proud Anti-Zionist

[dangshen @dangshen1]

@susanabulhawa Agreed, i have no tears left to consider the overhyped anti semitism. Aligned with predictable Western exceptionalism, who are still arguing about whether zionism is racism, WTF?? 80+ years and they still don’t know?

[Dr. Ezzideen @ezzingaza]

6/

I do not know whether anyone reading this has participated in these demonstrations. But if you have, there is something I want to tell you.

I say this as someone who has watched his city being destroyed, who has lost many people he loved, and who now lives far from the place where he was born.

I understand anger.

I understand what it means to feel unheard, to watch people with power make decisions that determine the course of your life without ever having to live with their consequences.

I understand the desire to shout when no one seems willing to listen.

And I believe you have every right to protest. To organize. To refuse to accept injustice. To demand a future in which you can live with dignity.

But do not allow your anger to make innocent people pay for decisions they did not make.

Do not turn the streets where you hope to build your future into places of destruction.

I have seen what happens when a person loses a home. I have seen what happens when a street disappears, when the places that held your memories no longer exist, when an entire city becomes something you can recognize only in photographs.

And I have learned that destroying a place can take a moment, while rebuilding it may take generations.

Do not destroy with your own hands the very places you are fighting to live in.

And if you choose to carry the Palestinian flag, I ask you to remember something.

Behind that flag are millions of human beings.

People who have names, families, memories, and ordinary dreams. People who want to wake up without fear, return to their homes, raise their children, and grow old in the places where they were born.

Our flag is not an empty symbol onto which every political struggle can be projected. It belongs to a people whose lives cannot be reduced to an image of resistance.

Perhaps the Palestinian flag has become a universal symbol of resistance.

But the Palestinian people do not dream of resisting forever.

We dream of the day when we will no longer have to resist simply to live.

#SurvivalTestimony #Paris

[dr. mohammed hamad - Gaza @Medo198518]

I have a confession to make...

For a long time now, I’ve been feeling something strange. It isn’t depression or sadness. It’s something I can’t explain, and I don’t know when it began.

When I told a friend about it, they said they felt exactly the same way. I thought it was a coincidence, until I realized that we were all carrying the same bitterness.

You see them wandering the streets, walking as though they’re going somewhere, but you can’t tell whether they’re thinking about something or simply walking because they have to. Nothing sparks their curiosity anymore. Nothing surprises them. Someone might read the first line of a news story about an entire family being killed, put their phone away, and ask how much a kilo of tomatoes costs.

There is nothing surprising about that anymore.

I think about everything we’ve witnessed over the past three years, the faces we memorized before losing the people behind them, the images we’ve learned to scroll past, and the news stories we no longer bother to finish reading. I remember how we once mourned tragedies that had nothing to do with us, like the tragedy of Rayan, the Moroccan child.

How did we become so accustomed to the news of our own deaths?

My God, what has happened to us?

In the tents, people don’t have the luxury of stopping. They must search for water in the morning, find a way to afford food, count what little money remains, and worry about what they’ll do if one of their children falls ill tomorrow.

A grief that never ends.

We’ve grown tired of complaining, too. We already know what others will say, and we know we’ll repeat the same words tomorrow. The tents will remain tents, and what we’ve lost won’t return simply because we talk about it. So silence feels like the lesser harm to our hearts.

Two weeks ago, I asked an eleven-year-old boy selling tissues in the market why he wasn’t going to school.

He looked at me and said:

“And even if I went to school, what would change, sir? My mother and I wouldn’t find anyone to feed us. How would you and your education help me then?”

I didn’t know what to say. Damn it, he was right.

At eleven, he had already learned that feeding his bedridden mother, the only person he had left, mattered more than school, his future, or his dreams.

But there’s something else we rarely talk about.

Even when you decide to speak about your pain, you hesitate. You begin telling your story, then remember that the person listening has lost their home and family, or endured something worse than you have. So you shorten your story and say you’re fine.

Everyone wants to talk, but who has any room left to listen?

Two friends might sit together, each desperate to speak, only to exchange the same familiar question: “How are you?” They give the answers they’ve grown accustomed to giving and leave, while the words they came to share remain trapped in their chests.

I’ve given this phenomenon a name: **“Herd Numbness.”**

I don’t know if the name is accurate, or when all this began. I only know that we’ve seen too much, lost too much, and been forced to keep living, even on days when we weren’t sure we’d make it through.

For a long time, I’ve felt something strange. And whenever I try to understand it, I look around and realize that everyone else feels it, too.

I don’t know whether we’ve grown accustomed to what happened to us, or whether we simply no longer have the strength to feel it as deeply as we should. I don’t know if this unsettling silence brings relief, or if words themselves have nowhere left to go.

All I know is that we are no longer who we used to be.

And the strangest part is that when I look around, no one seems surprised.

