#Bedouin [Official]

[sayruq]

In his spartan home in Israel's Negev desert, Mohamed Hassouna points to the spot where his seven-year-old daughter Amina was seriously wounded by a fragment of a projectile during Iran's attack on Israel. Amina, the only badly injured person recorded in Israel in this unprecedented attack by Tehran, was placed in intensive care with a serious head injury, said the Soroka hospital in the city of Beersheva. The little girl belongs to the Bedouin community, descendants of Muslim Arab shepherds who live in the Negev and are often denied many of the rights granted to other citizens. "We have no shelter," lamented Amina's father, who criticised Israeli authorities for leaving him and his family at the mercy of rockets and missiles. Many Bedouin communities have lived on the margins, and are often accused by authorities of settling on desert lands without official authorisation. While most Israelis have access to bomb shelters, many Bedouin communities are not allowed to build them. Their villages, on paper, do not exist, and no road signs lead to them.

[screamingfromuz]

Uz's Charity Master List

As promised, a comprehensive list of places to donate to if you wanna help the people involved in the Israeli Palestinian conflict!

This is how it is gonna work. For the sake of safety, the main list include ONLY registered organization, i.e. ones that are registered in a governmental list. Due to the mass amount of organizations I decided to split it into categories: Solidarity & General, Israel, Gaza, West Bank, Bedouin, Miscellaneous.

Next to those lists, I added two more lists- Projects and Shit List. Projects will include project and fund raising that are not through an official organizations, so the risk factor is higher, and I will do my best to verify them before publishing. The Shit list for organizations you should avoid for various reasons.

For the sake of future edits, the reblog on the lists themselves will be turned off so I could edit and update the lists without having to deal with several versions going around. This post will serve as the Table of Contents and will be rebloggable.

Solidarity & General part 1 Solidarity & General part 2 Israel Gaza West Bank Bedouin Miscellaneous Projects Shit List

If someone is interested in submitting a charity to be added, you can send me an ask with the following details:

organization's name official government registration short history at least one source to prove it's legitimate official site if you would like to be credited in the post.

for projects and fund raising.

name details at least three sources to prove it's legitimate url if you would like to be credited in the post.

for Shit List

name details at least two sources to prove your claims if you would like to be credited in the post.

Submission that will pass verification will be added.

[thethief1996]

9.000 palestinians were killed in 3 weeks of bombings and the USA has just approved $14bi in additional military aid for Israel, on top of the annual $3.8bi Joe Biden instituted 28 years ago. Israel has targeted an ambulance convoy near Al-Shifa hospital, which was evacuating wounded from hospitals to the Rafah crossing. Al-Shifa is already working at 164% capacity, while 25 of the 35 hospitals in the Gaza Strip have shut down due to damage from bombing and lack of fuel (if I hear another zionist talk about how good Israel is for roof knocking hospitals is I'm going to explode). They did everything Israel asked of them and still they were murdered.

Almost half of these deaths are children, and even in death they're not respected and the US president and western media outlets are casting doubt over the reported numbers, even though they cast no such doubt over the numbers reported by Israel even though there's no official list provided by the government. It's ridiculous how blatantly they are copying Holocaust denialism talking points.

Meanwhile, Israel is enjoying the fog of war to proceed with the ethnic cleasing of the West Bank. Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, that have been intimidated by the construction of settlements hounding them for years, received threats by armed civilians saying they would be killed if they didn't leave in 24h and since then settlers have burned down their homes. Bedouin villages in Hebron, whose population was already routinely brutalized by settlers from the outposts nearby, are receiving equal threats and being terrorized by the destruction of their water supplies, roadblocks and physical violence. This is the largest forced displacement in the West Bank since 1972 and it's all being committed by settlers backed by the IDF. Israeli activists said they don't even know if these settlers are acting at the government's request or if they're just terrorizing people into running away from their homes in their free time. Thousands of Gazans who worked within Israel's "green line" were being held hostage since Oct 7th and reported they were tortured and labeled with numbers around their legs. Today, they were pushed back into southern Gaza amid airstrikes.

Palestinian journalists are being targeted for live streaming their genocide. The least we can do is pay attention and take action. Gazans have said our support lifts their spirits. If nothing else, to lift their spirits.

TOMORROW, NOV 4TH, there will be a National March in Washington DC organized by 500+ orgs and expected to be the largest pro-Palestine movement in the history of the USA. If you can, please attend.

Educate yourself. Read into Palestinian history and the occupation. You can't common sense people out of decades of propaganda. If your arguments crumble when a zionist brings up the "disengagement of Gaza", you have to learn more.

Read Decolonize Palestine. They have 15 minute reads that concisely explain the occupation (and its colonial roots) and debunk popular myths, including pinkwashing.

Read on Palestine. Here's an amazing masterpost.

Verso Book Club is giving out free books on Palestine (I personally downloaded Ten Myths about Israel by Ilan Pappe).

Keep yourself updated and share Palestinian voices, looking to inform yourself from the sources. Palestinians have asked of us only that we share, tweet and post, over and over. Muna El-Kurd said every tweet is like a treasure to them, because their voices are repressed on social media and even on this very app. Make it your action item to share something about the Palestinian plight everyday. Here are some resources:

Al Jazeera

Anadolu Agency

Mondoweiss

Boycott Divest Sanction Movement

Palestinian Youth Movement

Mohammed El-Kurd (twitter / instagram)

Al-Shabaka (twitter / instagram)

Mariam Barghouti (twitter / instagram)

Muhammad Shehada (twitter)

Motaz Azaiza (instagram) - reporting directly from Gaza.

Take action. You can participate in boycotts wherever you are in the world, through BDS guidelines. Don't be overwhelmed by gigantic boycott lists. BDS explicitly targets only a few brands which have bigger impact. You can stop consuming from as many brands as you want, though, and by all means feel free to give a 1 star review to McDonalds, Papa John, Pizza Hut, Burger King and Starbucks. Right now, they are focusing on boycotting the following:

Carrefour

HP

Puma

Sabra

Sodastream

Ahava cosmetics

Israeli fruits and vegetables

Push for a cultural boycott - pressure your favorite artist to speak out on Palestine and cancel any upcoming performances on occupied territory (Lorde cancelled her gig in Israel because of this. It works.)

If you can, participate in direct action or donate.

Palestine Action works to shut down Israeli weapons factories in the UK and USA, and have successfully shut down one of their firms in London.Some of the activists are going on trial and are calling for mobilizing on court.

Palestinian Youth Movement is organizing direct actions to stop the shipping of wars to Israel. Follow them.

Call your representatives. The Labour Party in the UK had an emergency meeting after several councilors threatened to resign if they didn't condemn Israeli war crimes. Calling to show your complaints works, even more if you live in a country that funds genocide.

FOR PEOPLE IN THE USA: USCPR has developed this toolkit for calls, here's a document that autosends emails to your representatives and here's a toolkit by Ceasefire in Gaza NOW!

