#Al Quds Travel

[odinsblog]

“I first started noticing the journalists dying on Instagram. I'm a journalist, I'm Arab, and I've reported on war. A big part of my community is other Arab journalists who do the same thing.

And when someone dies, news travels fast. Recently, I pulled up the list that the Committee to Protect Journalists has been keeping and looked at it for the first time. There are 95 journalists and media workers on it as of today.

Almost everyone on it is Palestinian. Scrolling through, I started to get angry. These were the people carrying the burden of documenting this whole war.

Israel is not allowing foreign journalists into Gaza, except on rare occasions with military escorts. These people's names are being buried in a giant list that keeps growing. What I want to do is lift some of them off the list for a moment and give you a glimpse of who they were and the work they made.

I'll start with Sadi Mansour. Sadi was the director of Al-Quds News Network, and he posted a 22-second video on November 18. That was a report from the war, but it also gave me a picture into his marriage.

Sadi's wearing his press vest and looks exhausted. He's explaining that cell service and the Internet keep getting cut off, and it's often impossible to text or call anyone, including his wife. So they've resorted to using handwritten letters to communicate while he's out reporting, sending them back and forth with neighbors or colleagues.

He ends the video with a picture of one of these letters from his wife. In it, she writes,

‘Me and the kids stayed up waiting for you until the morning, and you didn't come home. We were really sad.

I kept telling the kids, Look, he's coming. But you didn't show up. May God forgive you.

Come home tomorrow and eat with us. Do you want me to make you kebab or maybe kapse? Bring your friends with you, it's okay.

And give Azeez the battery to charge. What do you think about me sending you handwritten letters with messenger pigeons from now on? Ha ha ha.

I'm just kidding. I want to curse at you, but we're living in a war. Too bad.

Okay, I love you. Bye.’

A few hours after he shared that letter, Sadie and his co-worker Hassouna Saleem were at Sadie's home, when they were killed by an Israeli air strike that hit his house.

His wife and kids, who weren't there, survived.

Gaza is tiny, and the journalist community is really close. Reading the list, you can see all the connections between people. Like with Brahim Lafi.

Brahim was a photojournalist, one of the first journalists to die. He was killed while reporting on October 7. He was just 21, still new to journalism.

On his Instagram, you can see that in his posts just a few years ago, he was still practicing his photography, taking pictures of coffee cups and flowers. Then he started doing beautiful portraits and action shots. You can really feel him starting to become a journalist.

Clicking around on Instagram, I found a tribute post about Brahim from his co-worker Rushdie Sarraj. In this photo, Brahim staring intently at the back of a camera, his face lit up by the light from the viewfinder. He looks so young.

The caption reads, My assistant is gone. Brahim is gone. Rushdie himself was a beloved journalist and filmmaker.

And I know that because he's also on the list. He was killed just two weeks after Brahim. I read the tribute post to him too.

I saw this over and over again. Journalists posting tributes, who were then killed themselves soon after. And a tribute goes up for them.

And then the pattern continues.

Thank you.

Something else I saw over and over on the list, journalists later in the war who had become aware that they could be making their last reports. They'd say it at the beginning of their videos. And those were the hardest to watch, especially when it was true.

One video like that was posted by Ayat Hadduro. Ayat was a freelance journalist and video blogger. Her videos before the war covered a wide range from what I can tell, interviews about women in politics.

She even appeared in a commercial for ketchup-flavored chips. She clearly liked being in front of the camera. Once the war started, Ayat's pivoted to covering bombings and food shortages.

On November 20, she posted a video report from her home. You can hear the airstrikes hitting very close to where she is. It's scary.

‘This is likely my last video. Today, the occupation forces dropped phosphorus bombs on Beit Lahya area and frightening sound bombs. They dropped letters from the sky, ordering everyone to evacuate.

Everyone ran into the streets in the craziest way. No one knows where to go.

But everyone else has evacuated. They don't know where they're going. The situation is so scary.

What's happening is so tough, and may God have mercy on us.’

She was killed later that day.

Targeting journalists, in case you didn't know, is a war crime. So far, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found that three of the journalists on the list were explicitly targeted by the IDF, the Israeli military. Investigations by the Washington Post and Reuters, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have also raised serious questions in these three cases.

And the Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating 10 other killings. When we reached out to the IDF for comments, they said, quote, the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists. That's the answer they always give in these situations.

Meanwhile, dozens of seasoned reporters have fled Gaza. Journalists who worked for Al Jazeera, the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, Agence France-Presse. So many media offices were demolished in Israeli airstrikes that the Committee to Protect Journalists stopped counting.

It's not just individual lives that have been destroyed. It's an entire infrastructure.

Thank you.

The name on the list that was hardest for me to look at was Issam Abdullah, because I'd crossed paths with him once. Issam was a Lebanese journalist, a video journalist for Reuters for many, many years. He had just won an award for coverage of Ukraine.

I'm Lebanese and still report there sometimes, and I'd worked with Issam a couple of summers ago. He helped me film a sort of random story in Beirut. I was interviewing this entrepreneur who had started a sperm freezing company after an accident where he spilled a tray of hot coffee on his private area, burning himself.

I know, ridiculous. It was a really silly shoot. Right after we said cut and started to rap, Issam started this whole bit about being in his late 30s, reconsidering his own sperm quality and everything he now realized he was doing to hurt it, and no one could stop laughing.

It was a really good day that felt good to remember and to remember him that way. Issam was killed by the IDF on October 13. His death was one of the three that the Committee to Protect Journalists has identified as a targeted killing.

He was fired upon by an Israeli tank while standing in an empty field on the Lebanon-Israel border with a small group of other journalists. Everyone was wearing press vests with cameras out. They were covering the Hezbollah part of this war.

A few other journalists were injured in the attack, which was captured on video. The IDF says they were responding to firing from Hezbollah, not targeting the journalists. But multiple investigations, including by Reuters, the United Nations, Amnesty International and the AFP, found no evidence of any firing from the location of the journalists before the IDF shot at them.

The journalists in the group and video footage confirmed that there was no military activity near them. I had only met Issam once, barely knew him, but it affected me so much when he died. I know that he understood the risks of his job, but somehow it still felt so random and unfair that he would be struck down like that, following the rules, wearing his press vest and helmet, and a pack of reporters on a sunny day in an open field.

I find myself thinking about him all the time. His last Instagram post was commemorating another journalist, this iconic reporter Shereen Abou Aql who had been killed by the IDF. When I first saw that post in October, I thought how ironic because a week later, Isam also was killed by the IDF.

But then, after spending time reading the list, I realized how common this had become. I still haven't finished going through the list and looking up the people on it. I keep finding things that stick with me, like the funny way this one radio host would cut off a caller who was rambling on for too long.

A tweet from reporter Al-Abdallah that quoted Sylvia Plath. It read, What ceremony of wars can patch the havoc? I'm going to keep going down the list, even though this story is over now.

Just for myself. My own way of bearing witness. Which is, in the end, all that these journalists were trying to do.”

—DANA BALLOUT, The 95. Dana sifts through a very long list—the list of journalists killed in the Israel-Hamas war, and comes back with five small fragments of the lives of the people on it. Dana is a Lebanese-American, Emmy-nominated documentary producer.

[guerillas-of-history]

The mothers of the martyrs are present at a celebration for the opening of a monument for Tulkarem's martyrs Hamza Khreyoush and Samer Shafi'i, resistance fighters of the Tulkarem Brigade - Rapid Response Group.

Members of the Jenin Brigade travelled to Tulkarem to attend the event, as well as Saraya Al-Quds' Tulkarem Brigade, Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and Al-Qassam Brigades.

[90-ghost]

What is the first thing you will do, after you get your freedom? Tell us all something about yourself Ahmed.

First thing going to al quds to pray in Al-Aqsa Mosque .

I'm normal person lazy one I'm not social i love staying at home with my family or going out with them i know alot of people but i have just 2 friends and one of them closer to me we used to see each other every day and walk. I love swimming i live near the beach. I start working online on November 2022 and i trade Forex online since 2020 but i stopped after i start working online. I used to play football or soccer as u American say it. And i had playstation 4 used to play call of duty since 2018 . I wanted to study outside gaza after i finished High school on 2012 but it was impossible because the financial situation. Still dreaming of traveling to Europe or USA because i could find myself and discover what I'm able to do and achieve because here in gaza our life is hard and The available possibilities are few . I hope somebody could help me with that and get me a visa lol. Sometimes i think i don't know myself enough. Sorry i talked alot

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Scenes from the destruction wrought by an Israeli occupation airstrike which targeted a vehicle being driven by 7 foreign aid workers belonging to the World Central Kitchen, killing all inside. Among the dead included foreign citizens of Britain, Poland, and Australia, along with a dual American and Canadian citizen. The aid organization said it had coordinated the movements of its personnel with the Israeli authorities, who knew the vehicle contained humanitarian aid workers.]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🚀🚙💥 🚨

ISRAELI OCCUPATION BOMBS FOREIGN AID WORKERS, CONTINUES BOMBING ACROSS GAZA ON DAY 179 OF GENOCIDE

On the 179th day of "Israel's" ongoing war of genocide in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 7 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 71 Palestinians, mostly women and children, while another 102 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

In the latest occupation atrocity, the Zionist army bombed the vehicle of a group of Foreign aid personnel working for the World Central Kitchen (WCK), killing 7 employees, including 6 foreigners.

"World Central Kitchen is devastated to confirm seven members of our team have been killed in an IDF strike in Gaza," the organization said in a statement on its website.

According to the World Central Kitchen, despite coordinating the organization's movements with the Israeli occupation army, a convoy including two armored cars branded with the WCK logo and one soft-skin vehicle that were carrying the WCK team while it was traveling through a "deconflicted zone" was struck by an Israeli bomb, destroying at least one of the vehicles.

WCK says the team was leaving their Deir al-Balah warehouse, in the central Gaza Strip, where their teams unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza through a maritime route, when the convoy was targeted by Zionist forces.

“This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable,” World Central Kitchen CEO, Erin Gore is quoted as saying.

The seven foreign aid workers killed in the Zionist strike included citizens from Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, as well as a dual-citizen of the United States and Canada, and one Palestinian.

“I am heartbroken and appalled that we—World Central Kitchen and the world—lost beautiful lives today because of a targeted attack by the IDF. The love they had for feeding people, the determination they embodied to show that humanity rises above all, and the impact they made in countless lives will forever be remembered and cherished,” Erin Gore added.

In response to the International outcry over the atrocity, the Israeli occupation authorities said they will be “carrying out an in-depth examination at the highest levels to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident.”

The World Central Kitchen has suspended its operations in Gaza as a result of the incident.

In yet another atrocity yesterday, the Israeli occupation army bombed the Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital of Damascus, killing several high-level Iranian officials, including 7 military advisors of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In response to the strike, Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said in an announcement issued on Tuesday that the "evil Zionist regime will regret" it's crime of assasinating Iran's military advisors in Syria.

The Iranian leader said that both Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, and his deputy, General Mohammed Hadi Haji Rahimi were killed in the strike, which targeted the Iranian consulate in Damascus, declaring the crime was perpetrated by the "usurping and dispicable" Zionist regime.

“The evil regime will be punished by our brave men. We will make them regret this crime and other ones, by God's will," the Iranian leader added.

As Israel's crimes spread outside the occupied Palestinian territories and the Gaza Strip, and into the wider West Asian region, the bombing inside Palestine continued unabated.

In just one example, local civil defense crews recovered the bodies of six Palestinians who were killed, including two children, along with a number of wounded civilians, following a Zionist occupation airstrike targeting the Zarub family home, located in the city of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.

