I just saw a little girl in Gaza, barely more than a baby, in a blood-soaked shirt and the back of her head split open. She was killed, along with her mother, because Israel is killing Palestinians every day.
The decline in reporting isn’t because the genocide ever stopped. It’s because Israel killed the journalists and their Western colleagues want you to believe there’s a “ceasefire.”
When your ticket to political success requires condemning the people resisting oppression, don’t be surprised when some of us see electoralism as a career ladder rather than a liberation strategy.
The lesson the system teaches is clear: resist and be punished; integrate and be celebrated.
Palestinians know better than most that justice does not come from being welcomed into the institutions built to manage our oppression. History has taught us the difference between representation and liberation.
The U.S. left really does not understand the damage it is doing to the Palestinian liberation struggle.
No serious Palestinian engaged in the struggle for liberation, whether in Palestine or in exile, would ever condemn or denounce the right of Palestinians to resist occupation, apartheid, and genocide by any means necessary.
Yet we are increasingly told that people who do exactly that are part of the movement, and that anyone who challenges them is divisive, unreasonable, or an “op.”
What this actually does is place Palestinians who remain committed to our political principles in the crosshairs of everyone: Zionists, the right wing, the state, and now even sectors of the left. It marginalizes Palestinians, portrays us as extremists for upholding positions that have always been central to our national liberation struggle, and pressures us to abandon our own political consensus in order to accommodate American political sensibilities.
The result is the isolation of Palestinians from our own movement.
And beyond being wrong, it simply does not work. Palestinians have always been told to mute criticism, soften demands, and overlook real political differences with elected officials because doing otherwise might hurt their chances of winning. We are told they secretly agree with us, that they just cannot say it publicly yet, and that once they gain power things will be different.
But the opposite keeps happening. Politicians benefit from the energy and legitimacy of the Palestine movement, then distance themselves from it once they are in office. Palestinians are expected to accept that distance, accept new compromises, and accept the constant narrowing of our politics, all in the name of pragmatism.
Meanwhile, Zionists are free to pressure those same politicians from the right without restraint, while Palestinians are told that applying pressure from our own political position is unacceptable.
If our support is always conditional on staying quiet, abandoning our principles, and never criticizing elected officials, then what is being asked of us is political obedience, and that has never advanced Palestinian liberation.
At what point do we acknowledge the role Zohran is playing in this movement? Are people finally starting to see it? Zohran is aligned with the same political establishment working to undermine the Palestine movement.
First, he told people that saying "Israel has the right to exist" was the price of political legitimacy.
Then he turned condemning resistance into "strategy" and made it a condition for his endorsement.
He retained Jessica Tisch, a Zionist whose family has hosted Netanyahu, despite her ties to the surveillance of Muslim communities.
Now he's telling people to vote for Brad Lander, a Zionist who invested NYC pension funds in companies linked to arming Israel.
How many concessions are enough? How many red lines have to be crossed before people stop calling him an ally and instead a traitor of the movement?
FIFA is such a rancid organization. Over the course of their genocide against the Palestinians, the Israelis have killed hundreds of Palestinian athletes, including football players. It is a particularly nasty cruelty of the western liberal order to ask that the slaughtered ‘play’ with their killers.
It’s not at all surprising that “israel” chose the start of the world cup to bomb Gaza even more than before. That’s what they do; when the world’s eyes are focused on something else, they bomb Gaza ten fold.
Just saw footage of a Palestinian father carrying the shredded body of his daughter, killed in one of several Israeli airstrikes on Gaza just today. Israel declared south Lebanon a combat zone and is demanding people leave while it continues to bomb and kill entire families. All of this is supported and funded by this country, by both parties - even if some within them offer shades of dissent.
Palestinians don’t have time. The Lebanese don’t have time. They are being slaughtered, they are being eradicated family by family, child by child.
May we spend the same amount of time taking action and speaking about the slaughter of Palestinians on Eid as we have speaking about a politicians Eid outfit.
There are consequences to turning politicians into celebrities.
May Allah protect our brothers and sisters in Gaza.
On this Eid, join me in making this du’a.
Ya Allah, Ya Rahman, ease the suffering of the people of Palestine. Feed the hungry among them, heal their wounded, shelter their displaced, and grant them safety and sabr through every hardship.
Ya Allah, Ya Rahman, strengthen those in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, and everywhere in the world who continue to resist oppression where people suffer injustice. Grant them courage, unity, protection, and steadfastness, and make them among those who help bring an end to ظلم and oppression wherever it exists.
Ya Allah, Ya Rahman, have mercy upon the martyrs of Gaza. Accept them among the shuhada, forgive their sins, elevate their ranks in Jannatul Firdaus, and fill their graves with light and peace. Ya Allah, grant patience and strength to the families they left behind, and let their sacrifice never be forgotten.
Ya Allah, Ya Rahman, protect Masjid Al-Aqsa and remove every barrier that keeps the believers from it. Open its gates to the Ummah and allow us to worship there in peace and freedom.
Ya Allah, Ya Rahman, please bring complete Palestinian liberation to the land from the river to the sea.
Ameen.
Islamaphobia is not merely a harmful or prejudicial sentiment; it is an arm of the military-industrial complex that has an ever-expanding capacity for death. The issue isn’t that people think Muslims are scary but that there are entire institutions dedicated to killing us.
Three Muslims were just killed in a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego after two teenaged shooters entered and opened fire.
While anti-Muslim/anti-Arab racism has been systematically fomented in this country for decades, the last two and a half years have seen every major institution - political, media, and educational - manufacture outrage about antisemitism in service of those who support the slaughter of Arabs and Muslims.
Every institution has pushed anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism without pause because Muslim, Arab life has no currency here and is created to be expendable.
Just saw an image of a Palestinian child with his face blown off. Extermination of a people, of children - and every ideology that supports it - is my red line. My moral, political and social red line. There is no alignment with anyone who affirms the existence of the exterminators.
Palestinians aren’t a litmus test, they aren’t a rhetorical prop, they’re not a moral measure, they are not a means to support one politician or another - they are not objects to gawk at, to use at our convenience or policies to debate.
They are human beings and we have, it seems, decided they are not worthy enough of life or else nothing would be left standing.