FOR PEOPLE IN EUROPE: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace targeting the European Parliament

FOR PEOPLE IN THE UK: Friends of Al-Aqsa UK and Palestine Solidarity UK have made toolkits for calls and emails

FOR PEOPLE IN GERMANY: Here's a toolkit to contact your representatives by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN IRELAND: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN POLAND: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN DENMARK: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN SWEDEN: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN FRANCE: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN THE NETHERLANDS: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN GREECE: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN NORWAY: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN ITALY: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN PORTUGAL: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN SPAIN: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN FINLAND: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN AUSTRIA: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN BELGIUM: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN ROMANIA: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN UKRAINE: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace

FOR PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA: Here's a toolkit by Stand With Palestine

FOR PEOPLE IN CANADA: Here's a toolkit by Indepent Jewish Voices for Canada

Join a protest. Here's a constantly updating list of protests:

Global calendar

Another global calendar (go to the instragram of the organizers to confirm your protest)

USA calendar

Australia calendar

Feel free to add more resources.

[girlactionfigure]

Disclaimer: the intent of this post is not to delegitimize the right of either Israelis or Palestinians to sovereignty, dignity, and self-determination. There is no future in Israel and Palestine without both Israelis and Palestinians. Nor is this post an endorsement of any Israeli policy.

Rather, after a conversation in the comment section of a recent one of my posts regarding population density in Mandatory Palestine, I decided to rework an older post into this. Personally, I find it really interesting, and I think it’s a key piece in understanding the continuing conflict. It’s also important to dispel false propaganda about the Jewish presence in Israel that has now been accepted as fact.

POPULATION OF PALESTINE

For various centuries, the population of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories had remained stagnant. Travelers at the time described Palestine as an abandoned backwater province of the Ottoman Empire. That’s not to say that it was empty or that nobody lived there, of course, but it was sparsely populated, according to the official Ottoman censuses. However, the sudden population boom between 1850 and 1900 did not come from natural population growth but rather, from Arab immigration.

"Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies."

Mark Twain, 1867

"Many are Israel's forsaken places, and great is the desecration. The more sacred the place, the greater the devastation it has suffered. Jerusalem is the most desolate place of all."

Moses ben Nachman (Nachmanides), 1267

During the Ottoman period (1517-1917), modern-day Israel and the Palestinian Territories were a part of the Ottoman province of Syria, which was further divided into smaller vilayets (administrative divisions). Palestinian Arabs would not identify as “Palestinians,” but rather, identified primarily with their religion and clan. At best, they would call themselves “southern Syrians.” Until 1920, Palestinian Arabs advocated for Palestine to become a part of an Arab state in Greater Syria.

IMMIGRATION FROM EGYPT

The most significant factor in the population growth in Palestine between the turn of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century was Arab immigration, particularly from Egypt. At the turn of the 19th century, a famine prompted as much as 1/6 of Egypt’s population out of Egypt, with a significant percentage settling in Palestine.

The wave of Egyptian immigration continued in 1829, after thousands of peasants fled harsh labor laws imposed by the Egyptian ruler, Mehmmet Ali Pasha. Travelers during this period wrote that Bedouin tribes accompanied the peasants as well. In 1831, Egypt invaded Palestine. Over 6000 Egyptian peasants crossed into Palestine during the invasion; various Bedouin tribes also arrived with the Egyptian army. Others fled to Palestine as a result of blood feuds between different clans. Many Egyptian soldiers and administrators also chose to stay in Palestine.

By the late 19th century, the city of Jaffa had Egyptian neighborhoods all over town.

When the British invaded Egypt in 1882, scores of Egyptians fled to Palestine. A news report from the time stated: “Many of the people come here from Egypt to wait until the danger passes.” But very few actually returned to Egypt. To this day, the third most common Palestinian surname is El Masry, literally translating to “the Egyptian.”

IMMIGRATION FROM NORTH AFRICA

Following a rebellion against French rule of Algeria in 1850, a number of Arabs and Imazighen from North Africa settled in Palestine, particularly in the Galilee region and Safed.

IMMIGRATION FROM CIRCASSIA

Between 1863-1878, Russia murdered between 1.5-2 million Circassians in the Circassian Genocide. Another 1-1.5 million were expelled from their homes in Circassia. The Ottoman authorities then settled many of the deportees in the Levant, hoping that their presence would curb Bedouin and Druze influence, as the Druze were not always receptive to Ottoman rule, and the Ottomans hoped to squash sentiments of Arab nationalism.

The Circassians, who are Muslim, developed a good relationship with the Yishuv -- the Jewish community in pre-state Israel -- and are now one of the groups with mandatory conscription into the IDF. Like Jews once did, however, Circassians still dream of returning to their homeland, from which they were stolen.

SLAVERY

The Ottoman Empire began issuing decrees to reduce and ultimately terminate slavery in 1830, but these laws were rarely strictly enforced, especially in places such as Palestine. Throughout the 19th century, slave ships continued docking on the shores of Palestine, with the majority of the slaves coming from Ethiopia and Sudan, with a minority coming from Circassia. The last slave ship to arrive to Palestine docked on the shores of Haifa in 1876, though Arabs in Palestine continued holding slaves well into the 1930s.

JEWISH IMMIGRATION (19TH CENTURY)

Between 1881-1903, some 25,000 to 35,000 Jews -- most of them Ashkenazi Jews escaping massacres in Eastern Europe -- immigrated to Ottoman Syria, to the region now encompassing Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Only 15,000 of them stayed, due to harsh economic conditions and disease.

Between 1880-1914, about 8% of all Bukharian Jews immigrated from modern-day Uzbekistan to Jerusalem, escaping brutal persecution. In that same time span, 10% of all Yemenite Jews immigrated to Palestine. Most settled in Jerusalem and Jaffa.

THE "THREAT" OF JEWISH IMMIGRATION

The Ottoman Empire did not abolish the “dhimmi” status for Jews -- that is, second-class citizenship -- until 1856. Dhimmi taxation in Palestine was especially brutal, economically marginalizing religious and ethnic minorities. The Jews in Palestine relied on charity from Jews in the Diaspora for survival. The Samaritans, our closest ethnoreligious cousins, did not have a Diaspora community to come to rely on. Thanks to harsh persecutions, they were nearly wiped out during Ottoman rule.

Though dhimmi status was abolished in 1856, the Arab Muslim majority in Palestine had become accustomed to a certain social order, in which Jews were tolerated so long as we were subjugated. Thus, Zionism and Jewish immigration presented a threat to the status quo.

In 1899, the Arab mayor of Jerusalem, Yousef al-Khalidi, wrote to the chief rabbi of France, “Who can deny the rights of the Jews to Palestine? Good lord, historically it is your country!…But in practice you cannot take over Palestine without the use of force…” The chief rabbi of France forwarded al-Khalidi's letter to Theodor Herzl, who was quick to send a reply, assuring al-Khalidi that the Zionist movement had no intention of displacing the Muslim and Christian populations. It’s worth noting that during this period the mass influx of immigrants -- predominantly Muslim immigrants -- didn’t seem to bother al-Khalidi. It was Jewishimmigration that felt like a threat.

In 1882, the Ottomans prohibited Jews from immigrating to the Ottoman Empire. In 1893, the Ottomans prohibited all Jews -- “Palestinian” or not -- from purchasing land in Palestine. Thus, Jews in the region “enjoyed” less than four decades of equality under the law. No such restrictions existed for Arabs.