In another atrocity, several Palestinians were killed and a large number wounded after occupation artillery shelling targeted a number of residential buildings in the city of Khan Yunis, also in the south of Gaza, focusing artillery fire on the eastern and central parts of the city.

Meanwhile, Zionist warplanes bombed the al-Bashir Mosque, in the city of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, martyring a several civilians, including the death of at least one child, and wounding at least 20 others, while also dealing significant damage to neighboring residential buildings.

Similarly, Zionist fighter jets fired several missiles that slammed into two residential homes in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, while occupation artillery shelling targeted the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, along with the Sheikh Ajlin neighborhood, martyring three civilians and wounding six others.

Over the last day, as the Zionist occupation army withdrew from the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, located in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, which had been the largest and most well-equipped hospital in the entire Gaza Strip, a scene of mass destruction and carnage was revealed, with hundreds of bodies littering the hospital grounds, including some bodies discovered with handcuffed wrists, having been extra-judicially executed in cold-blood.

Among the bodies recovered from Al-Shifa were doctors and healthcare personnel, along with entire Palestinian families, which the Gaza Media Office says were just a small part of the roughly 400 citizens that were killed in two weeks of fighting near the hospital.

About another 900 Palestinians were arrested or detained by Zionist forces under suspicion of belonging to Resistance groups, while the Hospital buildings themselves were nearly completely destroyed, blown to pieces and left as scorched shells by the American bombs dropped on them by the Israeli occupation army.

As a result of "Israel's" ongoing war of genocide in the Gaza Strip, the infinitely rising death toll has now exceeded 32'916 Palestinians killed, more than 25'000 of which being among women and children, while an additional 75'494 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression beginning on October 7th, 2023.

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#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[normal-thoughts-official]

Why Joe and Nicky deserve to win the sun and moon showdown, and if they don't I'll end up in the INTERPOL Most Wanted list

A not at all dramatic essay

(Plain text version here)

1. Not only do they canonically use moon imagery to refer to each other, but their context adds new symbolism to that metaphor that other duos don't have

If you haven't seen TOG and aren't familiar with the van speech, well, I recommend that you do, but I'll transcribe it for your convenience:

"He's not my 'boyfriend'. This man is more to me than you can dream. He's the moon when I'm lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold. And his kiss still thrills me even after a millennium. His heart overflows with the kindness of which this world is not worthy of. I love this man beyond measure and reason, he's not my 'boyfriend'. He's all and he's more"

Yeah, pretty long way of saying "actually we're husbands", but let's focus on the "he's the moon when I'm lost in darkness" bit. That bit alone is already insanely romantic and enough to make us fans go rabid with this tournament, but there is an extra layer of romanticism to it, because Mr Yusuf al-Kaysani (aka Joe) is Muslim, and in Islam, the moon represents the guidance of Allah through life, the calendar is based on the moon cycles, and the brightness of the moon is compared to both the face of the Prophet Muhammad and the first batch of souls to enter Paradise. Therefore, the moon, in Joe's culture, is intrinsecally linked with the divine, guidance, holiness, and time

So, when Joe compares Nicky to the moon, he's not only saying that he brings light into a dark world; he is saying that he is the very guiding light that leads him to a blessed life, that he is the foundation through which the world and time can be understood, and that his beauty and holiness is comparable to that of the souls of Heaven themselves

Which is all already enough for me to bite through wood, but the specific relationship between the moon and the understanding of time in Joe's culture is also particularly meaningful for Joe and Nicky, because Joe and Nicky are two of the 5 people who are immortal in the entire world. And one of the core themes of the movie is how that sense of timelessness leads them to isolation, and a constant state of loss. There is a deep melancholy that permeates their entire existence due to the fact that time as we know it no longer makes sense to them, and they live outside of it, skirting around eras and history. So, by comparing Nicky to the very body that marked the passage of time for Joe, he is saying that Nicky is what helps him make sense of the impossible, that he is the constant in Joe's eternity, that he brings meaning to their confusing and sometimes alienating existence

But wait! There's more!

Because Joe and Nicky met in al-Quds (also known as Jerusalem) in the year 493 AH (also known as 1099 CE in the Gregorian Calendar) and had to travel together across the desert for a long time, which means that, for the first few years of their life together, they were in fact relying on the moon to guide them in their path. So they both have a deep intrinsic understanding of how the moon is a compass, the most reliable thing in uncertainty. And the moon has been guiding their steps, their relationship, since their paths were first joined. And they weren't separated since

Like. Listen, I'm sure Star Trek is great and its fans are lovely, and I salute the Star Trek fandom for everything it did for fandom history in general, but you cannot tell me that Spirk has this much baggage associated with the sunmoon symbolism. It just doesn't. If this were a hand touching tournament, no one would have as much symbolism linked to it than y'all, but when it comes to being the sun and moon, no one is doing it like Joe and Nicky

2. The most appealing aspect of the SunMoon dynamic is how they need to defeat all odds to be with each other, and Joe and Nicky have that in spades

"Oh I don't think that's the most ap-" IRRELEVANT. I'll talk about the other ones too. Just keep reading, okay? /joking

As you might know, Joe and Nicky met on opposite sides of a battlefield. They killed each other. (Many times). And what happened then?

They ressurrected and became immortal. That alone is already impossible, but it gets better - even for the rules of immortality in their universe, Joe and Nicky are still an impossibility that has never happened before or since

Because in The Old Guard, immortality is extremely rare. There have only ever been 7 immortals in the entire history of humanity. There are usually several millennia between the appearance of one immortal and the next one. Other than them, the shortest time gap between one immortal appearing and the next was 800 years. But Joe and Nicky became immortal at the same time, on the same day. Their very existence bends the rules of an universe that already bends the rules of the universe they lived in beforehand anyway. Joe and Nicky being together defies the very fabric of time, and if that isn't some sun and moon shit, I don't know what is

But it's not just some destiny shit either. Joe and Nicky were also not supposed to be together by other standards. For starters, they were on opposite sides of a war. Nicky was a fucking priest, and he joined the goddamn actual honest to god crusades. He was hateful and ignorant and awful, and when he chose Joe, he left behind everything he knew before him. All his certainties, his beliefs, his faith, his family, everything he had ever been taught. I'm also gonna go ahead and say that that ties into the whole "the sun is what makes the moon shine" metaphor - because everything that defines Nicky as he is now is the direct result of how meeting Joe changed him

And listen, listen to me. I'm not saying that he stopped being a bigot for Joe, because if he did, I doubt Joe would want him. He did it because it was the right thing to do, and he was wrong and ignorant and indoctrinated by the church. But he still had to make the choice to turn his back to all that, and that plain and simply would not have happened if he hadn't met Joe. It was Nicky's own effort, but meeting Joe was the catalyst

Joe, similarly, had to overcome a lifetime's worth of (well earned) resentment and hatred for what Nicky did. Joe forgiving Nicky at all is already nearly an impossibility (and he would be well within his right to never do that), but he didn't just forgive Nicky, he fell in love with him. And he chose him, well aware of how bloody and terrible his past was, and despite the fact that there is no way he wasn't deeply conflicted about what he felt for Nicky after everything the Christians put him through. I cannot even begin to imagine how hard this process must have been for Joe, and it was one he didn't have to go through at all - which means that he chose to

And that's not even taking into account the very personal resentments between the two of them, because they weren't just on opposing armies, they literally and personally killed each other. Several times over. And yet, impossibly, against all logic, against everything they had ever felt and believed in prior to each other, against possibly their own desires, they fell in love. They fell in love and have been hopelessly devoted to each other every since

And THEN, on top of all that at the beginning of their relationship, they lived as an interracial, interfaith*, gay couple, through what were undoubtedly the worst times in humanity's history to be either of those things. For 900 years, they had to love each other in secret and with varying degrees of risk associated with ever being found out as a couple, or even with being associated with each other at all to begin with

(*It is debatable what their current relationship with their respective original faiths is, since it isn't mentioned in the movie. But even if both of them had turned their back on their religions, they are still culturally Christian and culturally Muslim, and that makes a difference. Personally, though, I don't think either of them turned their backs on their religions, although I do believe Nicky turned his back to the Catholic Church as an institution for obvious reasons)

That's not even counting all the incredibly traumatic shit that they went through ever since (which I won't mention in detail because it's spoilers and also this is long enough already) and that would definitely break a couple with a less unbreakable bond. Through centuries and centuries of pain and regret, they have chosen nothing and no one but each other, first and foremost, no matter what that meant.

Nicky even brings it up in the comics:

[ID: Joe and Nicky touching foreheads with their eyes closed. Nicky is holding Joe's chin and he says, "why is it so difficult, Joe? We've been afforded more time than any lovers I can name. And still, every moment we scrape together feels precious. Something always happens-" End ID]

(From the Tales Through Time one-shot series. I generally think the comics are meh and the movie is where it's at, but I do recommend reading this one. It is set before the movie happens so there are no spoilers)

There has never been a time where being together was easy, and yet, Joe and Nicky chose each other no matter what. They chose each other even when it meant being separated and getting only scraps of time together in secret. If that isn't some sun and moon shit, I don't know what is

3. They complement each other

And not in the dumb stereotypical "the sunshine one and the grumpy one" way either. For starters, Joe isn't bubbly, and Nicky isn't grumpy. No, they have two characteristics that I think represent the sun and moon way better than that anyway - Joe is an extremely intense person, and Nicky, an extremely cool headed one

Joe doesn't feel anything by halves, and despite the fact that he has lived through several lifetimes, it still seems as if everything he goes through is happening for the first time. Every time Nicky or another one of the family dies, Joe looks just as desperate as he would a millennium ago, despite the fact that he's had centuries to get used to the fact that they die and then come back to life. He's the only one who's that affected by it (obviously none of them enjoy seeing each other die, but the rest seem to have accepted to some degree that it's a part of their lives, or at least gotten used to it). He has experienced so many horrible things, yet he is still as affected and disgusted by it every time, going as far as lashing out sometimes. When he's angry, no one is able to hold him back from yelling at the person he's angry at (not even Nicky). Similarly, not even an actual van full of armed homophobic guards is able to stop him from simply dropping a passionate speech about how important Nicky is to him, complete with getting misty-eyed and kissing him at the end (and I'm not even bringing up the fact that both of them have their hands and their feet tied)

To me, that is the most sun-coded possible trait, because the sun is intense, hard to ignore, and quite literally burning. The intensity with which Joe feels also feels like it could burn, but it's also what makes him so warm and loving

Nicky is also a pretty intense person, but, unlike Joe, he is super cool headed about it. For starters, Nicky is a sniper; he is capable of staying still for hours at a time, observing, figuring out the best time to strike. That demands an amount of control over himself, his feelings, even his instincts, that is admirable. But he's not just like that on a mission; Nicky is very careful with what he says, when he speaks, what he lets other people see of him. His expressions are all subtle, contained, and even when he is in a state of murderous rage, he doesn't lash out. He doesn't lose control. The same way that the moon and the sun share their brightness, Joe and Nicky share their intensity, but Nicky is able to subdue it while Joe burns with it and lets that be his strength

Where Joe is expansive and wears his heart on his sleeve, Nicky is cautious and guarded. Where Joe gets lost in his own feelings and loses sight of what they need to do, Nicky keeps their heads straight and reminds him of what they need to do. Like the moon that guides one through the desert

They're different and complementary, but also intrinsecally tied to each other. They have the same spark where it matters, but present it in different, complementary ways. They are a part of each other, but they're also themselves first and foremost. That's what the sun and moon are all about

Sun and moon imagery has been the staple of the Joenicky fandom since day fucking 1, and for good reasons

VOTE JOE AND NICKY IN THE SUN AND MOON DUO SHOWDOWN

[realtimefanduboutofcontext]

The journalists of Palestine

You may have heard a couple of names floating around social media - and I do mean ONLY social media - who have been vital to getting the facts about the genocide in Palestine right now. Let me highlight them for you.