[dangshen @dangshen1]

@AminSharaf The sickening irony is the IDF is happy for this film to promote these weapons of war. IDF anonymity allows no serious guilt or remorse; in fact much ‘PTSD’ is about soldiers missing their sense of superiority and power to decide life or death.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Crucially important video: the legal proof that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza from this year's Nobel Peace Prize Winner

[susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى @susanabulhawa]

these are the "persecuted Jews" you've been been brainwashed into believing were peaceful, innocent, victims. in fact, they are jewish supremacist demons who've been trampling and pilfering our lives, our land, our labor, our heritage, our very souls.

don't you dare talk to me about moderating my language. I never again want to hear a word about jewish trauma or jewish feelings. It's not enough that a small percentage of Jews are actually decent, caring human beings. It's just not enough. call me whatever you want. I literally cannot bear this anguish I feel for our people forced to live under the sadistic boots of these fucking parasites who've sucked our blood dry.

[Propaganda In Focus @PropagandaFocus]

As Russophobia spirals, an important corrective here from Professor Michael Northcott – "Propaganda and Britain’s Long War on Russia" – published in @PropagandaFocus
https://t.co/gBVOaCbhSs

[The Palestine Chronicle @PalestineChron]

A BMJ article documents recurring sexual violence against Palestinians, including rape, genital torture, humiliation and abuse of women and children.

Key Takeaways

A BMJ opinion article cites a UN investigation concluding that sexual and gender-based violence had become part of Israeli security forces’ “standard operating procedures” toward Palestinians.

Among 59 Palestinian journalists interviewed after Israeli detention, 17 reported sexual violence, while more than half of 165 detained children reported witnessing or experiencing sexual abuse.

The authors warn that sexual violence contributes to forced displacement, causes lasting physical and psychological harm, and persists amid serious failures of accountability.

https://t.co/cn3Bkct8Ld

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

How Israel Conquered the Latin American Right

From Bukele to Bolsonaro, the region’s conservatives have learned to love Zionism.

https://t.co/kk8iTAfeQp

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

If you want a serious demolition of the "Russia fixed Brexit" narrative, read these.
Warning: will deeply offend Guardian readers.

https://t.co/UyeO2b4Skb

https://t.co/rWm57U2f0P

[dangshen @dangshen1]

@ori_goldberg His words of wisdom and his immense courage will always be an inspiration to me.

[Carlos @agent_of_change]

In today’s Guardian, Gaby Hinsliff warns that Russia, Iran and China are coming for us, and worries we may have to sacrifice our liberal principles and become a “securocracy” to ward off these Eastern malevolents.

Aside from a bit of hand-wringing, the column would sit comfortably in the Telegraph or the Daily Mail. It’s a classic example of the liberal press being used to prepare the public for war, and to justify the erosion of civil liberties at home.

The article is overflowing with inconsistencies and tropes.

US bombers have spent the summer flying from a British airbase to bomb Iran, and the Guardian tells us that Britain “wants no part in the war” but that “we cannot quite escape the consequences”.

Then the alleged plot against RAF Fairford, in which Burnham says there are “strong indications that Iran played a part”. None of these “indications”, of course, have been stated. I rather suspect Tehran has bigger fish to fry right now. But even if the allegation turned out to be true, the substantive point is that Britain is a potential target because of its participation in Trump’s criminal war. Stop that, and any threat disappears instantly.

The same goes for Russia. Britain has spent the last four and a half years as one of the most enthusiastic sponsors of the proxy war in Ukraine, and now feigns surprise that Moscow isn’t terribly favourably disposed to us. Again, stop the war and the threat disappears.

“Russia, Iran and China” are threats to Britain only to the extent that Britain has made them threats. Reviving a George W Bush-style “Axis of Evil” serves solely to justify the drive to war, the vast increase in military spending that Trump is demanding of his NATO vassals, and the erosion of civil liberties at home.

Hinsliff slips in a sentence or two warning against xenophobia, and reminds us that Jewish refugees were interned as “enemy aliens” in 1939. Well done – liberal consciences duly eased. But the whole thrust of the piece is to prepare the Guardian readership for a harsher, more paranoid, more militarised Britain. It accepts the war and the enemy list, and simply asks that the repression come with “safeguards”.

In summary, this is part of a wider attempt to reconcile liberalism with the rising tide of militarism and fascism.

[Abubaker Abed @AbubakerAbedW]

This is a heart-shattering story.

Heartbreaking how the women of Gaza are the subject of the worst racism, gender-based violence, and injustices. Yet, feminist organisations and the world are doing nothing about it.

https://t.co/NRAXru8Smj

[The Hind Rajab Foundation @HindRFoundation]

🚨The #HindRajabFoundation has filed an Article 15 communication with the ICC calling for an investigation into Israeli officials, medical professionals and the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) over the death, torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees at Sde Teiman. The submission argues that the conduct documented in the filing amounts to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide under the Rome Statute.