IMMIGRATION IN THE 20TH CENTURY

Unlike the population boom in the second half of the 19th century, the huge spike in the population of Palestine in the 20th century did come primarily from Jewish immigration. Between 1904-1914, some 35,000 Jews fled violence, mostly in Eastern Europe, and sought refuge in the region under the Ottomans. Between 1919-1923, another 40,000 Jews arrived to Palestine -- now under the British -- from Europe. Another 70,000 Ashkenazi immigrants arrived in the 1920s, as well as some 10,000 Mizrahi immigrants, predominantly from Yemen and Iraq. 

Prior to the Holocaust, another massive influx of Jewish immigrants — between 225,000-300,000 — arrived from Europe. This angered the Arab leadership in Palestine, which responded with violence. To appease the Arabs, the British passed the 1939 White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 people over a period of five years and limited Jewish land purchases to 5% of the Mandate Palestine Territory. 

Between 60,000-100,000 Arabs immigrated to Palestine between the two world wars. There are numerous reasons for this migration, most notably, new economic opportunities. In March of 1926, a railroad from Egypt to Palestine was completed, which prompted many young Egyptians to leave by train to seek employment in Palestine. In the 1920s and especially in the 1930s, the coastal plain between Gaza and Jaffa, as well as the area between Gedara and Ness Ziona, Ramle, and Lod became densely populated with Egyptian immigrants. 

During World War II, when Jewish immigration was essentially squashed, the British brought Syrian and Lebanese laborers to Palestine. Civilians also employed foreign contractors, many of whom came to Palestine without the legal paperwork. Government records from this period state that there were some 14,000 Egyptian and Lebanese laborers. The population increase along the southern coastal plain during this period was almost completely due to Arab immigration. In the area of Israel now known as “the Triangle,” over 35% of the population consisted of immigrants from Egypt. 10-15% of the Israeli Palestinian population today lives in that region.

LAND OWNERSHIP

Jewish land purchases took place in sparsely populated areas and as a matter of official Zionist policy, the Zionists avoided purchasing land occupied by fellahin, or Arab farmers. Out of the lands Zionists purchased, 52.6% were unoccupied, belonging to foreign landowners; 24.6% belonged to Palestinian Arab landowners; 13.4% belonged to the government, churches, or foreign companies; and only 9.4% belonged to Palestinian Arab fellahin.

In the 1920s, David Ben Gurion, the future first prime minister of Israel, wrote, “Under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them...Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price.”

The 1937 Peel Commission corroborated this, stating: “Much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased.” In 1931, the British created a register for landless Arabs; only 664 Arabs out of a total of nearly 900,000 met the criteria.

For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Instagram and  Patreon. 

[mariacallous]

On the morning of March 14th, while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Vice-President J. D. Vance debated a possible U.S. attack on Houthi targets in a now infamous Signal chat, it was afternoon in Yemen, and a five-year-old boy named Hamad was still alive. Hamad had spent the day running around the city with his father, and when night fell he was back home, playing in the yard with his cousins, likely slipping one too many sweets into his mouth.

In a thread called “Houthi PC Small Group,” which included other top national-security officials, Vance seemed concerned about getting dragged into another conflict that was peripheral to American interests. The operation was meant to disrupt the Houthis’ ability to attack commercial ships and American military vessels in the Red Sea, which they had been doing for about a year and a half, in response to Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza. Vance floated the possibility of delaying the strikes so that the Administration could work on the public “messaging.” “I understand your concerns,” Hegseth told him, but messaging would be “tough” no matter the timing. “Nobody knows who the Houthis are,” he explained.

The debate didn’t last long. Within half an hour, Vance was persuaded. The next day, as sunset prayers ended and families broke their Ramadan fast in north Yemen, Hegseth announced to the group in Washington, “Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/ CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Shortly after, a “package” of F-18s was launched, the first of many strikes.

Just before one in the morning, a man whom I’ll call Hassan—he asked that we not use his real name, owing to concerns about his safety—bolted awake to a thunderous sound. His house, in the Qahza area in Saada, was shaking. The windows shattered as he heard another boom, and then another. “The noise of the air strikes were very unlike the Saudi ones, because they were too loud, too big,” he recently told me, referring to regular bombing campaigns that a Saudi Arabia-led coalition has conducted against Houthi strongholds since 2015.

Smoke and dust filled the rooms, and Hassan scrambled to rush his frightened children outside. He split his family into small groups among relatives’ homes and returned to the site of the strike. His neighbor’s two-story house, about a hundred metres from his own, was levelled. The house belonged to Mosfer Roga’ah, Hassan told me—a Bedouin from the country’s northern Kitaf district who had arrived in the neighborhood around six years earlier. Roga’ah had several sons who were married, so the house was often full of women and children, as it had been that night.

Hassan’s brothers were already there, digging through the rubble, searching for the remains of a family. “They were scattered and torn into pieces,” he said. Rescuers recovered mangled bodies. Among them were two faces Hassan recognized well: the five-year-old boy, Hamad, and a three-year-old girl, Dareen, who was rushed to a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital. Hamad was dead.

He “was roasted,” Hassan recalled, adding quietly that it was a “horrifying” sight. He later sent me photos of Dareen that were circulating on social media; she was attached to a breathing tube, her body covered in gauze and her face marbled with burn marks. In the debris, locals found remnants of Tomahawk missiles, which Airwars, a British nonprofit organization that tracks civilian harm in conflict zones, confirmed were the munitions used in the strike.

The controversy that has now been dubbed Signalgate has garnered considerable shock, amusement, and anger, illustrating the ineptitude of the Trump Administration for knowingly discussing war plans over a commercial phone app and for unknowingly inviting a journalist into the discussion. (The White House has insisted that it did not reveal any “war plans.”) Less has been made of the strikes themselves, which raise their own set of questions, including what the U.S.’s aims are in Yemen, and under what legal authority it is pursuing those aims.

American Presidents have struck Yemen before, often pointing to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, a joint resolution passed after 9/11, which gave the President the power to attack terrorist targets in foreign countries without a formal “declaration of war.” But Trump hasn’t invoked the A.U.M.F.; instead, he echoed aides who say that it is within the President’s constitutional power to launch attacks for defensive purposes. His predecessors, too, seemed to operate with that license: most recently, the Biden Administration continued to strike Houthi targets, without Congressional approval, even after taking the Houthis off the list of foreign terrorist organizations. “For years, Presidents have been asserting expansive power to use military force, under questionable legal authorities, with relatively little pushback from Congress,” Matt Duss, the executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy, a foreign-policy think tank in Washington, D.C., told me. “That’s extremely dangerous no matter who’s in the White House, but particularly with someone like Trump.”

The Trump Administration’s hostilities in Yemen appear more expansive than past campaigns, directed not just at Houthi weapons sites but also at Houthi leaders in residential areas. Perhaps more alarmingly, Trump hints at long-term engagement. “We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective,” Trump vowed. There remains little clarity on what right the President has to repeatedly strike a foreign country without the approval of Congress.

In addition to this legal debate, Signalgate raises questions about the reliability of American intelligence. According to Yemen’s health ministry, more than fifty people were killed in the strikes, and more than a hundred were wounded. One of the attacks hit a cancer-treatment center that was under construction, according to Houthi authorities. Another, the Roga’ah house.