Artwork by Ram Reyes @oversettext

Bisan Owda (she/her)

Bisan is the one you're probably familiar with. She's a young filmmaker who has worked with the UN on gender equality and climate change, and most recently this genocide. Her focus is social media. She called the strike, and is why we're all here.

Twitter - Instagram - TikTok

Motaz Azaiza (he/him)

Motaz is a photographer best known for capturing life in the Gaza Strip. He works for the UNRWA. His photo titled "Seeing Her Through My Camera" (depicting a girl being picked up from rubble) was named one of TIME's top 10 photos of 2023.

Twitter - Instagram

Plestia Alaqad (she/her)

Plestia is a citizen journalist and travel blogger, formerly an HR professional. She has been posting video diaries from Gaza - and even from Egypt as she had to flee in November. Her work has been a reminder of how beautiful Gaza can be.

Twitter - Instagram - TikTok

Wael Al-Dahdouh (he/him)

Wael is a journalist for Al Jazeera and the chief of its bureau in Gaza City since 2004. He has worked for the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds, and is a journalism veteran. Most of his family was sadly killed by Israeli strikes.

Twitter - Facebook - Instagram

As I've said before, mainstream media outlets have been avoiding the reporting of Palestinian journalists, or filtered their own biases through the Israeli army. It's important to listen to, and uplift voices from Gaza, no matter how uncomfortable it may get. Let them be heard.

[mariacallous]

It’s telling that the first question I saw raised in the media after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was killed when his helicopter crashed in the country’s mountainous northeast on his return from Azerbaijan in May was whether the United States had a hand in it. In that same regard, among the questions raised concerning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent travel to Pyongyang, apart from its impact on the simmering tensions across Asia, was what opportunities his willingness to venture farther from the Kremlin offers. Namely, should the United States and its allies seek to depose Putin by enabling a coup in his absence, or assassinating him during such travels? The answer lies in assessing the risk versus gain.

What would be gained by killing Putin? If the bar was juxtaposing the status quo with the consequences of Putin’s violent removal, would Russia’s threat to the United States and its allies be degraded? Would Russian troops withdraw from Ukraine and cease posing a threat to NATO allies in the Baltics and Eastern Europe? Or might Russian intentions become even more hostile and less predictable? Despite Putin’s obsession with intrigue, denial and deception, and smoke and mirrors, he’s fairly predictable. Indeed, the United States, with Britain leaning in the same direction, was the exception among its NATO allies, not to mention Ukraine itself, in forecasting with high confidence Putin’s plans to attack.

Would the United States do it? The record shows that the U.S. sanctioned violence in sponsoring the overthrow of democratically elected antagonist regimes in Iran in 1953 and Chile in 1973, while the Church committee investigations documented multiple CIA attempts to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

More recently, the United States made no pretense in concealing its hand in killing Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Qassem Suleimani in January 2020, an action that historic precedent would suggest was an act of war. Since 9/11, U.S. counterterrorism strategy has in practice been predicated on assassination. The mantra “find, fix, finish” is the other euphemism for preemptively hunting down and killing terrorists abroad before they might strike the U.S. homeland.

Left: Iranians tear up a U.S. flag during a demonstration following the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Gen. Qassem Suleimani, in Tehran on Jan. 3, 2020. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images   Right: The statue of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is toppled at al-Fardous square in Baghdad, Iraq, on April 9, 2003. Wathiq Khuzaie /Getty Images

While these episodes collectively demonstrate the U.S. government’s willingness to undertake consequential, lethal actions in the name of national security, when separated from transnational terrorist targets, only the strike against Suleimani occurred while he was abroad. Operations to depose Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran, Salvador Allende in Chile, and Castro in Cuba depended rather on internal elements to facilitate the plots.

Apart from these episodes and a possible hand in others,  U.S. governments have arguably favored the status quo of a predictable adversary. Regime change has not worked out well for U.S. interests. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq was no small factor in bringing about the Arab Spring, with effects that continue to reverberate across the Middle East as reflected by unresolved civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, as well as ongoing political instability in Egypt and Tunisia.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq also facilitated the rise of the Islamic State. And the Taliban ultimately outlasted the United States in Afghanistan by returning to power despite 20 years of American blood and treasure, and they now give sanctuary to insurgent groups threatening Pakistan, Iran, its Central Asian neighbors, and China.

The inclination to accept the known status quo is further strengthened when that country is armed with nuclear weapons. As regards Russia, even under the most ideal circumstances in which the U.S. government could remove Putin and conceal its hand in doing so, how confident is Washington that a stable and less hostile leadership would succeed him?

In Russia, like most autocracies, power rests with those who control the nation’s instruments of power—primarily the guns, but likewise the money, infrastructure, natural resources, connections, and knowledge of where the skeletons are to be found. That power is currently concentrated within a small circle of septuagenarians, almost all of whom have long ties to Putin, the Cold War-era KGB, and St. Petersburg. The Russian Armed Forces might have the numbers in terms of troops and tools, but under Putin, as it was in Soviet days, they are kept on a tight leash and closely monitored, with little discretionary authority for drawing weapons or coming out of their garrisons.

The three organizations most capable of moving on Putin and the Kremlin are the Federal Security Service, or FSB; the Rosgvardia, or National Guard; and the Presidential Security Service within the Federal Protective Service, or FSO. The FSB is Russia’s internal security and intelligence arm through which Putin governs given its relatively massive and ubiquitous presence across all the country’s institutions. The FSB enforces Putin’s rule, monitors dissent, intimidates, punishes, and liaises with organized crime. The Rosgvardia is Putin’s brute force. It was established in 2016 from among the interior ministry’s militias variously responsible for internal order and border security to be Putin’s long red line against protests, uprisings, and armed organized coup attempts.

Alexander Bortnikov leads the FSB, having succeeded Nikolai Patrushev, who followed Putin and has served since as one of his chief lieutenants. Until recently, Patrushev served as Russian Security Council chief and was most likely the Kremlin’s no. 2, and might still be, despite having been made a presidential advisor for shipping. Bortnikov, like Patrushev, shares Putin’s world view, paranoia for the West, political philosophy, and glorification of the old Soviet empire.

Bortnikov is considered by Kremlinologists to be Putin’s most relied-upon and trusted subordinate, and in turn, the individual best positioned to overthrow him, should he desire. While Bortnikov maintains a relatively low profile, limited glimpses suggest some degree of humility and contained ambition, although uncorroborated rumors suggest health issues. His deputy, Sergei Borisovich Korolev, some 10 years younger, is regarded as effective, similarly ruthless, but perhaps too ambitious and ostentatious in his relationships with Russian organized crime. It’s likely that Putin sees a bright future for Korolev but has enough reservation to justify more seasoning and evaluation before having him succeed Bortnikov.

The roughly 300,000-strong Rosgvardia is commanded by longtime former Putin bodyguard Viktor Zolotov. Likewise a part of Putin’s septuagenarian St. Petersburg crowd, with extensive past ties to organized crime, Zolotov emerged somewhat from the shadows following then-Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s June 2023 revolt. Zolotov claimed credit for protecting Moscow and mused publicly at how his organization would likely grow and secure more resources to facilitate its critical responsibilities.

Zolotov might not be as educated or sophisticated as Putin’s traditional siloviki associates, all former Cold War-era KGB veterans, but making his way up the ladder as he did from a St. Petersburg street thug, he’s not averse to using force to achieve his aims.

Little is publicly known concerning Zolotov’s politics apart from loyalty to his boss, but there’s no evidence he might offer a progressive alternative less hostile to the West. As Putin has done for all of those in his inner circle to secure their loyalty, Zolotov’s family members have been awarded land, gifts, and key posts. Patrushev’s son, for example, is now a deputy prime minister.

The FSO includes the Presidential Security Service, some 50,000 troops, and is responsible for Putin’s close physical protection. Little is known about its director, Dmitry Viktorovich Kochnev, now 60, whose mysterious official bio indicates that he was born in Moscow, served in the military from 1982 to 1984, and then went into “the security agencies of the USSR and the Russian Federation” from 1984 to 2002, after which time he was officially assigned to the FSO.

If Kochnev wanted Putin dead, he’s had plenty of time to pursue that goal, but he is unlikely to have the means and network to go further on his own in seizing power. Kochnev would still need the FSB and the Rosgvardia to accomplish the mission so would likely be an accomplice, but he would not be at the forefront of such a plot.

There are likewise a handful of others close to Putin who might influence his succession, or be the face of it, such as Igor Sechin, former deputy prime minister and current Rosneft CEO; former KGB Col. Gen. Sergei Ivanov, also a former defense minister and first deputy prime minister; and former KGB Col. Gen. Viktor Ivanov, who also had a stint as the Federal Narcotics Service director. All are known to be ideologically in line with the Russian leader and seek a restored empire unwilling to subscribe to a world order and rules created by the West that they believe aim to keep Moscow weak and subservient.

If Putin were assassinated abroad, regardless of the evidence, the old guard would likely accuse the United States and use it as a lightning rod to consolidate power and rally the public. And sharing Putin’s paranoia over the West’s existential threat, the risk is credible that they would retaliate militarily, directly, and with uncertain restraint. Believing themselves insecure, they would likewise crack down at home in an indiscriminately ruthless manner that might unleash long-contained revolutionary vigor among the population, which would throw a large, nuclear-armed power into chaos.

But could the United States do it if it wanted to? History shows that foreign leaders are not immune to assassination, as we were reminded when Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico survived being shot at close range by a disgruntled citizen in May. Unlike in the movies, however, assassinations are complicated, particularly against well-protected and deliberately unpredictable targets in foreign environments over which one has no control.

According to leaked documents and the account of Gleb Karakulov, a former engineer and FSO captain, Putin is paranoid concerning his safety and health. Karakulov’s observations, Putin’s limited travel, and his proclivity to cloister himself from direct contact with but a small number of insiders for his safety makes him a hard target. Scrupulous care for his movements includes the intense vetting, quarantining, and close monitoring of those involved with his transportation and his personal routine as well as in securing the cars, trains, and planes he uses. Who can forget the flurry of photos and memes surrounding the 15-foot-long table Putin used when conducting personal meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic?

For any such operation to succeed, close target reconnaissance and good intelligence are required to determine patterns and vulnerabilities on which to construct a plan. But while foreign head-of-state visits follow certain protocols and have predictable events, there are no long-term patterns within which to easily identify vulnerabilities. Other considerations include a means to infiltrate and exfiltrate the various members executing the operation as well as their tools. North Korea is not an easy place to visit let alone operate in for a foreign intelligence service to clandestinely steal secrets or conduct an observable action such as an assassination.

There are certainly additional risks when Putin or any foreign leader ventures beyond the layered, redundant, and tested security protocols enjoyed in their home cocoons. Visiting dignitaries must rely on the host government for a variety of resources and needs too numerous and costly to pack, and when doing so would offend the locals. And that extends to perimeter and route security, emergency medical support, and infrastructure integrity.

The threat to a foreign leader’s communications security, habits, health information, and that of their entourage is higher while in transit abroad—and therefore an attractive intelligence target. The multiple moving pieces and complicated logistics associated with such visits produce information that must be shared with the host governments and span agendas, itineraries, dietary requirements, flight and cargo manifests, communication frequencies, telephone numbers, email addresses, travelers’ biographic details, and weapons, to name a few.