➡️ More → https://t.co/qhgnpNEhuX

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

I never asked to know what a dismembered child looks like. Israel imposed that knowledge upon me.

I never wanted to know what it looks like when military explosives blow an infant's head off. I only know it because Israel forced me to know it.

The reason the Gaza holocaust hit westerners so hard is because it punched through our shitbrained western supremacist narcissism and our vapid mainstream culture and shook us violently awake to something real and terrifying.

All of a sudden the idea that our bombs are killing people in the middle east was no longer a vague abstraction sitting in the periphery of our awareness. It was a reality hitting us right in the guts in the middle of the day while we casually scrolled our phones, forcing us to run to the toilet to vomit up our lunch.

It made it personal. We were being kicked in the stomach over and over again by the state of Israel with the backing of our own western governments. The abuse of the Palestinians wasn't something that was happening exclusively to the Palestinians; to a much smaller degree, it was also something that was happening to everyone who witnessed it.

Westerners aren't accustomed to such confrontations. We are accustomed to bustling around in our mind-controlled dystopia with our first world problems and our neuroses and distractions, our attention going into treats and screens and our consumerist preferences and the petty dramas playing out in our respective social circles. Then all of a sudden we find ourselves in the bathroom puking up our sushi because our phone had just shown us the most unimaginably horrific thing we have ever seen.

And we were at all times aware that all the nausea and horror and rage and disgust we experienced when witnessing the Gaza holocaust happened because of the real material actions of real material people. The Israelis were deliberately causing as much devastation as possible to advance their longstanding goal of forcibly transferring all Palestinians out of Gaza. Our leaders were deliberately stalling and equivocating from behind their podiums to buy Israel enough time to make Gaza uninhabitable. We all understood that the waking nightmare we were witnessing was not some natural disaster that was passively occurring; it was being actively inflicted by people who were fully aware of what they were doing.

That's the sort of thing that changes you as a person. Changes your whole worldview. Changes your politics. Changes your beliefs. The average westerner needs to do a lot of internal restructuring to truly reckon with the Gaza holocaust and all its implications.

That, I think, has been the biggest reason why the genocide of the Palestinians has gotten so much attention and sympathy. It's because its live-streamed nature caused it to affect us in ways other acts of mass military slaughter usually don't.

Westerners are so propaganda-addled and indoctrinated that we are largely apathetic to what our bombs are doing to human bodies on the other side of the world. It's only when we are given some skin in the game, as in the Vietnam draft, that we start caring in any politically significant way. Gaza gave us skin in the game in the way it entered into our lives through our electronic devices and showed us things that were so jarring it left a permanent mark upon our lives.

Gaza forced us to look, and forced us to see, against all the efforts the propagandists have expended trying to keep us from noticing such things. That's why this thing isn't going away. People are only getting angrier and angrier. The empire has spent three years scrambling around unsuccessfully trying to get us to close our eyes again, and it keeps failing and failing and failing.

[Sharif Abdel Kouddous شريف عبد القدوس @sharifkouddous]

"We are not superheroes; we are not capable of enduring forever. We are human beings with limits – who still don’t know if we will live to see the next day"—Palestinian journalist & @DropSiteNews contributor in Gaza @Rashaaboujalal1 writes for The Key

https://t.co/hxAAsbgCyj

[Muhammad Shehada @muhammadshehad2]

My latest: "With or without 7 October: Israel's endgame was always ethnic cleansing"

Here I examine Israel's long obsession with emptying Gaza out, & how in the months leading up to Oct 7 Israeli leaders were openly fantasizing about flattening Gaza
https://t.co/1nNFGOaj89

[samaa • سما @samaakhullar]

This essay by Eman Basher about her mentor and friend Dr. Refaat Alareer absolutely broke me yesterday. If you have a minute today, read it. https://t.co/R4a5viE1tw

[Noura Erakat @4noura]

In this piece for @bostonreview - I try to connect as many dots as possible: between genocide, war profiteers, real estate, techno-fascists, Zionism, and the attack on international systems.

https://t.co/DY6QOLmPlA…

#Gaza #Nakba #Trump #TechnoFascists

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

There is a sentence that almost never appears in Western coverage:

Under international law, a people under military occupation have the right to resist that occupation.

This is not a controversial claim.

It is in the United Nations Charter.

It is in the Geneva Conventions.

It has been affirmed repeatedly by the UN General Assembly, explicitly referring to "all available means, including armed struggle."

It is the same principle invoked to describe French resistance to Nazi occupation as heroic rather than terrorist.

It is so uncontroversial that it doesn't need to be stated when applied to almost any other occupied people in history.

When applied to Palestinians, it disappears.

Not because it became false.

Because the people who control which sentences appear in the news made a decision about which populations are permitted to have legally recognized rights that are spoken aloud in prime time.

That decision is political.

The silence around it is also political.

The pretense that both are journalistic is the lie inside the lie.