Mosfer Roga’ah and his four sons were not home when the missiles dropped, Hassan told me. They were at the mosque for taraweeh, special prayers performed late into the night during the holy month of Ramadan. A video shared on Facebook shows them returning to where the house once stood. A few men can be seen helping someone stagger through the glare of headlights toward the wreckage. Seconds later, a loud scream pierces through a din of panicked voices. According to Hassan, that was one of Roga’ah’s sons, Abdullah—the father of Dareen and Hamad.

Eventually, Hassan told me, rescuers who dug through the rubble counted fifteen dead, all women and children. Among them were Risala, age thirteen; Saleh, age nine; Abdullah, age six; Nazam, age six; Abdulkader, age five; Hadi, age three; and Motlak, a newborn baby. The baby’s mother was also killed.

The New Yorker was not able to fully corroborate Hassan’s account, and Saada is nearly impossible for foreign journalists to access at the moment, but news reports and public social-media posts about that night counted civilians among the dead. (Many of the posts were made by people with Houthi affiliations.) Shortly after the strikes began, Trump declared on Truth Social that he had ordered the military “to launch decisive and powerful Military action,” adding that the Houthis “have waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones.”

Officials in the Trump Administration seemed unfazed by the prospect that civilians might die in the bombardment. “The first target—their top missile guy—we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,” Michael Waltz, the national-security adviser, wrote on Signal, in an update to the team. “Excellent,” Vance replied. The C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe: “A good start.” Waltz responded with emojis of a fist bump, an American flag, and fire. (Later, the U.S. Department of Defense said that it “takes allegations of civilian harm seriously and has a process in place to review them.”)

Trump’s White House, like its predecessors, continues to emphasize that the Houthis are supported by Iran. But the group also emerged from local political dynamics. The founders of the Houthi movement belonged to Zaydism, a Shia branch of Islam that ruled northern Yemen for a thousand years before being overthrown in the nineteen-sixties. A couple of decades later, Zaydism was revived as a cultural and political movement by Hussein al-Houthi, in part as a way to challenge Yemen’s central government, which disfavored Zaydis and neglected northern areas, like Saada. After 9/11, the U.S. poured military aid into Yemen as part of its global war on terror, expanding the Yemeni President’s ability to quell Houthi dissent—in turn drawing more support for the movement.

Yemen underwent a significant transformation. The Houthis grew in power and popularity, then launched an insurgency that spiralled into a series of wars with the central government. During the Arab Spring, in 2012, the Yemeni President stepped down; in the years that followed, Houthis stormed the capital. Regional and world powers, concerned that the group would expand, began to bombard and raid the country. The United States backed Saudi-led bombing campaigns, supported a naval and air blockade, and instituted a sanctions regime; together, these measures have further entrenched the Houthis’ hold on power, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and helped to push more than seventeen million into conditions of severe hunger. Today, Yemen remains one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

The U.S. continues to pummel Yemen. Recently, Trump shared a black-and-white video, from an aerial viewpoint, of a bomb landing on a group of about seventy people in a circle, which a Houthi-led news agency later described as a social gathering for Eid. Smoke fills the screen and, within seconds, a crater emerges. “These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack. Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis!” the President wrote.

Meanwhile, Roga’ah and his sons are surveying their own catastrophic damage. The fresh graves of their dead wives and children are lined neatly in a row, the result of a strike hastily agreed to over text message thousands of miles away. “They have hearts broken into pieces,” Hassan told me, of Roga’ah and Abdullah. “Every day they are crying, remembering this family that disappeared without any reason.”

[positivelyamazonian]

Hi! 👋 I want to ask you how you feel about Tomb Raider: The Myth of El Hawa? 🏜️

I'm very happy it got made and it's so beautiful, but the story is to close to La(ra)wrence of Arabia for me? It's not bad, just not very original 🤷‍♀️

(I'm also glad Lara didn't become leader of the tribe, that would make it very corny and her into white-savior 😂)

Sorry about my English 🙏

😘 💞

Yeaaahhh now it's when you send me to hell because I've absolutely not watched it before due to.... personal hectic life. In fact I've watched it just now and only because you asked me to. I'm really sorry for it because my dearest @adayka who has done so much for me and my fanfics worked in this project. But you can tell how personally and mentally exhausted I've been these last years that even if I reblogged and shared the shit outta this project when it came out, I didn't take the time to watch it myself, until now.

Here I leave the thing for if someone else wants to enjoy it:

I've enjoyed it a lot, for sure. I mean, the team is a full brick of talents: Murti, who's a skilled and gifted writer, Jasmine, who has nothing to envy to TR official comic artist when it comes to draw Lara, and of course, Jonell's voice is THE voice for me. Dean Kopri is also fantastic in putting music to all this beauty.

Yet, as you say, the plot isn't original enough. It follows loyally the original idea it existed for the link between The Last Revelation and The Angel of Darkness. Most of us have used it for our fanfics. And the fact it resembles so much Lawrence of Arabia is rightfully pointed out by yourself because even Core team, back in those days, called this plot Lara of Arabia. So they themselves were the first to acknowledge it was deeply inspired in this story.

As for the plot itself, I've enjoyed it but I don't feel particularly taken away for it. The white traveler being sheltered by a POC tribe and later accepted as one of them and initiated in their lore is old as fuck and as you well say, it stinks of white saviour-ism. Efforts have been made here to disclaim it, such as Lara acknowledging that the tribe didn't need her to survive, and the fact you point out, that she finally leaves before turning herself into a leader or something.

Only she HAS turned a leader, commanding expeditions of fighters to defend the people until she's nicknamed El Hawa. It also mentions her wearing blue as a special color to distinguish her, when, in fact, blue is the traditional colour Tuaregs - not Bedouins - use in the desert of Sahara.

It is also unclear why Putai is a black woman if the Bedouins are Arabs, and thus, not black. But that's a mystery that goes back to 2003, right?

In the end, I find it quite enjoyable and we should be grateful fans and former TR members cared enough for us to bring forth this little jewel, but I'm afraid it will just be a passing thing as it happens with everything TRAOD related. Also, as a way of filling the void between TR4 and TR6, it fits a bit distorted, since it would need more fleshing out and completing to fit properly in the rest of the lore - why would she go to Von Croy in Paris if, as she claimed, she cared little anymore about it and was instead anguished to find out what happened to Putai and her people? It just doesn't make sense. Moreover, you can see that's not her attitude in TRAOD at all. But yet again... undevelopment. On the game's part, of course.

Thanks for putting me into watching this, as I had forgotten I had it on my pending tasks. And don't mind the English, for mine isn't perfect either.

[robbinggoodfellows]

My full Unaired thoughts, as coherent as I can make them:

Nobody’s Solider:

HOLYYYYYY SHITTTTTTTTTT

WHAT THE FUCK

SO GOOD SO FUCKING GOOD

its probably gonna get tiktok-ifyed and misconstrued though :(

but the sheer ANGER with which he sings the chorus just hits me in the chest!!