In the era of ubiquitous technical surveillance, as the Israelis learned firsthand when Mossad agents assassinated Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in 2010, going undetected in any city is no small feat. Mabhouh’s killing was largely captured on CCTV. The Dubai investigation identified as many as 28 operatives who were involved, almost all of whom were revealed through technical means or the leads they generated.

Still, whoever assassinated Lebanese Hezbollah’s notorious international operations chief, Imad Mughniyah, in Damascus in February 2008 and al Qaeda deputy Abu Muhammad al-Masri in Tehran in 2020 managed to mount complex attacks in highly restrictive police states. Of course, neither moved about with a protective detail, let alone that which would surround a head of state.

Israel managed to assassinate Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in November 2020 in Iran despite a protective detail—although it was an operation that might have been taken from a science fiction movie involving automated robotic machines guns controlled from afar.

Then again, even with the best-laid plans for protecting Putin, one weak link could be the Russian leader’s self-imposed vulnerability, depending on the aging and problematic Soviet-designed Ilyushin Il-96 series jets he uses, as he did in recent travels to North Korea and Vietnam. Even if Russia builds and updates the replacement parts, there is long-term structural fatigue and limitations when trying to reconfigure so old an airframe design.

While there’s arguably an element of Putin’s pride in wishing to use Russian equipment, I suspect his inclination is driven more by paranoia for what adversaries might implant on his transport that prevents him from adopting newer Western aircraft, as his country’s commercial airlines have.

There are also significant bureaucratic hurdles to lethal operations. For the moment, at least, the U.S. practice of covert action is dictated by the rule of law. These are primarily executive orders rather than public laws, like EO 12333, which ironically forbids assassination, and the various presidential memos issued by Barack Obama in 2013, Donald Trump in 2017, and Joe Biden in 2022 guiding the use of “direct action,” the euphemism for drone strikes and other kinetic operations, against terrorist targets outside of conflict zones. But while the United States killed Suleimani as a terrorist who fit these guidelines, killing foreign leaders based on credible intelligence reflecting their ongoing efforts to do harm to the United States would reasonably still meet the legal bar for preemptive self-defense.

When it comes to killing Putin or any prominent adversary, the biggest challenge is not necessarily if it can be done, but whether it should be done. Openly killing Suleimani posed risks, of course, but ultimately, Iran is not an existential threat. Its retaliation could have been more costly, had Tehran chosen escalation, but still manageable.

Russia, on the other hand, as Putin frequently reminds the West in his saber-rattling speeches threatening nuclear war, is another matter. What happens if you fail? As The Wire’s Omar Little said, paraphrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson, “When you come at the king, you best not miss.”

[athena5898]

CENTRAL GAZA (PrR)(Quds) — The child Hanan, whose mother was martyred and whose legs were amputated when the occupation bombed their home in Deir al-Balah. Her family appeals for permission to travel abroad for treatment.

[tittyinfinity]

Video on Reddit:

Prominent Palestinian prisoner Israa Jaabis makes a statement upon her long-overdue release. by u/iwasasin inPalestine

(Screencap)

The video is not translated, however, this is a comment from the OP:

On the day of the accident, October 11, 2015, one day before the final submission of her project for the Special Education module. Israa’ drove from Jericho to Al-Quds in a small car that was overflowing with household items. She was moving to Jerusalem with her son, Mu’tasim, and, by transporting some of the small furniture, she had hoped to save on moving expenses. One of the items that Israa’ carried with her was a propane tank for the kitchen. It would have been too expensive to buy a brand new one in Jerusalem. As she was leaving Jericho, the engine of her car died twice. Young people in the town warned her to turn around and find another form of transportation, but she did not heed their advice. She needed to get to Jerusalem to her new job at a nursing home. Each time her car died, the engine emitted a burning smell. After travelling a couple of kilometers outside the Israeli Al-Za’ayem military checkpoint, near the illegal Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and a short distance east of Al-Quds, Israa’s car died again. No soldiers or army vehicles were in sight. A while later, a retired Israeli police officer passed by her stalled car. He parked his car in front of hers and asked for her ID as she desperately tried to restart the car. “There is a strong smell in the car,” she told him, trying to exit the car, but he insisted that she stay inside while he examined her papers. She tried to open the windows, but they, too, were affected by the electrical failure. Again, she tried to exit the car, opening the door, but the officer rushed over and slammed it shut, crushing her hand. She yelled “Allahu Akbar ’alaiku” (God is greater than you are), chastising him several times for not allowing her to escape. She urged him to let her out as fire ignited in the front part of the car. He refused. He stood there, watching her burn inside. The airbag deployed, completely trapping her inside the blazing car. The police officer who stopped her claimed that she was trying to use the propane tank to blow up the car. His testimony was the only one considered in the Israeli court, and Israa’ was branded a ‘terrorist.’ She was sentenced to 11 years in prison. While serving her term at HaSharon prison inside Israel, she was repeatedly denied much needed medical attention causing her to lose fingers and her health to deteriorate significantly.

[anglocatholicboyo]

Pro-Israeli individuals would have us believe that as Queer people we ought to side with Israel concerning its doings in the Palestinian territories, because Israel has Gay rights and Palestine does not.

I would not doubt that Israel has more robust protections for Queer people, but this does not even begin to justify the evil which Israel commits against Arabs within and without its borders.

I will never allow the Israeli Armed Forces to white-knight for me; to 'claim' me in this way.

What sort of monstrous assertion is it, that I ought to side with oppressors over the oppressed, just because the oppressors like me more? It seems that some are forgetting the message one of the most important stories to have ever come out of Palestine; here, I'll retell it for you, updated for modern audiences:

"A Palestinian was going down from Al-Quds to Ariha, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. An Iaraeli Knesset member happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a British Army General, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Queer person, as they traveled, came where the man was; and when they saw him, they took pity on him. They went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then they took the man in their own car, brought him to a hotel and took care of him."

[argaman01]

Jerusalems in the United States - New York State

I reposted a blog earlier today about how Jewish Voice for Peace had at some point had people recite "Next Year in Al-Quds" instead of "Next Year in Jerusalem" during a Passover seder. Someone then commented that they could have said "Next Year in Jerusalem New York," and in fact, there is a Jerusalem, New York, and it's not very far from me. (I live in Ithaca)

The New York Jerusalem is in Yates County, right on Keuka Lake. (In the map below, it's enclosed by the dotted red line).

From a history of the town published in 1892:

"Jerusalem is practically and substantially the mother of towns in Yates County.  The district, sometimes called township, of Jerusalem, was organized in 1789 as one of the subdivisions of Ontario County, and included with its limits all that is now Milo, Benton and Torrey, as well as its own original territory.  On the erection of Stueben County in 1796, the region or district called Bluff Point, or so much of it as lies south of the south line of township seven, was made a part of the new formation; but in 1814 an act of the Legislature annexed Bluff Point to Jerusalem, and to which it has since belonged.   

"In 1803 the town of Jerusalem was definitely erected, embracing township seven, second range, and so much of township seven, first range, as lay westward of Lake Keuka and lot No. 37.  At or about the same time the other territory that had previously formed a part of the district of Jerusalem was organized into a town and called Vernon, after Snell and finally Benton."

The Public Universal Friend

Portrait of the Public Universal Friend, from 1812, unknown painter. Source: Yates County Historical Society

A famous resident of the town (famous then, not now), was the Public Universal Friend:

"The Public Universal Friend, Jemima WILKINSON, was of course a pioneer of this town, the same as she had been in the locality and settlement on Seneca Lake.  In 1790 she first came to the Genesee country and four years later she established herself permanently in the town of Jerusalem."

The Public Universal Friend was born as Jemima Wilkinson in 1752 to a Quaker family in Rhode Island. Jemima was transformed into the Public Universal Friend after "a night of fevered dreams" on October 10, 1776.

Jemima took on a new identity after the fever. "'Reborn' in their place was the Public Universal Friend, neither male nor female. According to the Friend, Jemima’s soul had passed into heaven, and God had reanimated their body with the spirit of the Friend sent to spread the Quaker gospel. From then on, the Friend began to gather followers and travel as a preacher."

The Friend lived as nonbinary person: "The Public Universal Friend dressed in a way that blended masculinity and femininity, and this drew much attention. Their clothing included a cravat and robe like traditional ministers and clergymen wore, as well as the kind of hat typically worn by Quaker men. They also didn’t wear the traditional bonnet or head covering women were expected to wear. The Public Universal Friend’s gender presentation caused curiosity and anger, and it was a radical challenge to the status quo that the Friend was not willing to be bound by the customs of the community." 

How did the Friend come to settle in Jerusalem, New York? After their transformation, the Friend gathered a following, and they decided to create a settlement in western New York, called Jerusalem.

The Friend's house, where they lived until dying in 1819. (Photo from the National Park Service).

Sources

Yates County, New York, History of the Town of Jerusalem: https://web.archive.org/web/20050125071905/http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ny/county/yates/jerusalem/jeruhistory.htm

New York Public Library, January 13, 2023: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2023/02/16/who-was-public-universal-friend-living-outside-gender-binary-revolutionary-times

Washington Post, January 5, 2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/01/05/long-before-theythem-pronouns-genderless-prophet-drew-hundreds-followers/

National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/places/the-friend-s-home-jemima-wilkinson-house.htm

Life Story: The Public Universal Friend: https://wams.nyhistory.org/settler-colonialism-and-revolution/settler-colonialism/public-universal-friend/

Jerusalem and the Society of Universal Friends: http://upstatehistorical.org/items/show/75

More information about the Friend

The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America, by Paul B. Moyer (Cornell University Press, 2015).

"'Indescribable Being': Theological Performances of Genderlessness in the Society of the Publick Universal Friend, 1776–1819," by Scott Larson, Early American Studies 12:3 (2014) 576-600. (Special issue: Beyond the Boundaries: Critical Approaches to Sex and Gender in Early America). JSTOR link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24474871

[graymanbriefing]

Civil Unrest / Societal Collapse / Citizen Actions Brief: National Summary 》In Dearborn, MI; pro-Palestinians gathered at an "International Day of Al-Quds" (annual Palestinian event held on the last Friday of Ramadan) and chanted "death to America"... 》Nationwide on April 13th; activists associated with "Don't Mess with Our Kids" conduct rallies at all 50 state capitals. The Christian centered group, affiliated with "Her Voice Movement" and supported by "Mom's 4 Liberty", conducted prayer rallies/gatherings in the 50 cities and also called for "pro transgender ideologies" to no longer be promoted in public school systems. LGBT activists counter-protested many of the gatherings. At least one rally was attended by Proud Boys. The majority of... 》Nationwide, pro-Palestinians gathered at rallies and celebrated Iran's attack on Israel. Videos show rally leaders teaching U.S. citizens who support Palestine and Hamas, how to chant "death to America" i... 》In Chicago, IL on April 15th; pro-Palestinians blocked the roadway (I-190) entering into Terminal 1 at O'Hare Airport, for... 》In San Francisco, CA on April 15th; pro-Palestinians blocked traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge holding signage that read "stop the world for Gaza". Both directions of travel were halted on the bridge for "multiple miles" for 4+ hours. Protestors tethered themselves to vehicles to prevent LE from removing them from the road. Debrief: U.S. Senator Cotton advised that citizens should "take matters into their own hands" to intervene when pro-Palestinians begin blocking roads. Such e... 》In NYC, NY on April 15th; mass pro-Palestinian protests (15 different protests) occurred throughout the city as the groups celebrated attacks on Israel and called for the U.S. to stop assisting Israel. Pro-Israeli groups counter-protested. Multiple roads were blocked, including Newburgh-Beacon Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge. Protestors were seen waving Hezbollah fla... 》In OR, FL, PA, TX, WA, CA, NY, and at least 12 other states on April 15th; mass pro-Palestinian protests and riots shut dow...(CLASSIFIED, get briefs in real-time unredacted by joining at www.graymanbriefing.com)

[andnowanowl]

Since "Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation" is suspiciously not available in the US in the form of an e-book, I purchased a physical copy and wanted to share it here for anyone else also unable to get access.

