Fatima Rahiman

Online Learning Programmes Manager at the University of the Witwatersrand.

[Zara Zhar @Boudicca61AD]

In a time when so many voices rise for Palestine, there is still nothing more powerful, nothing more sacred, than hearing the words of Palestinians themselves — voices that have been silenced, distorted, or spoken over for far too long.

A few days ago, I stumbled upon a series of fragments that stopped me where I stood. Written by Ziad Abu Zayyad @Ziadaz26 from East Jerusalem, "The Seventy-Eighth Year of an Ongoing Nakba" is not just testimony. It is a window into a living heart and soul.

Through nine profound parts, he invites us onto his balcony overlooking a sky heavy with smoke and fire. He lets us feel the weight of a new calendar measured in massacres and mourning. He shows us love during genocide — tender and haunted, like fire meeting wind. He speaks of death not as an end, but as something Palestinians have learned to stare down, repeating through tears and defiance: “Death died, but we did not die.”

These are fragments straight from the beloved land — intimate grief, the shame of surviving, the quiet strength of a child in Cairo begging to return to her ruined home, and the stubborn beauty that refuses to be erased. Reading him feels like both an honor and a wound. His words slip beneath the skin: raw, poetic, deeply moving, and achingly human. They fuel my anger, my compassion, and my commitment to keep speaking about Palestine.

If you haven’t read them yet, please don’t wait. There are nine parts so far, and such precious testimonies can vanish in the blink of an eye. Step onto that balcony with him.

For Ziad

When I stood with you on your balcony in East Jerusalem — through the smoke and fire crossing your sky — something in me wanted to answer with beauty instead of despair.

So I searched for a painting that could speak back to your words. I found this quiet watercolor by Sophie Halaby, one of Palestine’s most tender voices. From a stone balcony much like yours, she looks out over red-tiled rooftops, palm trees swaying gently, and green life rising between the homes. It is Jerusalem as she once breathed — intimate, rooted, alive with morning light.

I chose this painting for you because your fragments moved me so deeply. In the midst of the Seventy-Eighth Year of the Nakba, you gave us not only grief, but the raw poetry of survival, love like fire meeting wind, and a child’s longing to return home. Your balcony has carried too much smoke.

Yet I believe, with all my heart, that one day the smoke will dissipate. The skies will clear. Liberation will come, as sure as the seasons return to your beloved land. And when it does, may you stand once more on your reclaimed balcony in a time of peace. May you feel only the warmth of the sun, the whisper of palm leaves, and the quiet joy of a city finally at rest.

Until that day, your voice and Halaby’s brush remind us why we stand with Palestine: not just the land, but the right to live gently in it — to love, to remember, and to look out from your balconies without fear.

Thank you for sharing your heart so generously, Ziad 🫶

[Empire: World History @EmpirePodUK]

Louis Theroux on the dark privilege of exposing the dire situation in The West Bank.

[🔻agitprop + absurdity🔻 @agtprpnabsrdty]

'When they found out I'm South African, they pulled me into a room and beat me up'

Ebrahim Peters, a South African activist from a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, says Israeli forces tortured him because of his nationality, linking the abuse to South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel

[tim anderson @timand2037]

Comparto este video que lanzaron ayer Silvio Rodríguez y Chico Buarque; los fondos que se recaben serán donados a la Sala de Pediatría del Instituto de Oncología de Cuba, así que si queréis verlo, darle like y compartirlo con otras personas, es un pequeño grano de arena para aliviar la difícil situación en que se encuentran.
El vídeo es precioso y presenta esa Habana tan digna como empobrecida.
https://t.co/AVk6LbJAI7

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

As the world looks elsewhere, Israel continues to exterminate Palestinians in Gaza. Days in days out. Shame on complicit western media and all complicit governments.

[AJ+ @ajplus]

“Open the road!”

Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank are protesting against Israeli soldiers and settlers blocking the road to their school with a barbed-wire fence.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

A major city in Colombia cooled itself by 2°C simply by planting millions of trees and shrubs—demonstrating that nature provides one of the most effective cooling solutions available.

Medellín has turned its urban environment into a cooler, more livable space through its innovative Green Corridors project, launched in 2016. The initiative planted nearly 880,000 trees and 2.5 million smaller plants along busy roads and waterways, replacing heat-trapping concrete with lush vegetation. This created an extensive network of interconnected green zones that function like natural cooling systems, reducing the city's average temperature by more than 2°C.

Beyond cooling, the project delivers wide-ranging benefits: it purifies the air, boosts urban biodiversity by welcoming back wildlife, and fosters a healthier atmosphere through shade and evapotranspiration—the natural process by which plants release water vapor. Honored with the 2019 Ashden Award for Cooling by Nature, Medellín's approach has become an inspiring model for cities worldwide seeking sustainable ways to adapt to rising temperatures and combat climate change.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

Professor Derek R. Peterson, a University of Michigan historian and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, thanked “pro-Palestinian student activists” during a graduation speech today, for “opening our hearts to the injustices and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.”

Peterson teaches history and African studies at the University of Michigan, where he also became chair of the faculty senate in 2025.