10/10

July:

Ethereal magical experience

It reminds me a little bit of something Twenty One Pilots would have done which I kinda love

Its really sad lyrically :((

10/10

That you are:

OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT THE FUCK HOLY SHIT OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

This is a fucking religious experience

An out of body journey

Im officially a Bedouine stan <3

The way Andrew says “that you areeee” so irishly aughhh i love him

”all of me. all. of. me.” AUGHB

This is the love song of all time

Perfect 1000000/10 no notes

[jordanianroyals]

Royal Wedding in Amman | By Rami G. Khouri, June 16, 1978

An American girl became a queen yeaterday as 26-year-old Princeton University architecture graduate Lisa Halaby took the name of Noor al Hussein, the faith of Islam and the hand in marriage of King Hussein, ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordon.

The new queen's mother was barred from the four-minute ceremony itself - Koranic law dictates that the bride be the only female present - but the new queen beamed radiantly down at her two-inches-shorter, 16-years-older royal husband at a reception afterward attended by some 500 friends and relations. Soft drinks subbed for champagne at the reception, though, as Moslem law again prevailed.

Queen Noor, whom Jordonian officialdom had reffered to earlier as "Moslem Miss Noor Halaby," had converted to her husband's faith. she had been expected to attain the rank of "pricess" because she was not an Arab, but was dubbed his queen by the Jordanian monarch. Only one other of his four wives, the late Queen Alia, a Palestinian, had been so honored.

But Queen Noor's Arab ancestry - her father was of Syrian descent - had been played up by the state-run media since her engagement to the king was announced, and, of course, it is all up to the king as to visit what he wishes to name his wife.

The bride smiling throughout the ceremony and the two-hour reception that followed was dressed in a white Christian Dior wedding gown and had a women band of white flowers holding in her long blond hair in place.

Diamond earrings and bracelets added sparkle to her composure, as she and the king posed for photographers immediately after the wedding ceremony.

Queen Noor - her name means "Light of Hussein" - was visibly settling comfortably into her new role, and she and the king exchanged frequent glances and comments that grinning broadly.

Five hundred guests waited for them on the lawn of the Zahran Palace, home of the queen mother and traditional site of royal marriages. The couple emerged to cut the seventier one-yard-high fruitcake wedding cake with a golden Hashemite sword, and mingled for 10 minutes with the royal family that had gathered to congratulate them.

The casual, happy atmosphere of the occasion was captured decisively when one of the king's young daugthers from a previous marriage rushed up to Queen Noor and exclaimed "I really like your dress," for which she was rewarded with an equally enthusiastic embrace, and a hug and a kiss from the king. Queen Noor had helped design the gown.

The guests included the elite of Jordonian society, the diplomatic corps, government officials, senior officers of the armed forces and selected friends of the new queen. But no foreign guests were to be seen aside from the Halaby family, Mrs. Cyrus Vance and a handful of the queen's friends from the United States. Oneof Hussein's ex-wives, the English-born Princess Muna, was also present. The former Toni Gardner, she now lives in London but returns frequently to Amman where she still has a palace.

Smartly dressed, flag-bearing troops of the Hashmeite horse guard flanked the entrance to the Zahran palace, in Amman's most exclusive residential neighborhood, while the armed forces band played lively music in the background and tough Bedouin security forces got caught up in the general gaiety around and continually preventing photographers from swarming over the royal couple.

The father of Queen Noor, former Pan American Airlines chairman Naheeb Habaly, said "We have feelings of pride, pleasure and some anxiety," and revealed that the king and queen will visit the United States before the end of the year "so she can have an American-style reception in Washington for all our friends in the United States."

The wedding ceremony itself was a traditional all-male affair, with the king and his bride sitting together on a settee flanked by the chief justice of Jordon's highest Islamic court; Crown Prince Hassan and Prince Mohammad, and the bride's father, with his gray business suit and black bow tie.

The king first signed three copies of the marriage contract, and Habaly followed suit, signing in Arabic to the left of the king's signature. The chief justice, Ibrahim Qatan, then recited the couple repeated. The vows derived from the Koran, the Islamic holy book, simply stake that the couple has been married according to the agreements reached between them them in the marriage contract and according to the laws of God and his prophet.

Then, the royal couple, with the king at the wheel of their silver Mercedes 600 limousine, drove out of the palace grounds and off to an undisclosed destination, followed by the usual contingent of two security cars, and the cheers and quiet clapping of the several hundred guests who gathered at the gate to see them off.

There was a festive feeling throughout Amman today, but no special decorations or signs of public celebration, in keeping with the wishes of the newlyweds for a low-key ceremony. Newspapers were filled with notices of congratulations from citizens throughout the country, and some shopfronts and taxicab windows sported large black-and-white pictures of the king and queen. Otherwise, life in the Jordanian capital went on as usual. (Washington Post)

[soon-palestine]

This is the guy behind charging Palestinians thousands of dollars to flee Gaza. It isn't 5000$ right now though, it's actually 10,000$

His name is Ibrahim Arjani 🧵

By the way, all what I'm talking about is only available in Arabic. I only translated and summarised from another thread that was in Arabic.

Hala is part of Organi Group whose CEO would be Ibrahim Arjani. He is really close to the current regime and has a complicated history.

Ibrahim Arjani was born in northern Sinai to the Tarabin tribe. His father is called Gom'a Arjani from the Tarabin tribe. His mother is Sabiha Sha'er who is from Gaza and he was actually raised with her in Khan Younis before moving back to Sinai.

In 2008, some Police officers clashed with the Bedouins of northern Sinai in suspicion of involvement in the 2004 and 2005 bombings and 3 guys from the Tarabin Bedouin were killed. Those officers left their bodies beside a trash can and no investigation was done regarding this.

Arjani was released in 2010. Now we jump to May 2014, when Sisi met up with Ibrahim Arjani (who appeared as the sheikh of the Tarabin tribe) as part of his campaign during the 2014 elections. He even dressed him in the Sinai abaya.

From here, the relationship between him and Sisi starts He founded the Misr Sinai company for investment which he became its CEO with the help of the military. This company's capital is HUGE with the military contributing to it by 51% while the other 49% are Sinai businessmen

This company's name was later changed to Organi group and he was involved in hundreds of projects with Sisi outside of Sinai.

And in exchange, Sisi helped him form his own armed militia in Sinai. In 2015, Arjani founded Sinai Tribes Union which tens of Sinai tribes are involved in. And part of this Sinai Tribes Union is the Knights of Al-Haytham brigade which serves the interests of Arjani.

And during the Sinai insurgency, these militants helped the Egyptian army and were accused by Sinai for Human Rights of using 37 schools in Sinai as military bases and destroying 59 more schools and there is actually a report by The Guardian about this. theguardian.com/world/2023/mar…

And as a side note, this isn't the only thing they did in Sinai. There was almost no media coverage of what was happening in Sinai as it was hidden from the public so it's been hard to determine the toll on civilians there. But sometimes, vids were leaked:

As well as many testimonies and like hundreds of videos and info leaked by Sinai for Human Rights but it really needs a whole other thread. Sinai for Human Rights is the one who revealed that refugee camp they were building as well.

In any case in 2014 after the aggression on Gaza, the only company that obtained authorization to enter building materials into Gaza during the reconstruction was the Organi group and they monopolized this and became the biggest beneficiary in Gaza out of this aggression.