RIYAM KAFRI ABU LABAN

Chemistry professor, blogger, 36

Born in Amman, Jordan

Interviewed in Ramallah, West Bank

Riyam Kafri Abu Laban was born in Amman, Jordan. Her father was one of thousands of Palestinians not allowed to return to their homes after the Six-Day War of 1967 —marking a second wave of Palestinian refugees after the massive displacement of 1948. Riyam's parents waited for the opportunity to return to the West Bank instead of leaving to pursue lucrative jobs elsewhere. They finally returned to the West Bank in 1980, after years of legal wrangling. On returning to Palestine, they settled near Ramallah.

We interview Riyam in her spacious kitchen in Ramallah. As she talks, she stirs pots, washes dishes, and checks the oven, effortlessly putting together a dinner for six as she tells her life story. We learn that this kind of multi-tasking is normal for her. She is the mother of twins, teaches organic chemistry at Al-Quds University, and she helps to run the university's liberal arts program (designed in conjunction with Bard College). She also writes a blog with a fellow professor, and her posts are sharply observed explorations of daily life in Palestine.

Writing is Riyam's passion, but she came to it later in her career. She received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and had the opportunity to live a comfortable life in the United States. She chose instead to return to Palestine where she started teaching, and she found her voice as a writer in describing life as a resident of the West Bank. She writes that Palestine is "like a distant land that inhabits the warmest chambers of one's heart, so close yet so unattainable.¹

A DESIRE TO LIVE JUST LIKE ANY OTHER TEENAGER IN THE WORLD

When the war broke out in 1967, my father was an electrical engineering Ph.D. student in Germany. After the war, Israel gave ID cards to Palestinians. The cards were required for them to remain in Palestine, but since my father was abroad at the time they were distributed, he wasn't able to get one. My mom, who hadn't yet met my father, was in the West Bank at the time and was able to get an ID card. A little after dad moved to Jordan. Later, he met my mother while she was traveling through Jordan to visit a relative. My parents were married in November 1977, and then they started working immediately to return to Palestine. At first they thought that since my dad was marrying someone with an ID card, it would be easier for him to apply for one as well. But the Israeli government said that they needed to have a child to prove that the marriage was real. They got pregnant really quickly and I was born nine months later, in Amman, Jordan, in October 1978.²

After I was born, my parents continued their pursuit of an ID card for my father. This time, the Israeli authorities told my mom that she needed to have a boy, because a girl didn't count. Who knows what their reasoning was. My mom had to make the choice to get pregnant as soon as possible again, so that she could try to have a boy and reapply for an ID for my father.

An opportunity came up for my father to help build a new university out of a technical college that was located in Abu Dis.³ So we moved to Palestine in 1979, even though we didn't have an ID for my father yet. We didn't stay long. The faculty named the new university Al-Quds.⁴ Al-Quds is the Arabic name for the city of Jerusalem, and the name drew a lot of attention from the Israeli authorities, who assumed the founders were implying that the city belonged to the Palestinians. Some professors were arrested, and my dad was sent back to Jordan.

The next year, my mother was pregnant with my brother Muhanned, and we tried again to live in the West Bank. My father had found teaching work. This time, we settled near Ramallah.⁵ Finally, my father was able to obtain an ID card not long after my brother was born. Then after he got his ID card, he helped found the engineering school at Birzeit University.⁶ My mother was a teacher, and later a principal, but she took some time off after the birth of Muhanned and later my sister Duna.

I grew up in a politically active family. I also grew up with parents who thought that their children had to leave a mark on society. We were raised to think that we had to live with a sense of purpose. And the main purpose, the underlying goal, was always to serve Palestine in one way or another.

I was sheltered from some of the problems many Palestinians have, but I can't say I grew up completely sheltered, because I was educated about the Israeli occupation. You know, I grew up during the beginning of the First Intifada, so the entire atmosphere was different.⁷ Everyone, from teenagers to adults, was more aware of Palestine, of the political situation, of the prisoners and arrests.⁸ Demonstrations took place right outside our home, since we lived in a central area of Al-Bireh, just outside Ramallah.⁹ One of my earliest clear memories is from the start of the Intifada. I was eight years old, and I spoke to a BBC reporter. I told him, "We're not just throwing rocks, we want our freedom!"

The demonstrations during the First Intifada brought the neighborhood together. At that time, women would knit navy-blue V-neck shirts that they could send to prisoners. So that's how I learned knitting. The prison would only accept that color, and it had to be V-neck, and it had to be plain—we couldn't even use any stitches but the most basic ones. And my mom was part of a women's group that would go into refugee camps to visit prisoners' families, and they would also collect these knitted shirts and send them to prisons.

I don't remember much about my first couple of years at school. Actually, the Israeli military shut down most schools in the area during the First Intifada. Schools might operate for only a few hours a week. So we did distance learning. I was enrolled at the Friends School, and I'd go once every two weeks to drop off my assignments and pick up new ones.¹⁰ The first day of the year, we'd go to pick up our books, get our first assignments, and then immediately go home to start working on them. We were really responsible for our own education. Kids from all around would come to our home, and my mother would teach them. Finally, when I was around twelve, the school reopened. But even then it was only open for half days.

Around the time I became a teenager, the Intifada took on a different emotional quality for me. I wasn't just knitting sweaters anymore I was watching my friends get arrested. I remember the powerful desire to live just like any other teenager around the world, to spend my time listening to music and not having to care about politics. It was suffocating. I say this with a lot of humility, because I didn't even see what it was like to live in a refugee camp. So if I was suffocating in the middle of a city, with a home that had all the amenities that anyone could ask for, I can't imagine what it was like for anyone in the refugee camps. And then I saw this complete switch, with Oslo, around 1993.¹¹

Things started to open up more. We could get to places we couldn't get to before, including Jerusalem, and Haifa, and Jaffa.¹² By the time I graduated from high school in '96, even the topics of conversation with my more the day-to-day concerns with friends were completely different living and work. We didn't need to talk about fighting just to live and struggling just to exist. I could think about things like the New Kids on the Block, pop music. But even as a teen, I never trusted the Oslo Accords. We had peace, but it felt like an illusion, a hologram.

I WAS IN LOVE WITH THE CONCEPT OF A ROAD TRIP

I lived in Ramallah until I was seventeen. Then I graduated from the Friends School, and I received a full-tuition scholarship to Earlham College in the States.¹³ The Friends School had an arrangement where they'd send one or two graduating students to Earlham on full scholarship every year. I'd applied to a few other liberal arts colleges in the States, but I really wanted to get into Earlham, and when I got the scholarship, my family discussed it. It was a little bit of a conflict. It was very tough for dad, particularly. My mother is a very realistic woman, and she felt like her children leaving home was inevitable. But I think for my father it was harder. He viewed the United States as a country that helped Israel. It was a matter of principle that his daughter shouldn't leave this country to study in the U.S. Coming to terms with that was a huge adjustment.

In the end, we decided that I'd go with the idea to become a physician, and that I would return to Palestine after my education. My parents announced, "We'll allow you, our first daughter, to go to the United States on your own, only under the following terms—you will not return with a bachelor's in biology or chemistry, because you could always do that at Birzeit, and you will try to get into medical school." I would finish my education, and then I would come back and work here in Palestine.

All I knew about Earlham was that it was a small school, that I wouldn't have more than thirty or forty students in my classes, which was true. Except for introductory classes, I think most of my classes were like that. I think at seventeen you don't know what to expect out of college, and I soon learned that the school was extremely challenging. I worked really hard. But the social life was far better than I expected. The kindness of people on campus made me feel really cared for in a small setting. And Earlham was very pro-Palestinian. As a Quaker institution, they were very interested in educating Palestinians—they'd been accepting Palestinian students since 1948.

I took biology in the first year, under the assumption that I'd be a pre-med student. But I was broken by the anatomy and physiology course. I just couldn't do it—the smell, the formaldehyde. I worked so hard, and I could barely break a C in the course.

And in the meantime, I was taking organic chemistry, and I was practically sleeping through the course and I was getting an A, you know? And that's when things kind of shifted. I had a great organic chemistry professor, Thomas Ruttledge, who's still my friend and colleague, and I decided to become a chemist. And I thought, "Well, I'll get a Ph.D. instead of an M.D." And I wanted to work in the pharmaceutical industry. That part really enticed me—the idea of creating things.

By the end of my undergrad experience, I felt very much at home at Earlham, and I do think those were the best four years my of entire time in the United States. You know, the one thing that fascinated me the most living in the United States was the ability to drive anywhere. I was in love with the concept of a road trip. I learned driving just to be able to drive out for endless hours, because it was mind-boggling to me that I could cross state lines and be in Tennessee for a couple of hours, and on the same day drive back to Indiana, no problem! That was new to me, and I loved traveling, even after starting my Ph.D. program.

I did my Ph.D. in medicinal organic chemistry at the University of Tennessee, and I focused on computer-based drug design and discovery. I learned to design compounds by modeling enzymes on a computer, which was a very cutting edge approach to medicinal chemistry at the time. I worked with a team that researched anti-HIV compounds and anti-cancer agents.

I briefly considered staying in the U.S. When you're in graduate school and doing research, all you see as important is the science that you're doing. And you don't have a concept or understanding of what life really is, right? Because for a scientist, life exists within the walls of the lab, and the library, and on your computer. And so for a while I really thought that I should stay for a post-doc there. But my parents weren't willing to live through another year of not having their children around. They were really adamant that we should all finish and return as soon as we were done.

Also, I started my Ph.D. program at Tennessee right before September 11, 2001. I remember the day of the attacks, I had to teach a class. As I walked into the classroom, I heard some students whispering about me, "She's Palestinian, they're responsible for this." I couldn't keep silent. I told the whole class that it couldn't have been the Palestinians, and that there was no way I would condone such an act. I told them I came from a violent place, but that all I wanted was for things to be easier for my younger brother and sister. I ended up crying, and a colleague came to the classroom and took over the class for me.

Later I experienced real hostility, even from some faculty, me questions like, "Why are Muslims like this?" I knew then I couldn't stay in the U.S. I couldn't go through life explaining myself to others. It sounds strange, but I thought then that if I had children, I'd rather they who'd askgrow up with the problems of occupation and know who they were than to keep having to explain themselves and their identities to everyone else in their community.

There is a lot that I still love about the U.S. and the South - I still make sweet potato pie every November, around Thanksgiving. But since September 11, I've known there is no way I could be happy living my entire life in the States.

So an opportunity arose in Ramallah at a pharmaceutical company called Pharmacare, and it sounded interesting enough. Also, I thought, If I'm willing to try living in the United States and adjust to its cultural values - the way it works, its social structure, everything—then why not give this chance to Palestine itself?

So after my Ph.D. program I returned to Palestine in January 2007, and I began researching the antioxidant activity of Palestinian plants with Pharmacare. It was part of a project where we were looking for anti-cancer compounds in traditional Palestinian medicinal plants. I worked with herbalists throughout the West Bank. We started the lab from scratch. Up until that point, all pharmaceutical companies in the West Bank were generic drug producers. Our work was the first to invest in innovative research in the region.

