Narod Seroujian

Instructor of Anthropology @AUB_Lebanon | alumna @UvA_Amsterdam | materiality of wounds and scars, maiming and debilitation, politics of care in LB | violinist

[Narod Seroujian @kankourig]

A reflection (and some beautiful photos 📸) from a walk I did with my “Intro to Anthropology” students @AUB_Lebanon @AUBSOAM through Beirut’s Ain el Mreisseh.
Rather than bringing the external world to the classroom, we took the class outside the four walls. Thread 1/7

[Hadi Hoteit | هادي حطيط @HadiHtt]

Some animals are enjoying the summer's rains in South Lebanon

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

Was asked to go to Azerbaijan for a lecture . I declined (they yuugely upped their offer, not understanding my ethics, thinking it would make a difference).

I will not set foot in Azerbaijan with Reuben Vardanyan jailed there.

[Electronic Intifada @intifada]

Israel uses its “precision warfare” to intentionally kill children. That’s the finding of a new report co-authored by Dr. @Memers1st and @WesJBryant examining Israel’s use of quadcopter drones in Gaza.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

🇪🇸🇵🇸

[Basem Alhabel @BAlhabel]

The rice had expired, so the children wouldn’t eat it. Instead, they fed it to the ants so they wouldn’t go hungry. They smiled and laughed, happy that they could help even the smallest living creatures.

This is Gaza. 💔

[Nicola Perugini @PeruginiNic]

More systematic elimination of aid workers providing life saving and life sustaining services.

[Jehad Abusalim @JehadAbusalim]

Anwar, a child from Gaza, wrote this letter to his amputated leg:

"A letter to my dear leg,

Today, with you in front of me, I wanted to tell you: I was sad, and I felt weak and ashamed when I lost you, because something in me was missing and I felt I was less than other people and would never do anything again. But today I have become a strong person, and I feel confident every time I look at you. I went out and sold things, I made friends, and I started walking long distances. I do things that people with two legs cannot do.

I love you so much."

[roqayah chamseddine @roqchams]

The ruling class in Lebanon, which has long linked its interests to imperialism, cannot but look with hostility on the South and its people. They want a Lebanon that is a playground for tourists and a tool in the hands of imperialism, while the South is betrayed and left to burn.

For decades, this has been the foundational logic of the Lebanese state: treating the South as an unwanted liability. The political establishment has never viewed southerners as citizens entitled to the protection of the state but as cheap labor to be exploited, and a front-line sacrifice to keep the rest of the country insulated.

A ruling class that did not fire a single bullet to defend its land has zero moral authority to dictate the terms of our people's future. The South has survived and kept its territory because its people chose to bleed for it while the state sat in complicit silence; it will not be allowed to sign away our land in order to buy peace of mind for a state that has always viewed the people and the land of the south as foreign to this nation's history and geography.

If the fires of the South reach the presidential palace then so be it.

[Narod Seroujian @kankourig]

Friends in Beirut and abroad, I am giving a talk, “Wounds, Pagers & Politics of Wounding in Lebanon”, at IFPO - DÉC, on July 1st, 3-5 pm (Beirut time). It’s in hybrid format: https://t.co/Msv65qnXyJ
I’m honored to have @mayamikdashi as a discussant. Hope to see you there!

[Nada Maucourant Atallah @MaucourantNada]

Very sad to learn that Mona Khalil died after weeks in the ICU following an Israeli strike that levelled her home in Mansouri. She was a very well-known environmental activist and dedicated her life to saving endangered turtles. She stayed in the south despite Israeli strikes because of her love for the land.

She was a civilian, a renowned figure but Israel targeted her house.

CNN profiled her in 2017 here: https://t.co/ZaMRnuS4zf

“I live every day to the fullest and don’t worry about tomorrow,” she told the newspaper.

[Abier @abierkhatib]

Ya habibi 😭😭😭

“They took my arm and leg, but I’m not done yet”

[MintPress News @MintPressNews]

Local Cats Greet A Lebanese Mukhtar As He Returns To His Village In The South

The local civil defense took responsibility for feeding them in his absence according to reports.

When he returned the cats swarmed in to greet him.

[Ahmad Baydoun @weatherwar]

A new checkpoint in Beirut.

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

I had 20 patients in my Pediatric War Injuries Clinic today, for follow-up care.

Of the 20 children, Israel had killed one or both parents of 19 of them.

[Steve Sweeney @SweeneySteve]

Children terrified as I$rael bombs the Jabal Amel hospital in Tyre, another war crime committed with Western supplied weapons with total impunity

[roqayah chamseddine @roqchams]

I spoke to a young girl who is in Beirut for medical care after her family survived an Israeli airstrike on their village a few weeks ago; her face still bore the marks of the attack, and her little arm was wrapped in a cast.