Zvi Bar'el, a political analyst for Haaretz, said that the main beneficiary from rebuilding Gaza is the Organi group and that Egypt's monopoly benefits Israel's policies. He also said that Arjani does this on behalf of the Egyptian gov't so they don't "get their hands dirty."

Arjani basically controls all the crossings between Sinai and Palestine and Israel. There were even instances of him using these crossings to smuggle drugs and for human trafficking, according to one of the sheikhs in Sinai.

And on the 7th of November 2023, Resolution No. 234 was published on the official Gazette appointing Arjani as a member of the National Authority for the Development of the Sinai Peninsula which means Arjani's control of ALL of Sinai was complete.

This is the same Sinai whose people were displaced and God knows what else happened there because of the heavy media blackout during the insurgency.

Anyway after all of this, the Egyptian media wants us to believe that he is just a businessman. Does this look like "just a businessman" to you? This is one of the reasons why many Egyptians call him the Hemedti of Egypt.

They're so heavily armed from the gov't. Absolutely doesn't look like he just formed his own militias in Sinai with the help of the gov't or anything.

[howieabel]

“In the Negev in Israel, Israeli authorities have refused to legally recognize 35 Palestinian Bedouin communities, making it impossible for their 90,000 or so residents to live lawfully in the communities they have lived in for decades. Instead, authorities have sought to concentrate Bedouin communities in larger recognized townships in order, as expressed in governmental plans and statements by officials, to maximize the land available for Jewish communities. Israeli law considers all buildings in these unrecognized villages to be illegal, and authorities have refused to connect most to the national electricity or water grids or to provide even basic infrastructure such as paved roads or sewage systems. The communities do not appear on official maps, most have no educational facilities, and residents live under constant threat of having their homes demolished. Israeli authorities demolished more than 10,000 Bedouin homes in the Negev between 2013 and 2019, according to government data. They razed one unrecognized village that challenged the expropriation of its lands, al-Araqib, 185 times.” ― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

[old-school-butch]

‘But you misunderstand my argument - I don't actually think Israel is a decolonization project - I was responding to claims that Hamas' action is some form of resistance to 'settler colonialism' which, since Judaism as a faith is indigenous to the region, is nonsense.’

Except it’s not nonsense at all. The Zionist project was conceived to be a settling of the European Jewry in Palestine initially. No other groups who make claims to their people having lived in a place in the past to justify this kind of state building are taken seriously, nor would they be. This would be like the Roma population going to north India and attempting to set up a state by displacing the locals. They are genetically and ancestrally tied to that land, so why not them, too? Shall we all go back to where our ancestors of a couple centuries, even millennia in many cases, originated from? Is that the logic we defer to to decide what is and what isn’t settler colonialism?

"The Zionist project was conceived to be a settling of the European Jewry in Palestine initially"

The struggle for Jewish self-government goes back a liiiiiittle further than that. Maybe you've not read the Bible but you can track a straight line between 'the LORD said unto Moses, go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him, thus saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, let my people go' to 'By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." which happened when the Bablyonian Empire rolled into town. Another four? five? empires later you finally have the Hasmoneansn and Maccabeans self-governments weakening under Roman rule and finally the fall of the second Temple era. Which led to approximately another 2000 years of attempting to return to Zion. But Jews remained living in the area the entire time, the goal of Zion is self-government, to create a nation safe for the Jewish people.

"No other groups who make claims to their people having lived in a place in the past to justify this kind of state building are taken seriously"

What do you think is happening in Myanmar? What do you think Nunavut self-government is about in Canada? The idea of a homeland is pretty old, but modern American politics has an overly simplified view of land claims - either you can prove you were the first humans there ever or you're a settler/colonist who doesn't deserve to be there.

Except when it's about Jews in Israel. When I point out that by this logic Jews have an old erclaim to the region than the later Arabian colonizers, then I'm told the history is either too old and doesn't count, or not real because there's no documentation going that far back in history, or the (actually far more realistic) argument there are a number of ethnic groups and religions that can track extremely long timelines in the same general region because the story of human history is older than our ability to write it down. So I agree with your last point, that while there are obvious impacts of colonialism and conquest, it gets really absurd to imagine that the only place anyone really belongs is wherever they're from 'originally'.

Anyway, Israel has only recently hardened its stance and officially became a 'Jewish state' - 20% of the population are Muslim and many Druze, Bedouin, Circassians and Christians live within its borders. I'm not happy about this recent change and I'm sure those minorities are not as well.

I'd characterize the Arab-Israeli conflict as mostly religious in nature, at its core, not ethnic or even territorial. Islamism is a trans-national movement with the goal of creating a caliphate as a super-state, something the surrounding Arab states find increasingly alarming as they search for stability, but they are content to let it grow in Palestine as long as Israel remains the focus of their grievances. If Israel ever falls, do you think there would be peace in the region? I don't. Look at the wall Egypt is building on their border with Gaza.

[girlactionfigure]

🟪 MORE SPIES CAUGHT, HAMAS HUMAN SHIELD STRATEGY PROVEN - Real time from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

A Gut’a Chol HaMoed from Israel - happy Succot intermediate holy days.

( PHOTO - doing your best to make a Sukkah in Lebanon. )

🔅END OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME in Israel, this Saturday night 2:00 AM. Change clocks back 1 hour, computers and phones should auto-adjust.▪️

❗️MORE SPIES CAUGHT.. 7 residents of east Jerusalem were arrested on suspicion of planning to eliminate a nuclear scientist and a mayor - on behalf of Iran.

⭕LEBANON - ANTI-AIRCRAFT FIRE at IDF JETS from HEZBOLLAH per Al Jazeera with video (not shared here), 23 mm anti-aircraft fire.

⭕HEZBOLLAH FIRES LONG RANGE MISSILE(S) this morning, alerts from Zichron Yaakov through north Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah for long range launches 1-5 missiles (so far).  With the low number and longer flight time, interception has been 100%.  Because of high altitude and speed of the flight, the scatter pattern for the debris covers a huge area. That is why a small number of missiles results in a large alert area in central Israel.

The opposite is occurring in the north, where Hezbollah is firing 20-110 short range rockets in a barrage, therefore each alert area is 1 or multiple rockets inbound.

⭕HAIFA PORT WORKERS GET THREATENING SMS.. Haifa port workers received messages Monday which stated that the port's system had been hacked and that they should leave the place as it would be the target of a missile attack.

⭕HAIFA - KRAYOT.. strong explosion without warning as an incoming rocket hits a nearby open area.

♦️LEBANON - HEAVY OVERNIGHT AIRSTRIKES across parts of Beirut and other areas.

♦️LEBANON - news report: boy killed working his shop due to Israeli STRIKE ON THE ROCKET LAUNCHER IN THE BACK space being rented by Hezbollah - reported straight like that.

♦️LEBANON - MASS EXODUS from Beirut continues, both sides of the highway going OUT.

♦️LEBANON - BUNKER UNDER HOSPITAL CAUSES PANIC.. Following the IDF spokesman's announcement regarding the Hezbollah cash-vault bunker under the al-Sakhal hospital in Harat Kharik in Dahiya in Beirut, hysteria began in the area surrounding the hospital as people tried to flee assuming an incoming IDF attack.

🔹US VS HOUTHIS $$.. The cost of the damage suffered by the US military so far is $186 million just from the downing of the MQ-9 Reaper drones.