THERE'S A RHYTHM IN PALESTINE THAT REALLY GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN

Palestine had changed quite a lot since I had left. I had been away for the entire Second Intifada.¹⁴ I had never seen the wall. That was my first impression of what had changed. I had seen pictures, but to see it cut through terrain I remembered well—honestly, to this day I haven't resolved the feeling I had when I saw it. Passing into the West Bank through Qalandiya, I saw incredible poverty—Qalandiya looks like all the misery of the West Bank, including overcrowding.¹⁵ Then driving into Ramallah, I was amazed to see how things had grown. There were new tall buildings, signs that people were doing okay. The city was jazzy, sort of dressed up. Coming back home, it was as though that illusion of peace, the hologram, had shrunk to a bubble just around my hometown.

Still, being back in Ramallah was a challenge in some ways. Once you go to graduate school abroad, it's an entirely different experience living in Palestine. Believe it or not, the culture shock was easier to get over going to Earlham from Palestine than the culture shock that I faced coming back after almost eleven years of being away.

I can't exactly pinpoint what the reasons are for the difficulty. I think one of them is that I spent eleven years on my own, in a country that's fairly free and accepts anything and everything. And I learned to think for myself, learned to accept people for what they are and who they are, and not judge them for what they think or what they look like or what they believe. And I came back to a country that's fairly systematic. There's a specific, almost rigid, structure in society here that you have to fit into.

I came back here to Palestine, and I had social obligations and family obligations, and I was no longer able to read in my free time. Even the way I dressed had to change. So it was very difficult at the beginning.

But even in those early days back, I felt like Ramallah had a way of making me feel comfortable. And it's not just the city—it's the people. There's a rhythm in Palestine. Every country has its own rhythm, but there's a rhythm in Palestine that really gets under your skin, even with all the difficulty of travel, with all the difficulty of being stuck on the road in traffic. There's something that just gets under your skin, and it's very difficult to leave, once you start to get settled in here. I also finally found old friends, and a lot of my friends were going through the same difficulties. They'd been gone for a while, they were educated outside, whether in France or England or the U.S., and had returned. So we had something in common, and a common language, and that's kind of what's got me slowly coming back into living here.

OUR FIRST CLASS

I worked for Pharmacare for over two years, until around 2010. But there were several reasons why I thought it was not the right place. I was spending my entire time in a lab with only one other person, and I realized more and more that I wanted to work with people. And what does a Ph.D. do with people, other than teach, right? When I was nineteen years old, my adviser Thomas Ruttledge told me that I would end up in teaching, and I thought he just didn't know me. He said that I had it in me.

So in 2010, I applied to Al-Quds University and Birzeit University for teaching positions. Al-Quds had recently developed a partnership with Bard College in the U.S., where Bard would establish a liberal arts degree program within Al-Quds.¹⁶ And Bard thought I was the perfect candidate to teach for them—I was a liberal arts college graduate. I would understand the concepts and the teaching methods of liberal arts education.

Originally, it was a part-time position for a semester, so I only taught one class. After that first semester, Al-Quds and Bard immediately offered me a full-time position. They kind of took me in. They didn't care that I didn't have an extensive publication history or anything like that. It wasn't an old boys' club like Birzeit University.

I became a core faculty member and one of the founding faculty members. We had no program—only thirty students— and I remember running these internal transfer campaigns, where we encouraged students from Al-Quds University to give it a try for one semester. We basically opened it up for everybody, so good students and bad students were applying, and we accepted all of them just to be able to run a program. Then I started building the science program, and now we have the largest and most successful division in the entire college. I have sixty students who are hoping to complete their degree in either biology or chemistry right now. This year, at the end of June 2014, we were able to graduate our second class and my first class of chemistry majors.

I WORE A HEADPIECE THAT'S 200 YEARS OLD AND MADE OF GOLD LIRAS

In the spring of 2009, I met a man named Ahmad through a friend of mine who works with him in the municipal government. We saw each other occasionally for a year and a half, but I wouldn't say we were dating, really. I saw him once or twice, and I think we were both busy with our careers, and so it kind of just took its time.

We would send each other messages every now and then, check on each other. Then it took a more serious turn in the fall of 2010, in September. We started seeing each other among groups of friends so that we could keep it on the down-low, so no one would really catch who was dating whom.

Then in the end of December, we decided that we wanted to be together. He invited me to dinner on December 30 at his family's home. He said that after dinner he'd love to go to my parents' home—he wanted to meet them. From there, things developed really quickly. On Friday morning, New Year's Eve, he called me and he said that his older brother would like to talk to my father and that he'd like to make this official, which is the culturally correct way of doing things. And so they set a date to talk to my parents officially and ask for my hand in marriage.

The night of New Year's Eve, Ahmad surprised me by proposing in front of 360 guests at the Mövenpick Hotel New Year's Eve party.¹⁷ So, by the next morning, the entire city knew that we were engaged.

It was right at the beginning of the second semester for me, so it was a little bit hard to think about getting married during the semester, but semesters at Al-Quds University are never properly planned, because there are strikes, and there are closures and political reasons not to go to school. So we thought about April for a wedding date, and then it didn't work with one of his brothers, whose daughter was expecting a child, and they wanted to be with her when she had the child. We decided that it would have to be pushed till June, but his mother was not willing to see that happen. She felt like she was old, and you never know what happens, and she wanted to be there for the wedding. And so we actually ended up getting married in March 2011, on a very cold, rainy day.

We had a full-on traditional Palestinian wedding. I wore a traditional dress, and I also wore a headpiece that's 200 years old and made of gold liras—Ottoman liras. The wedding party was huge. There were over 700 guests. I should have known that my life would be loud after that. After the big wedding, we had a smaller wedding reception for the family and close friends.

Within less than a year, I went from being single and career-oriented to a wife, a pregnant woman, then a mother of two. I had my twins on November 10, 2011. I came from a small, nuclear family where everybody's educated, and we had a very quiet breakfast every Friday morning, and suddenly I shifted from that into this huge, clan-like family, with a whole lot of brothers and sisters who are all married with children, whose children were having children. Life with my husband's family was loud and lively, and I learned how to cook for forty people—while pregnant. And I found myself completely entrenched in Palestinian life in a way I hadn't been before.

I DISCOVERED THE WRITER IN ME

My husband worked as the mayor of Ramallah's right-hand man. When we married, in a way, I thought I was marrying Ramallah. My friends actually nicknamed me "Lady Ramallah," because I was everywhere, I would go to all the cultural events, always out in the city.

When I finally got to know my husband's family well, I realized that I didn't marry the city, I married Abu Shusha and Zakariyya, which were the two villages that his parents had left in 1948.¹⁸ I suddenly found myself completely entrenched in Palestinian culture that I've only read about the diaspora refugee culture. Now, my kids are descendants of refugees. It's been a total switch for me. And it was more eye-opening to me - there's real suffering in Palestine, there's real heartbreak. And it's a lot more than what people think it is. When I began to see these things, that's when the writing happened.

In July 2010, Bard sent me to the U.S. to do this writing workshop called "Language and Thinking," which is part of our core program for all of our students, and all faculty from all fields are encouraged to teach the course. And that's where I discovered the writer in me. At the Bard workshop, I discovered how much I love human beings and that I like to learn from them. That is when I started to write in earnest. Before long I had started a blog about Palestine called The Big Olive.

I started it with a woman I met at a wedding named Tala. I met Tala exactly two weeks before I went to that writing workshop, so all these things started to come together at the same time. Initially, the blog was supposed to be about Ramallah and about my return to the city, and how the city helped me really adjust. But it became more about growing close to this big Palestinian family of my husband's as well.

Another reason I felt I needed to write about the real Palestine was that I was traveling a lot through the West Bank doing school recruitment. I spent a lot of time traveling to the Abu Dis campus near Jerusalem, visiting Bethlehem, going from checkpoint to checkpoint. The blog became a place where I could examine what it was like to live in this growing, cosmopolitan city—Ramallah—and then going out and observing a culture that you don't see within the city.

Back when I was living in the U.S., I used to get asked about life in Palestine quite a lot by my friends there. I would tell them to imagine that you are commuting from New York City to a small town in New Jersey, which should be an hour drive. But in order to get there, you can't take the regular highway, you have to take all these back roads. And even the back roads aren't all open, and at any point in time, any of the state police might stop you and ask you questions for an hour or more without giving any reason. Suddenly most of your day, most of your work, has been commuting home. It's exhausting. That's what living in Palestine is like, and that's what I wanted to capture in my blog.

I'd always tell my American friends, "You take your freedom to move too much for granted." I remember being stuck in traffic going to JFK after my workshop with Bard in 2010. I was trying toget to the airport to go back to Palestine, and I was really getting antsy. I was with my friend, and I said something like, "Oh my God, I'm going to miss my plane, and I can't understand this traffic." And my friend looked at me and said, "What do you mean you can't understand this traffic? You're the one who lives it every day in Palestine." But that's the thing we take gridlock for granted in Palestine. It's possible to be surprised by terrible traffic in the United States. And so I think that's the difference between traveling here and there.

As Palestinians, we can't take any of our day-to-day plans for granted. I may plan to start my class at eleven o'clock, and on any day I could easily be fifteen minutes late, an hour late, no matter how early I left—for no reason other than a random pop-up checkpoint somewhere between home and school. There may not even be a tense situation or security reason for the pop-up checkpoint. It could be just because.

The stress of getting to work and then back home rules our lives. And now that I have children, I feel it's even further compounded. I have to get to daycare to get my children, and to bring them home so that I can have an hour with them during the day, so then I can put them to bed on time. And that's such a basic human want. That's something that working mothers all over the world have to worry about. But I have to worry about it several times over. Every day I have to figure out how I might improvise if I can't get to daycare to pick up my children on time.

This stress makes you age faster, I think. In certain areas of Palestine, you can cut the tension and serve it up on a platter. And it's because people are not able to be regular human beings, because they're completely controlled by these random obstacles that will stop life from happening.

When I was pregnant, I constantly feared that my water would break in Qalandiya and I'd be stuck. I had twins who were breech sideways, and so there was no room for them to come out. I couldn't have natural birth.knew that. And so, the last time I drove, I was about a week from giving birth. I went as far as making arrangements with a doctor in Bethlehem so that, should my water break, it would be easier to go to Bethlehem and give birth there than drive the few miles to my hospital. So I had a friend, and he agreed that he would have an ambulance on standby in Bethlehem that would come and pick me up at the drop of a hat and would take me right away to the French women's hospital in Bethlehem. He would also make sure that he was in contact with my OB/GYN, who could explain to him on the phone the details of my pregnancy. That's an extreme example, but the truth is that every time I leave the house, I have to have contingency plans. I never know how long it might take to run simple errands.

If you're in much of the U.S., you're pregnant with twins, and you work a few miles away from home and the hospital, you can get to any hospital at any time, no matter when your water breaks, no matter if your twins are breech, or both pointing downward with their heads and ready to be delivered naturally. You have that access. Here, you don't.

The only access from one city to the other is roads, and when those roads are blocked, then life stops. And that's how women end up giving birth at checkpoints. I wrote about giving birth at a checkpoint on my blog, and I was writing about my own fears. It was something that kept coming at me. And even when I was driving, I kept thinking, "What if I get stuck in this crazy traffic, and someone hits me, rear-ends me, and then I lose one of the babies because of the shock?"

For anyone who doesn't know the road Wadi Nar - actually, it's a little better now that the roads are a little bigger - but it's this winding, uphill road between Ramallah and the cities southeast of Jerusalem where trucks of all kinds and sizes and cars of all kinds and sizes are traveling two ways. There are no clear two lanes, and literally, when you are going up, look to your right, you're practically on the edge of a cliff. If your car gets hit, there's nowhere to go except down the valley.

