“I found [my family] gathered in the living room, facing the door as it shook on its hinges from the force of the pounding. Mom gathered us up with her as Dad went to slide the bolt open with shaking hands. A unit of military infantry stormed inside.”
🗞️ New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, running for Congress in New York’s 10th District, is facing scrutiny over the city’s pension investments in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer.
The New York Daily News reports that under Lander’s tenure, NYC pension funds not only retained but increased investments in Elbit as Israel’s genocide in Gaza escalated, including last year. The record contrasts with Lander’s earlier push to divest from Russian assets after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which he framed as both a moral stand against an “unlawful invasion” and a fiduciary necessity.
Lander, however, has rejected calls to divest from Israeli arms firms, saying pension managers should not “bring politics” into investment decisions.
This deeply moving letter written by Fayez Kanafani (10 years old at the time) shortly after his father, Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated by Mossad in Beirut on 8 July 1972.
To my father, Ghassan Kanafani
When I was small, my father used to take me to Al-Muharrer, seat me on his own chair and ask me to draw some pictures. When he moved to Al-Anwar, I used to accompany him there too. Then he moved to Al-Hadaf and took me, along with my sister Laila, to meet his colleagues there. My father was a good man. He bought me all I wanted and I still love him, although he is dead.
I found Arabic difficult but he taught me lots of things. As a result, I could read all the articles written about him. I liked having such a father because he was very intelligent and people loved him.
When we were in Denmark, Laila and I used to miss him very much and asked my mother to take us back to him. When we returned we used to see him working in the garden every Sunday, planting flowers with gentle hands.
Sometimes we worked together and when it got hot we used to take our shirts off. After work, he would often teach me how to use the small rifle he had bought me. I liked to watch television with him.
When I grow up I want to be like my father and will fight to return to Palestine, my father’s homeland, the land he and Umm Sa’ad used to tell me so much about.
From now on, I will help my mother and sister a lot so that they won’t miss him too much. But we will never forget him, or Lamees who died with him and whom we all loved very much — Lamees who was always kind and never lost her temper.
Fayez Ghassan Kanafani
-Photo: Ghassan with his children Fayez and Laila
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.
There are non-Marxist Caribbean plantation economists that have a far better grasp of the material constraints facing Cuba than any dogmatic Western Marxist. I rather engage those who understand actual conditions shaping small peripheral economies, what trade dependency, foreign exchange shortages, import reliance, tourism vulnerability, and unequal integration into the world economy looks like than idealist fucks who can only condemn an island under siege. 😑
A very dangerous new nightmare we are living in Gaza City, and no one in the world is paying attention to it.
Days ago, the Israeli army installed huge military cranes, each about 30 meters tall, on the eastern areas it controls. These cranes are equipped with machine guns and cameras, and they fire randomly and almost continuously at tents, streets, and exposed neighborhoods.
Gaza City is extremely narrow, only 10 kilometers wide. A single crane at that height is enough to expose the entire city from east to west. Every street, every square, every tent, every house has become completely exposed. There is no place to hide, and not a single moment of safety.
In just the past two days, three people were killed by fire from these cranes. One of them was sitting quietly with his father in a small café, trying to breathe for a few minutes. Hours later, a 5year old girl was killed while playing near her home.
These cranes have turned the entire city into an open field. The latest military technologies are directed at civilians. We have become an open testing ground for their new weapons. The horror is not just in the sound… it is the constant feeling of being an exposed target at all times, where even children cannot run in the street without fear.
Un 10 de junio de 1944, la División de las SS "Das Reich" de Hitler, perpetraba una de las masacres mas salvajes de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, en el municipio francés de Oradour-sur-Glane, asesinando a 642 personas, 207 niños (55 menores de 5 años).
Los nazis de las SS Das Reich comandadas por el oficial Adolf Dickman, entraron en el pueblo de Oradour con la falsa premisa de que allí había un almacen de armas de la resistencia antifascista francesa.
Al mediodía, los nazis sacaron a todos los vecinos de Oradour de sus casas, agrupando a los hombres en la plaza y encerrando a las mujeres y los niños en la iglesia, donde macabramente los nazis idearon el detonar una carga explosiva en el altar para matarlos a todos, algo que además les serviría como señal para comenzar el fusilamiento de hombres en la plaza.
Cuando la mecha de la bomba en la iglesia llegó a su final, la carga explosiva no explotó totalmente, aunque el ruido sí sirvió para fusilar a los hombres en la plaza... el humo negro de la carga mal detonada, empezó a asfixiar a las mujeres y los niños dentro la iglesia, por lo que algunos intentaron escapar y cuando salieron de la iglesia, los nazis empezaron a acribillarlos a tiros.
A los niños y mujeres que se quedaron aterrorizados dentro sin poder huir, los nazis les cerraron las puertas y los quemaron vivos prendiendo fuego a la iglesia, muchos de los niños eran incluso bebés que estaban en brazos de sus madres.
Tras asesinar a todos los civiles, los nazis pusieron explosivos por todo el pueblo (igual que los sionistas hacen hoy en Gaza y en Líbano) y lo arrasaron por completo, no dejando piedra sobre piedra.
Los nazis asesinaron a sangre fría aquel día a 642 civiles inocentes, entre ellos, 207 niños que fueron brutalmente ametrallados y quemados vivos... es increíble que hoy sabiendo de estos crímenes, muchos sigan profesando la ideología genocida nazi.
Filmación de 1972, donde se observa a unos niños, que formaron parte del grupo de música tradicional latinoamericana llamado Pilcuicatl, lo que en náhuatl significa “Niños que cantan”. Entre los integrantes de este grupo se encontraba Claudia Sheinbaum, Daniel Jiménez Cacho, Julio Sheinbaum, Andrés Melo entre otros. Lo pequeños interpretan La Tatita, Martín Guemes, El Sol y La Luna, Barlovento, Zikuriada, Camilo Torres, Pago Viejo, La Bruja, La Procesión, La Paloma y Juan Sin Tierra. Conocías este interesante detalle de Claudia Sheinbaum?
Loving deeply is the only way to accommodate the knowledge of so much suffering. Our love grounds us in the world and allows our hearts to grow more responsive rather than shriveling and hardening to avoid further pain. There’s no going back for any of us, but there is choice.
I think the most basic freedom that all of us can have at any time is not to become the people the ruling class wants us to be: self-centered, incurious, petty, racist, paranoid, uninterested in anything but consumption and not being asked to think about anything that matters.