❗️HAMAS’s MANIPULATIONS & INTENTIONAL HUMAN SHIELDS.. (WSJ) “As Arab mediators tried to speed up cease-fire talks, (Hamas leader) Sinwar urged his comrades in Hamas’s political leadership based outside of Gaza to REFUSE concessions. High civilian casualties would create worldwide pressure on Israel, Sinwar said in a message.

Sinwar messaged Hamas officials, urging them to refuse a hostage deal. Hamas had the upper hand in negotiations, Sinwar said, citing internal political divisions within Israel, cracks in Netanyahu’s wartime coalition and mounting U.S. pressure to alleviate the suffering in Gaza.”

▪️SERIOUS CRIMINAL INCIDENT - KFAR QASIM.. (Israeli Arabi/Bedouin town near Rosh Ha’ayin) 3 young people, ages 17, 17, 20, stabbed, critical condition, CPR.

▪️TRUMP SAYS.. Trump on the talks for a ceasefire in Lebanon: I spoke with people from Lebanon and to my surprise they want it (the attacks on Hezbollah) to continue as long as possible.

▪️AID PROFIT..  IDF: Paul Landes, head of the economic warfare staff at the Ministry of Defense, refuses to answer the question of whether Hamas makes money from humanitarian aid.

[voidsuites]

of course i want it to be us. of course. and woof. challengers really isn’t escapable. ever.

aaaaanyways i’m out of class and i need to SCREAM FOR A SECOND because hozier brought out one of my fav other artists for the live debut of the song she features on (that you are ft. bedouine) AND OH MY GOD. i was maybe like. seven rows back. saw her with my own eyes. hozier is beautiful bedouine is gorgeous allison russell is breathtaking last night was truly a treat for both my ears and my eyes (not for my feet. they still hurt.)

the visuals he has for his songs are also so pretty i took so many pictures and videos (concerts are an ever present strain on my camera roll) like any amount of pain or exhaustion i experienced is infinitesimal compared to the way live music heals my soul.

- 🧸

okay well it’s us now btw. it’s official.

AAAAAAHHHH so glad you had a good time!!! i don’t listen to hozier that much but everyone that ik irl that’s seen him say he’s such a good performer. and lol the feet hurting bit is so real— i was wearing these boots when seeing wallows and my feet probably died bc i stood the entire time. fun times

concerts are so healing. you leave feeling forever changed it’s so funny. i remember seeing the nbhd in 2021 and after listening to them endlessly for like 7 years i was FIXED. no worries no sadness just vibes bahaha. i love music

[mariacallous]

Within days of Hamas’s massacre last month that left 1,400 people dead in Israel, a gas station near the southern city of Be’er Sheva was packed with Israeli soldiers. Convoys of beaten-up military jeeps were zigzagging in and out of the pump terminals, and the roadside cafe had stopped taking civilian orders, trying to reserve all available stock for troops preparing for the first ground invasion of the Gaza Strip in just under a decade. In the parking lot, Israelis manned a makeshift booth offering falafel to passing soldiers, playing patriotic songs. The gas station workers, meanwhile, leaned on stock pallets in a shaded corner—four Bedouins speaking to each other in broken Hebrew with thick Arab accents, staring out into a nation not quite their own on the brink of war. They must have been terrified of outing themselves as Arabs.

By the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, there were roughly 156,000 Palestinians who found themselves within what became the official borders of the state of Israel. Almost overnight, they had morphed into citizens of Israel. As of 2020, they number almost 2 million (including East Jerusalem Palestinians who hold permanent resident status), comprising about 20 percent of Israel’s population. They had evaded exile, but their initial relations to the state were marred by resentment and confusion: Many had relatives settled in tent cities in neighboring Arab countries, and large swaths of their former agricultural lands had been expropriated. Almost two decades would pass until these Arab towns in Israel would be released from military rule.

Arab citizens began from a point of severe disadvantage. Much of the Palestinian population lived in farming communities with lower levels of literacy. On top of this, there were deep feelings of resentment associated with the establishment of Israel and the new necessity of navigating it in what then was the enemy tongue.

More than half a century later, these Arabs are intimately embedded in the fabric of Israeli life. All signs indicate that, over time, socioeconomic gaps have narrowed. Scarcely a single sector can function without Arab labor. Schooling and the domestic life of Arab Israelis are still largely conducted in Arabic, and members of this population tend to gain fluency in Hebrew only upon entering higher education. In academia, most material is taught in Hebrew, and then, in most professions, Arab Israelis invariably sit alongside Israeli Jews on a daily basis.

A degree of accommodation and understanding has formed, and as far as many Israelis are concerned, this is the gold standard of coexistence. Arabs, however, continue to face discrimination and hardship—along with their own internal divisions.

What am I? Too Israeli for the Palestinians and too Palestinian for the Israelis. Our identity is no identity, and we are born into confusion,” said Huda, an office worker who lives in the northern town of Kafr Yasif (she did not want her last name used because she is scared of reprisal).

Huda is a Christian Arab. Christians make up 1.9 percent of the Israeli population, while Muslims comprise 18 percent, and Druze, 1.6 percent.

This confused identity becomes more acute during times of war. “Unlike Israeli Jews, I hear the screams of Palestinians in my mother tongue and I understand them,” she said. “And yet, here, understanding them amounts to sympathizing with them.” (Interviews with Arab Israelis for this piece were conducted in Arabic and Hebrew, depending on the subject’s personal preference.)

Since the outbreak of the war, at least 110 Arab Israelis have been arrested for speech-related offenses, according to Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel. Separately, the group said 100 complaints have been filed against Arab Israeli students, 74 have been summoned for disciplinary hearings, and three students have been expelled.

Abed Samara, head of the Hasharon Hospital cardiac ICU in central Israel, was suspended from work for a Facebook post published roughly two years ago featuring a green flag with religious writing in Arabic and a dove symbolizing peace, along with a short text in Arabic that included the word “martyr.” The color green is traditionally associated with Islam. Samara said the flag was mistaken for the Hamas flag and the post was deeply misconstrued. “No one even bothered to consult me about any of this,” he said in an interview given to Hebrew-language media.

Dalal Abu Amneh, a popular singer and neuroscientist, was arrested and held in solitary confinement for two nights for posting a Palestinian flag with the caption, “There is no victor except for that of God.” These are just two examples of Arab Israelis who have had their reputations ruined after the events of early October—despite the fact that a recent poll showed at least 80 percent of Israel’s Arab population to be categorically against the massacre.

Fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza does not usually trigger violence between Arabs and Jews in Israel. But it did the last time Israel and Hamas fought a war in May 2021. Among the attacks on Jewish Israelis, synagogues were torched and hundreds of homes were looted—many of them in and around mixed Arab-Jewish cities.

The incident shook Israel enough that its military a few months later staged an exercise simulating scenarios of “domestic unrest” for the first time since the Second Intifada. On Oct. 4, just three days before the massacre, an Israeli headline featured talks among police officials to loosen open-fire protocols. As of Oct. 26, that motion has been set forth for voting in the Knesset and comes as Israel is especially attuned to signs of sympathy for Hamas among Arab Israeli citizens.