I tell my friends that it's only by the grace of God that I make it from sunrise to sunset every day, and I go to Abu Dis, and I still have the energy to take care of two kids every day. The only way for me to de with this stress is to write. I've gotten such positive responses to the blog from everyone who reads it, but I'm not sure if I'm actually a good writer, or if people just want to be nice to me. And this is where one of my fears exists. It's not a fear, it's maybe that I'm not willing to believe that I'm good at something else other than science.

On the other hand, I found this open-armed place with this community where anything you write is up for discussion, and it's up for editing and up for improvement, and people are willing to read what you write. Because every time you write, you're putting yourself on that paper. And I'm always submitting pieces to an online magazine called This Week in Palestine, or just putting work up on the blog, and thinking, Dear God, please have mercy on me. There's a piece of me within those words. So don't let them batter it because it would break my heart. And so I'm in between, as a writer, I'm still searching for the voice. I don't know what narrative I'm going to take, I don't know what I am trying, I don't even know what story I'm telling.

So I'm still trying to find my voice. I'm not ready to give up science completely and just do writing. And at the same time, I can't just let the science take over, because I'm so extremely happy to finally have that part of me alive again.

THERE IS REAL SUFFERING OUTSIDE OF RAMALLAH

When the Bard program at Al-Quds was just getting started, we didn't have enough students to fill the classes. Besides teaching, I worked as a recruiter and traveled all around the West Bank to meet students. I traveled a lot in Bethlehem and recruited a lot of students from the refugee camps there. I also recruited quite a lot from around Hebron. Those trips were so valuable to me, because they reminded me that there is real suffering outside of Ramallah, beyond the day-to-day obstacles of checkpoints and uncertainty that I faced in moving around the West Bank.

I've seen that suffering touch my students. We recruited quite a lot from the refugee camps, and so I taught many of the young people I was recruiting. I remember one student took an intro organic chemistry class with me I always had to tell him to be quiet so I could get on with the lecture, because he was always asking questions. He was funny, sweet, handsome. One of the leaders in the program. Then in the middle of summer break, he disappeared for two weeks. His parents had no idea where he was—they just found his car abandoned in the street one day. He'd been arrested. And then when he returned to school in the fall, he was a completely changed person. He didn't say a single word all fall semester.

But I think the liberal arts approach here is valuable. The students really take to it—they flourish. We have students reading Greek philosophy, drama. And writing as well. I remember one assignment where students read the "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet and recast it from a Palestinian perspective. The students shared their work in class, and the results were chilling and powerful.

I hope my students will have an easier time than my generation has had. I hope they make the Palestinian cause the way they see it and not simply follow leaders whose ideas have expired. And I hope they stay alive. For my children, I hope they find liberation through education, and I hope that they choose the pen and the book before anything else. For myself, I want to continue to write, though my hopes for Palestine feel more and more crushed. I hope to never forget for a moment that whatever peace and prosperity I have in Ramallah is temporary - an illusion.

---

Footnotes

¹ From the appendices -

IN WAITING by Riyam Kafri Abu Laban

The following prose poem was written by Riyam Kafri Abu Laban and is included here to stand in for sentiments expressed to us by nearly every one of our interviewees, whether their narratives were included in this collection or not.

Welcome to the land of waiting. People here are born waiting. Waiting to return to a homeland lost, and, from the looks of it, in the most desperate moments, lost forever.

Waiting to return to a home they still carry a key for in their hand, and a memory of in their heart; an image hidden in the folds of their dreams, and which, sadly, in the most realistic moments they know no longer exists.

In Palestine you wait for Ramadan, just like you wait for a breath of fresh air in a crowded restaurant in New York City. You wait for a permit to travel. You wait for schools to open, for the strike to end, for the checkpoint to be removed, for the accident rubble to be cleared. You wait for the Allenby Bridge to empty, for the doctor to finally come in on time.

In Palestine you wait. You wait for your dreams to come true.

You wait to leave the refugee camp, you wait to leave the village, you wait to arrive in Ramallah, you wait for destiny to embrace you—but she really never does. In fact, at the first stop she slaps you hard in the face and leaves her mark on you, and then you spend a lifetime waiting for that wound to heal. It never does.

In Palestine you wait to graduate, you wait to find a job, you wait for the next job to be better than the first.

In Palestine you wait to get married, then you wait to have children, then you wait for them to grow. Then you wait for them to become doctors—but trust me, they will not.

In Palestine you wait in line endlessly to receive permission to see the Palestine that is yours. And after you finally get a chance to see her, you realize she looks nothing like what your grandparents described, and nothing like the country your mother cries over. You wait to see her, only to realize that she has moved on, and did not wait for you.

In Palestine you wait for the birth of a child anxiously, with the hope she will not be born on a checkpoint.

In Palestine you wait for the hunger strike to end. You wait for sons and daughters to be released from prison—only to be rearrested again, at the next checkpoint while on their way to find a job and start a life.

In Palestine you wait for your paycheck only to have it hijacked by hungry loan payments and red hot gasoline prices.

In Palestine, you wait endlessly in Qalandiya to get home. Keep waiting. This might take hours.

You wait for the summer to end in the hope that winter will bring more peace, and you wait for winter to end in the hope that summer will bring more warmth.

In Palestine you wait for everything and everyone.

In Palestine you wait for the next eruption, the next Intifada, the next incursion, the next war—which always comes.

² Amman, the capital of Jordan, is a city of over 2 million residents.

³ Abu Dis is a city of around 12,000 people just east of Jerusalem and the location of one of Al-Quds University's campuses.

⁴ Al-Quds is a university system with three campuses-one in Jerusalem, one in Abu Dis just outside of Jerusalem, and one in Al-Bireh, adjacent to Ramallah. The system currently serves over 13,000 undergraduates.

⁵ Ramallah is a city of over 30,000 people. It has experienced rapid growth since it was adopted as a de facto administrative capital by the Palestinian Authority following the Oslo Accords. Numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and diplomatic outreach offices are also based in the city. Ramallah is located about ten miles northeast of Jerusalem, the city many Palestinians consider Palestine's true capital.

⁶ Birzeit University is a renowned public university located just outside Ramallah. It hosts approximately 8,500 undergraduates.

⁷ The First Intifada was an uprising throughout the West Bank and Gaza against Israeli military occupation. It began in December 1987 and lasted until 1993. Intifada in Arabic means "to shake off."

⁸ Israel carried out the mass arrest of Palestinian citizens during the First Intifada. More than 120,000 Palestinians were arrested or spent time in prison from 1987 to the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

⁹ Al-Bireh is a city of over 40,000 people just east of Ramallah.

¹⁰ The Friends School of Ramallah is a Quaker-run institution that was opened in 1889, during the time of Ottoman rule.

¹¹ The first Oslo Accords negotiations took place in Norway, the U.S., and France during the summer of 1993. The Accords outlined a plan for the Israeli military to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank in stages while further negotiations would be carried out regarding Palestinian statehood, security, borders, and Israeli settlements.

¹² Access to Jerusalem was significantly restricted to Palestinians from the West Bank before the Oslo Accords in 1993. Haifa is a city of 270,000 people in northern Israel. Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv in Israel, was home to many Arabs before 1948.

¹³ Earlham College is a Quaker-affiliated liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. It has an enrollment of 1,210 students and has regularly accepted a large cohort of Palestinian students since the signing of the Oslo Accords.

¹⁴ Though a small portion of the barrier wall in the West Bank was constructed as early as 1994, construction of the wall increased rapidly in 2002.

¹⁵ Qalandiya is a refugee camp and city of nearly 30,000 located between Jerusalem and Ramallah. It's also the name of the nearby checkpoint, one of the biggest in the West Bank.

¹⁶ Bard College is a liberal arts college in Dutchess County, New York, on the Hudson River. It serves just over 2,000 undergraduate students. Bard formed an alliance with Al-Quds University in 2009, with the idea of bringing training in liberal arts education to Palestine.

¹⁷ The Mövenpick Hotel in Ramallah is part of a Swiss chain of international luxury hotels. The hotel in Ramallah was opened in the fall of 2010.

¹⁸ Abu Shusha was a Palestinian village of under 1,000 near the city of Ramla that was destroyed in the war of 1948. Zakariyya was a Palestinian village of just over 1,000 north-west of Hebron that was destroyed in the war of 1948.

[workersolidarity]

[📹 Scenes from the destruction evident following the Zionist occupation army driving armored bulldozers through Palestinian homes in the Al-Manshiya neighborhood of the Nour al-Shams Camp, in Tulkarm City.]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚨

ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES DEMOLISHED PALESTINIAN HOMES IN THE OCCUPIED WEST BANK

On Thursday evening, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) stormed both Tulkarm City and the Nour al-Shams Camp east of Tulkarm, imposing a curfew and bulldozing local infrastructure along with Palestinian homes, facilities, fences and other areas.

According to local reports, reinforced occupation forces stormed the city accompanied by two D9 armored bulldozers, which traveled through Tulkarm City from its western axis heading towards Nour al-Shams and passing through Courts Square (Al-Alimi), Al-Quds Open University Street, Nablus Street, Aktaba roundabout and employee's housing.

The IOF also laid siege to Nour al-Shams Camp, deploying vehicles from all sides around the refugee camp, and on all roads leading to it. Occupation soldiers also deployed reconnaissance drones over the camp.

The Zionist occupation army then imposed a curfew on Palestinian residents and prevented any vehicles from entering or exiting the camp.

Meanwhile, Zionist forces in D9 bulldozers went to work tearing up several sections of Tulkarm's streets while driving towards Nour al-Shams Camp, destroying sections of Al-Younis roundabout in the Northern neighborhood, Al-Sikka Street, Martyr Saif Abu Lebda Square, and Nablus Street near its western entrance.

IOF bulldozers also destroyed several Palestinian homes and property, including facilities and fences.

During the siege, clashes broke out between local residents and occupation soldiers, resulting in the wounding of a young man who was transported to Martyr Thabet Thabet Government Hospital where his wounds were described as "moderate".

#source

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[normal-thoughts-official]

Why Joe and Nicky deserve to win the sun and moon showdown, and if they don't I'll end up in the INTERPOL Most Wanted list

A not at all dramatic essay

(This is the plain text version. To see the version with bold, italics, hyperlinks, and big text, click here)

1. Not only do they canonically use moon imagery to refer to each other, but their context adds new symbolism to that metaphor that other duos don't have

If you haven't seen TOG and aren't familiar with the van speech, well, I recommend that you do, but I'll transcribe it for your convenience:

"He's not my 'boyfriend'. This man is more to me than you can dream. He's the moon when I'm lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold. And his kiss still thrills me even after a millennium. His heart overflows with the kindness of which this world is not worthy of. I love this man beyond measure and reason, he's not my 'boyfriend'. He's all and he's more"

Yeah, pretty long way of saying "actually we're husbands", but let's focus on the "he's the moon when I'm lost in darkness" bit. That bit alone is already insanely romantic and enough to make us fans go rabid with this tournament, but there is an extra layer of romanticism to it, because Mr Yusuf al-Kaysani (aka Joe) is Muslim, and in Islam, the moon represents the guidance of Allah through life, the calendar is based on the moon cycles, and the brightness of the moon is compared to both the face of the Prophet Muhammad and the first batch of souls to enter Paradise. Therefore, the moon, in Joe's culture, is intrinsecally linked with the divine, guidance, holiness, and time

So, when Joe compares Nicky to the moon, he's not only saying that he brings light into a dark world; he is saying that he is the very guiding light that leads him to a blessed life, that he is the foundation through which the world and time can be understood, and that his beauty and holiness is comparable to that of the souls of Heaven themselves

Which is all already enough for me to bite through wood, but the specific relationship between the moon and the understanding of time in Joe's culture is also particularly meaningful for Joe and Nicky, because Joe and Nicky are two of the 5 people who are immortal in the entire world. And one of the core themes of the movie is how that sense of timelessness leads them to isolation, and a constant state of loss. There is a deep melancholy that permeates their entire existence due to the fact that time as we know it no longer makes sense to them, and they live outside of it, skirting around eras and history. So, by comparing Nicky to the very body that marked the passage of time for Joe, he is saying that Nicky is what helps him make sense of the impossible, that he is the constant in Joe's eternity, that he brings meaning to their confusing and sometimes alienating existence

But wait! There's more!