"The Israelis killed my bird," she told me, almost matter-of-fact. "I picked him out with my grandfather. He was tiny and beautiful and he understood me. Every morning I would take him to the balcony before everyone got up and we would sit together and talk," she said.

Her siblings told me how much the bird loved her, how she would give him treats and was trying to train him to do little tricks based on videos she saw online. "He was her baby," they teased. Her father, also injured, promised to get her another bird once they returned to the village.

Her parents said for days she cried for this bird, asking them if they were sure he was gone. "I didn't want to tell her," her father told me. In the smallest of ways, Israel steals from our children the simple joy of extending their love and care to the precious animals of this land.

"When we go home I want dad to make me a bigger garden for all the birds," she said. "Just for the birds."

[Kegham Balian @kbalian90]

BREAKING: George Deek, Israel's Special Envoy to the Christian World, says "We never got involved or took position in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, per se", which led to the ethnic cleansing of Christian Armenians and their Churches from Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

You have to admire that carefully placed "per se". The amount of heavy lifting it does for Israel's image in the Christian world would've been commendable had it not been a typical hasbara escape hatch, absolving Israel of any responsibility or accountability, and invariably collapsing under the weight of Israel's own record during that war.

In no particular order:

⁃According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), between 2016 and 2020, leading up to the 44 Day War, roughly 69% of weapons exports to Azerbaijan came from Israel, in a war that butchered 5,000 Armenian soldiers, barely adults. So neutral.

⁃The highly advanced Israeli weapons systems included loitering munitions (suicide drones) such as the IAI Harop and Elbit SkyStriker, Hermes 900 reconnaissance drones, Spike anti-tank guided missiles, and LORA surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.

⁃Israeli weapons manufacturer Aeronautics Defense Systems used a suicide drone by attacking Armenian positions during a sale presentation at the behest of Azeri officials who requested a live demonstration.

⁃Israeli military personnel trained Azeri soldiers in piloting drones.

⁃Azerbaijan supplies 65% of Israel's crude oil imports, which are pumped via the BTC pipeline through Georgia and Turkey. A clear energy security and arms agreement: you send oil, we give you weapons.
So neutral.

⁃In December 2023, Azerbaijan effectively blockaded the Lachin Corridor, the only route between Armenia and Artsakh. A starvation campaign ensued for 9 months, targeting hundreds of thousands of Armenian indigenous Christians: Food shortages, supermarket shelves emptied, families lining up for hours for a piece of bread. No fuel. No medicine. Cancer patients requiring urgent treatment were stranded. Malnutrition. Miscarriages.

George Deek was Ambassador at that time. He was there in Baku.

Did he voice concern for the besieged Christians in Artsakh? No. His country enabled it. Haaretz, an Israeli outlet, even published a bombshell report entitled "Israel's fingerprints all over the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh".

To quote the Special Christian envoy himself:

"When violence against a vulnerable minority is ignored because acknowledging it is politically inconvenient, there is a name for it: abandonment."

For Israel, the defense of the Armenian Christian presence in Artsakh was politically inconvenient.

That is why they were complicit in the ethnic cleansing of 150,000 indigenous Christian Armenians from their 2,000-year-old homeland.

[Heidi Matthews @Heidi__Matthews]

Flotilla participants are arriving at Istanbul airport. This is what Israel military and prison personnel did to them.

[Omar Hamad | عُـمَـرْ 𓂆 @OmarHamadD]

Not a single stone remains standing, nor a tree, nor a human being—Israel has completely annihilated my town, Beit Hanoun.

[Narod Seroujian @kankourig]

Unbearable to carry all these wounds.

[Marwa Osman || مروة عثمان @Marwa__Osman]

A heartbreaking testimony from a school teacher in South Lebanon about her student, Hassan, murdered by terrorist Israel in the southern Lebanese town of Arab Salim:

"In my classroom, there were two boys who shared the same name: Hassan Farhat.
I used to distinguish between them by their fathers' names.

Then the father of the first Hassan was martyred…
And suddenly, his father's name became a wound. I became afraid to call him by it, afraid of reopening the ache of orphanhood in his heart every single morning.

Today, something even more horrifying than the mind can bear happened…
The Zionists killed the father of the second Hassan as well.
And Hassan himself was martyred alongside his parents.

Little Hassan.
The quiet child who would leave his games to pray.
A memorizer of the holy Qur'an.
Gentle, dignified, and deeply well-mannered.
The boy who could barely carry his schoolbag… is now being carried to his grave.

In my classroom now,
there is one Hassan who is an orphan,
and another Hassan who is a martyr.

What kind of crime is capable of killing the same name twice?
What kind of savagery turns children into either bodies beneath the earth… or children waiting for their turn to grieve?

Farewell, Hassan…
Farewell, child of the South." 💔

~Words of Alaa Younis, a school teacher in South Lebanon, mourning her student Hassan, who was killed by terrorist Israel in the southern Lebanese town of Arab Salim.