“I woke up that Saturday, saw footage of the massacres, and my first thought was: We’re done for,” said Hamada Mahamid, a 30-year-old Hebrew teacher from the Arab Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm, the third-largest Arab Israeli city and part of a cluster of exclusively Muslim towns and cities bordering the Green Line. “It was clear to all of us that this is no joke: People are holed up in their homes, my friends have stopped going to work, and we are even reluctant to chat over the phone,” he said.

Similar sentiments were expressed by Arab Israeli politicians, who currently number 10 of 120 members of the Knesset. Even those who have generally assumed staunch positions against Israeli military operations in Palestinian territories, such as Ahmad Tibi, have urged their populations to keep a level head and avoid any actions that may risk their standing in Israel.

Hosni Sadeq, a restaurant owner from the Arab Israeli city of Tira, said he feels betrayed. Even during the quietest periods, a stabbing attempt on the other side of the country would leave his restaurant empty on the busiest day of the week—which tends to be Saturday, when Jews stream into the local marketplace for shopping and authentic Arab food. “Not only do I have to speak their language and never with a single mistake, but I have to forget my origins and never speak a word about their enemies,” he said.

For Huda, war exposes the wedge between the two peoples living on a single slice of land, which each side claims as its own. “We are not actually friends,” she said. “We exchange laughs at work, but when war breaks out, each rushes back into his own camp.”

Crime rates in Arab Israeli towns have skyrocketed in recent years. The Israeli police blame a lack of cooperation from Arab citizens for the inability to reverse the trend, but Arabs often cite a lack of initiative on the part of the authorities. “Just like in America, but a little different,” Mahamid said. “Here, no one cares when Arabs kill Arabs—if anything, it serves the state well.” Israeli politicians often refer to the danger of Arab violence seeping into Jewish communities— which Tibi called “condescending,” as it paints the Arab community as the “backyard” of Israel, where “anything can happen.”

Indeed, several months ago, Israeli Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai was heard on a leaked voice recording shrugging off the endemic violence, in a conversation with right-wing extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister. “There is nothing that can be done,” Shabtai said, according to reports. “They kill each other. That is their nature. That is the mentality of the Arabs.”

Now, as the Knesset is being called to vote on loosening open-fire protocols, calls among Israeli Jews to establish armed community-watch squadrons, and Arab officers in the police force languishing at just above 5 percent, Arabs are convinced that the police will never truly be on their side. Many have begun rethinking plans for the future.

Mahamid, who plans to marry in a couple of months, is for the first time looking into immigration options.

“The last decade of quiet is dead and gone—everyone knows it, even though some deny it,” Mahamid told me, echoing the words of Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi, who, referring to Hamas in a recent address, said that “all of the terms of the past are gone and have dissipated.” Hanegbi’s words apply as much to homeland security as to the Israeli social fabric, which many Arab Israelis believe has been irreparably damaged.

“I condemn the massacre. I retched at the sight of what Hamas did. And I condemn the ceaseless bombing of innocent Gazans. If the Israelis didn’t know in advance about the massacre, how would the 2 million Gazans have known?” Mahamid said. “But when this is all said and done, we are going to be left alone with them here on the interior.”

Survivors of the massacre tend to note two things in recalling the horrors of that fateful Saturday: the sound of gunfire and the sound of Arabic. Almost every reference to that day includes a reference to the Arabic language, which as of 2018 was downgraded from an “official language” of Israel to one of “special status.” This shift came in the nation-state law, a controversial measure from the political right that sought to reaffirm Israel’s role as the “national homeland of the Jewish people” and left Arabs wondering what exactly they have been working toward over the last several decades.

“Canada is looking good at the moment,” Mahamid told me. “I can’t speak a lick of English, but I’d now prefer to babble than take my chances in Arabic on the Israeli street.”

[adventuressclubamericas]

Adventuresses We Love - Lady Hester Stanhope Lady Hester Stanhope was raised with the privilege that came with being a member of the British aristocracy in the late 18th century. She served as official hostess and, later, private secretary, for her uncle, William Pitt the Younger, during his terms as Prime Minister. After his death, though, and a series of misfortunes, Lady Stanhope turned her back on England and set off for a life of adventure.

Her travels took her to the Middle East, where she’d spend the rest of her life. En route to Cairo, her ship sank in a storm off Rhodes, taking her clothes with it. Stanhope and her party borrowed Turkish clothes in the aftermath, but she refused traditional women’s attire, adopting instead Turkish male clothing. She’d continue to dress in this manner from then on.

She’d explore Greece, Malta, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, the Holy Land, and finally, Lebanon, keeping careful notes along the way. In Egypt, she became the first English woman to enter the Great Pyramid, while in Syria she was the first English woman to visit Palmyra. The trip to Palmyra took her through Bedouin controlled territory. There were concerns that the Bedouin would be hostile towards the outsiders, but Stanhope so thoroughly charmed their leader that not only were she and her party welcomed, but they also started referring to her as “Queen Hester.”

In 1815, she’d lead what would be the first modern archaeological excavation in the Holy Land. An Italian manuscript suggested that a fortune in gold was buried in Ascalon in what is now Israel. The dig wouldn’t find any gold but did recover many important artifacts and made several important scientific discoveries.

Lady Stanhope would finally settle in Lebanon. At first, she was warmly greeted by the Emir. The reception would turn cooler, though, over the years as she gave support and refuge to those fleeing fighting between different parties throughout the country. The support of the people led to her becoming the de-facto ruler of her district in Lebanon.

Lady Hester Stanhope, “the Queen of the Desert,” died in her sleep June 23, 1839, at her home in Lebanon. She was 63. The diaries she’d kept during her adventures were published in three volumes after her death.

[mithliya]

"arab is literally a recent invented identity" what???? can you explain?

how does it work out with for example Arabic (named after Arabs) existing sine 1st century. how about Arabic tribes living in Arabian Peninsula far before anything that's remotely considered recent. are you perhaps talking about people of various non arab ethnicities (eg people of NA) becoming Arabized, arabic replacing their languages and these originally non arab groups becoming part of arab world and even having an arab identity? because even this isn't exactly recent.

there was a term such as arab existing before but the way it is thought of today is modern. the vast majority of us were not referred to nor viewed as arab until relatively recently in history (and even if u wanna think of early islam and islamic conquests, many of us have civilisations predating islam for hundreds and thousands of years, so yes it is still recent when considering our entire histories) and the vast majority of us were not arab until islam reached our countries. egyptians were not arab nor were other north africans, many levantine people weren’t arab, even some of the people from the gulf (sometimes dubbed as “real arabs”) werent considered arab (such as baharna, who are not & were not bedouin ie the arab nomads):

you can find that historically, arab was an imposed label by westerners onto people they considered primitive desert dwellers, meaning distinct groups from modern syria, yemen, saudi, jordan, kuwait, and UAE. none of these groups actually referred to themselves as arab. when islam came to exist, arab identity was more firmly instilled as the people who converted to islam near its founding. then it changed to something else and now today arab basically just means someone from a country where arabic is the official language (or among the official languages) & often also means muslim on top of that. ultimately, arab is not a real ethnicity and arab identity is more modern than many people know.

you can also look into pan-arabism which is basically a pretty recent phenomena that emphasised arab identity and unity.