[Megatron @Megatron_ron]

BREAKING:

🇺🇸 Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo calls on Americans to watch the PALESTINE 36 film

He says this will expose the Epstein Zionist regime.

[Maze Love @MazeLove14]

Listen to her break down “competent score” and “predictive compliance” in less than a minute.

These are not politically visible because they are considered technical efficiency and risk-management tools embedded within existing systems…

[Wesam Afifa وسام عفيفة @wesamaf]

18-year-old Abdullah Al-Raqab is suffering from a life-threatening skin condition, Pemphigus Vulgaris, triggered after being shot while seeking aid for his family. Gaza’s collapsed healthcare system cannot treat him. His father’s cry is a call to the world’s conscience: Let him out for treatment before it’s too late.
#GazaUnderAttack #HealthCrisis #HelpGaza

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

Palestinians high schoolers in Gaza striving to be journalists so Israel is more likely to kill them and put them out of their misery. One of the most disturbing things I’ve ever heard.

[Dr. Ezzideen @ezzingaza]

This is not a ceasefire.
Call things by their proper names.
It is war, only changed in form. It no longer always comes with bombs and collapsing walls.
Sometimes it comes quietly, with teeth, filth, fever, and the slow humiliation of those already broken.

Today I treated three people bitten by rats.
Three.
All adults.
Once, such creatures sought the weakest, children and infants.
Now misery has deepened.
They attack grown men and women inside their tents, inside the last scraps of fabric people still dare to call shelter.
One man came with a bite to the foot. Within hours the flesh reddened, swelled, and hardened. Infection spread rapidly. It became cellulitis, and we had to send him to the hospital for intravenous antibiotics. A man may survive bombs only to be undone by a rat.

And still the world uses the word ceasefire.

Tonight my aunt told me she and her daughters are afraid to leave the tent after dark, even to go to the toilet.
The rats strike the sides of the tent at night, loudly and repeatedly. She said they are large, moving in groups, almost coordinated, less like animals and more like a dark current passing through the camp.
Something between a swarm and an omen.

Summer approaches, and heat is their season.
Yet there is no response. No pesticides, no pest-control supplies, no means of containment, because the Israeli army continues to block their entry into Gaza.
So people remain trapped with vermin, contamination, rising disease, and the knowledge that relief exists somewhere in the world but has been withheld.

People speak of ceasefires because they imagine war only as explosions.
They do not understand its quieter forms: when a mother searches for water, when a father cannot secure bread, when infection spreads from preventable wounds, when women fear the darkness outside their tent, when sleep itself becomes an ambush.

That is war.
Not paused, only administered differently.
Quieter perhaps, slower certainly, but no less real, and no less cruel.

#WoundedGaza

[Ewan Morrison @MrEwanMorrison]

The correct use of robots - cleaning up slop, not forcing it on all of us.

[MW @muslim_world]

It is said that the young man in the photo, named Ahmed Abdullah, was a pharmacist working in a pharmacy. Every month, an elderly poor woman would come to him for her medicine. She would then approach him at the cash register... Whenever she saw him, her face would light up with joy. For years, she had been buying this medicine, and this young man would only take 200 Egyptian pounds from her. She would pay and leave.
Then, the young man passed away... The elderly woman returned to the same pharmacy, requested her medicine, and went to the cash register to pay 200 pounds. But he was not there.
Before she could ask about him, the new cashier said: “What is this, madam?”She replied: “This is 200 pounds for the medicine.”He responded: “But this medicine costs 2,000 pounds, madam.”
Surprised, she said: “But for more than three years, I have been getting it for 200 pounds from the young man who was here... Where is he?”
The new cashier replied: “He passed away, madam. May God have mercy on him.” Upon reviewing the records, it was discovered that this young man had been covering 1,800 pounds of the cost every month from his own salary at the pharmacy.
When the pharmacy owner learned of this, he decided to continue selling the medicine to the woman at the same price as an ongoing charity (sadaqah jariyah) for the sake of the young man’s pure soul. The least we can do to honor this exemplary young man is to let his photo travel the world without stopping, so that everyone may pray for mercy upon him. He deserves recognition.

[Jean Jacques Dessalines 🇭🇹🇵🇸🇳🇪🇲🇱🇧🇫🇨🇺 @JeanJacquesDes7]

Clara Mattei demonstrates how Marxist critique can calmly dismantle liberal/capitalist assumptions with intellectual rigor, responding not with anger but with patience and clarity that exposes the limits of a narrowly formed worldview.

Radical_ideas_

[Sarah Wilkinson @swilkinsonbc]

Who would you be without us? you would not exist without us: defiant words to the colonisers: Lebanon stands Palestine stands | #Dounana

[Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده @RamAbdu]

When asked about what she could save : “I saved my books”
#Gaza

[Dr. Yousef 🇵🇸 @yousef_ki1]

Do you stand with Francasca Albanese?
Raise your hand 👋🏽

[Fixing Education @FixingEducation]

Students remember more when they write it down on paper. Not type it. Not screenshot it. Write it!

The act of writing slows students down, adds tactile feedback, and helps lock it into memory.