Because Joe and Nicky met in al-Quds (also known as Jerusalem) in the year 493 AH (also known as 1099 CE in the Gregorian Calendar) and had to travel together across the desert for a long time, which means that, for the first few years of their life together, they were in fact relying on the moon to guide them in their path. So they both have a deep intrinsic understanding of how the moon is a compass, the most reliable thing in uncertainty. And the moon has been guiding their steps, their relationship, since their paths were first joined. And they weren't separated since

Like. Listen, I'm sure Star Trek is great and its fans are lovely, and I salute the Star Trek fandom for everything it did for fandom history in general, but you cannot tell me that Spirk has this much baggage associated with the sunmoon symbolism. It just doesn't. If this were a hand touching tournament, no one would have as much symbolism linked to it than y'all, but when it comes to being the sun and moon, no one is doing it like Joe and Nicky

2. The most appealing aspect of the SunMoon dynamic is how they need to defeat all odds to be with each other, and Joe and Nicky have that in spades

"Oh I don't think that's the most ap-" IRRELEVANT. I'll talk about the other ones too. Just keep reading, okay? /joking

As you might know, Joe and Nicky met on opposite sides of a battlefield. They killed each other. (Many times). And what happened then?

They ressurrected and became immortal. That alone is already impossible, but it gets better - even for the rules of immortality in their universe, Joe and Nicky are still an impossibility that has never happened before or since

Because in The Old Guard, immortality is extremely rare. There have only ever been 7 immortals in the entire history of humanity. There are usually several millennia between the appearance of one immortal and the next one. Other than them, the shortest time gap between one immortal appearing and the next was 800 years. But Joe and Nicky became immortal at the same time, on the same day. Their very existence bends the rules of an universe that already bends the rules of the universe they lived in beforehand anyway. Joe and Nicky being together defies the very fabric of time, and if that isn't some sun and moon shit, I don't know what is

But it's not just some destiny shit either. Joe and Nicky were also not supposed to be together by other standards. For starters, they were on opposite sides of a war. Nicky was a fucking priest, and he joined the goddamn actual honest to god crusades. He was hateful and ignorant and awful, and when he chose Joe, he left behind everything he knew before him. All his certainties, his beliefs, his faith, his family, everything he had ever been taught. I'm also gonna go ahead and say that that ties into the whole "the sun is what makes the moon shine" metaphor - because everything that defines Nicky as he is now is the direct result of how meeting Joe changed him

And listen, listen to me. I'm not saying that he stopped being a bigot for Joe, because if he did, I doubt Joe would want him. He did it because it was the right thing to do, and he was wrong and ignorant and indoctrinated by the church. But he still had to make the choice to turn his back to all that, and that plain and simply would not have happened if he hadn't met Joe. It was Nicky's own effort, but meeting Joe was the catalyst

Joe, similarly, had to overcome a lifetime's worth of (well earned) resentment and hatred for what Nicky did. Joe forgiving Nicky at all is already nearly an impossibility (and he would be well within his right to never do that), but he didn't just forgive Nicky, he fell in love with him. And he chose him, well aware of how bloody and terrible his past was, and despite the fact that there is no way he wasn't deeply conflicted about what he felt for Nicky after everything the Christians put him through. I cannot even begin to imagine how hard this process must have been for Joe, and it was one he didn't have to go through at all - which means that he chose to

And that's not even taking into account the very personal resentments between the two of them, because they weren't just on opposing armies, they literally and personally killed each other. Several times over. And yet, impossibly, against all logic, against everything they had ever felt and believed in prior to each other, against possibly their own desires, they fell in love. They fell in love and have been hopelessly devoted to each other every since

And THEN, on top of all that at the beginning of their relationship, they lived as an interracial, interfaith*, gay couple, through what were undoubtedly the worst times in humanity's history to be either of those things. For 900 years, they had to love each other in secret and with varying degrees of risk associated with ever being found out as a couple, or even with being associated with each other at all to begin with

(*It is debatable what their current relationship with their respective original faiths is, since it isn't mentioned in the movie. But even if both of them had turned their back on their religions, they are still culturally Christian and culturally Muslim, and that makes a difference. Personally, though, I don't think either of them turned their backs on their religions, although I do believe Nicky turned his back to the Catholic Church as an institution for obvious reasons)

That's not even counting all the incredibly traumatic shit that they went through ever since (which I won't mention in detail because it's spoilers and also this is long enough already) and that would definitely break a couple with a less unbreakable bond. Through centuries and centuries of pain and regret, they have chosen nothing and no one but each other, first and foremost, no matter what that meant.

Nicky even brings it up in the comics:

[ID: Joe and Nicky touching foreheads with their eyes closed. Nicky is holding Joe's chin and he says, "why is it so difficult, Joe? We've been afforded more time than any lovers I can name. And still, every moment we scrape together feels precious. Something always happens-" End ID]

(From the Tales Through Time one-shot series. I generally think the comics are meh and the movie is where it's at, but I do recommend reading this one. It is set before the movie happens so there are no spoilers)

There has never been a time where being together was easy, and yet, Joe and Nicky chose each other no matter what. They chose each other even when it meant being separated and getting only scraps of time together in secret. If that isn't some sun and moon shit, I don't know what is

3. They complement each other

And not in the dumb stereotypical "the sunshine one and the grumpy one" way either. For starters, Joe isn't bubbly, and Nicky isn't grumpy. No, they have two characteristics that I think represent the sun and moon way better than that anyway - Joe is an extremely intense person, and Nicky, an extremely cool headed one

Joe doesn't feel anything by halves, and despite the fact that he has lived through several lifetimes, it still seems as if everything he goes through is happening for the first time. Every time Nicky or another one of the family dies, Joe looks just as desperate as he would a millennium ago, despite the fact that he's had centuries to get used to the fact that they die and then come back to life. He's the only one who's that affected by it (obviously none of them enjoy seeing each other die, but the rest seem to have accepted to some degree that it's a part of their lives, or at least gotten used to it). He has experienced so many horrible things, yet he is still as affected and disgusted by it every time, going as far as lashing out sometimes. When he's angry, no one is able to hold him back from yelling at the person he's angry at (not even Nicky). Similarly, not even an actual van full of armed homophobic guards is able to stop him from simply dropping a passionate speech about how important Nicky is to him, complete with getting misty-eyed and kissing him at the end (and I'm not even bringing up the fact that both of them have their hands and their feet tied)

To me, that is the most sun-coded possible trait, because the sun is intense, hard to ignore, and quite literally burning. The intensity with which Joe feels also feels like it could burn, but it's also what makes him so warm and loving

Nicky is also a pretty intense person, but, unlike Joe, he is super cool headed about it. For starters, Nicky is a sniper; he is capable of staying still for hours at a time, observing, figuring out the best time to strike. That demands an amount of control over himself, his feelings, even his instincts, that is admirable. But he's not just like that on a mission; Nicky is very careful with what he says, when he speaks, what he lets other people see of him. His expressions are all subtle, contained, and even when he is in a state of murderous rage, he doesn't lash out. He doesn't lose control. The same way that the moon and the sun share their brightness, Joe and Nicky share their intensity, but Nicky is able to subdue it while Joe burns with it and lets that be his strength

Where Joe is expansive and wears his heart on his sleeve, Nicky is cautious and guarded. Where Joe gets lost in his own feelings and loses sight of what they need to do, Nicky keeps their heads straight and reminds him of what they need to do. Like the moon that guides one through the desert

They're different and complementary, but also intrinsecally tied to each other. They have the same spark where it matters, but present it in different, complementary ways. They are a part of each other, but they're also themselves first and foremost. That's what the sun and moon are all about

Sun and moon imagery has been the staple of the Joenicky fandom since day fucking 1, and for good reasons

VOTE JOE AND NICKY IN THE SUN AND MOON DUO SHOWDOWN

[naipan]

THERE IS AN OLD BOOK “PALESTINA EX” MONUMENTIS VETERIBUS ILLUSTRATA” which debunks the occupation fallacy

“The book is written in Latin. In 1695. Rilandi was describing what was then called Palestine.

The author Adriani Rilandi is a geographer, cartographer, traveler, philologist, he knew several European languages, Arabic, ancient Greek, Hebrew.

He visited almost 2,500 settlements mentioned in the Bible. The research was conducted as follows:

*He first created the map of Palestine. He then designated every settlement mentioned in the Bible or the Talmud with its original name.

* If the original was Jewish, it meant "pasuk" (a suggestion in the Holy Scriptures that mentioned the name. )

* If the original was Roman or Greek, the connection was in Latin or Greek.

In the end, he made a population census by settlements.

Here are the main conclusions and some facts:

* The country is mainly empty, abandoned, sparsely populated, the main population is Jerusalem, Akko, Tsfat, Jaffa, Tveria and Gaza.

* Most of the population is Jews, almost everyone else is Christians, very few Muslims, mostly Bedouins.

* The only exception is Nablus (now Shchem), where approximately 120 people from the Muslim family Natsha and approximately 70 "shomronims" (Samaritans).

* In Nazareth, the capital of Galilee, lived approximately 700 people - all Christians.

* In Jerusalem there are about 5,000 people, almost all Jews and a few Christians.

* In 1695, everyone knew that the origin of the country was Jewish.

* There is not a single settlement in Palestine that has Arabic roots in its name.

* Most settlements have Jewish originals, and in some cases Greek or Roman Latin.

* Apart from the city of Ramla, there is no Arab settlement that has an original Arabic name. Jewish, Greek or Latin names that have been changed to Arabic that don't make any sense in Arabic. In Arabic, there is no meaning in names like: Akko, Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Gaza or Jenin, and names like Ramallah, al-Khalil (Hebron), al-Quds (Jerusalem) - they do not have philological or historical Arabic roots. So, for example, in 1696, Ramallah was called Bethel (Beit El, the House of God), Hebron was called Hebron and the Cave of Mahpel was called El-Khalil (the nickname of Abraham) by the Arabs.

* Relandi mentions Muslims only as nomadic Bedouins who came to the cities as seasonal workers in agriculture or construction.

* About 550 people lived in Gaza, half of them Jews and half Christians. Jews were successful in agriculture, especially in vineyards, olives and wheat, Christians were engaged in trade and transportation.

* Jews lived in Tveria and Tsfat, but their occupation is not mentioned, except for the traditional fishing in Kineret.

* In the village of Um El Fahm, for example, lived 10 families, all Christians (about 50 people). There stood a small Maronite church.

The book completely refutes theories about "Palestinian traditions", "Palestinian people" and leaves almost no link between the land and the Arabs who even stole the land's Latin name (Palestine) and took it for themselves.

Book by Adrian Relandi (1676-1718) about Palestine, published in Utrecht in 1714.” [Summery by https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/whose-land-is-this/]