#arab world and women's history

[lightdancer1]

One of the great ironies of the Abbasid Golden Age was that it was very much a woman's doing:

The life of Khayzuran has more than a few similarities to the Russian autocrat Catherine I, in going from poor woman to the holder and bestower of absolute power in a realm where it was held absolutely. Unlike Catherine I or Elizaveta she held power indirectly, through the reins of her husband and her son.

This was a known factor in the life of Harun Al-Rashid, along with the power of his wife Zubaidya. This was not held in his favor at the time, or in theirs. It also raises a point about the Islamic world, that wealthy women could and did in the right circumstances hold a very great deal of power and influence, and that contrary to the most deluded wishes of modern fanatics this is how the 'glory days' actually worked in practice.

[rrcraft-and-lore]

Tawaif - a highly skilled courtesan (skilled in: music, dance, poetry, and singing) who catered to nobility in South Asia. Similar in respects to Geisha in many ways, including that sex was NOT obligatory. It occurred, but the primary function was entertainment.

Most commonly romantic poetry like Ghazals -a form of Arabic poetry that made its way over to South Asia: odes of long lost lovers, tragedy, separation, stuff to pull at your heart strings. And, shairi, another Arab/Persian kind of poetry that is built on monorhymed quatrains or four sixteen syllable lines (keeping to the same rhyme scheme) with a caesura used between lines 8//9 to break up the first half from the second.

During the British Occupation, they were simply called, Nautch girls or dance girls. But this is far from all they did or were capable of. The name itself, Tawaif, is the term for a HIGHLY SKILLED courtesan. They were trained to the upmost of artistic forms. They were not there to perform sex acts - that was often incidental and not contractual. And the women had the power to rebuff men's advances.

The Tawaifs of India were regarded as some of the greatest performing artists of their time with documented praise and examples from travelers such as Xuanzang, a Chinese pilgrim, notable traveling Buddhist Monk and scholar who frequented India, remarking on the Tawaifs skill, beauty, and performances during once such visit to the Sun Temple in Multan. Al-Biruni, often regarded as the father of Comparative Religion studies, an Iranian polymath and scholar, regarded on their skill and larger numbers during the 11th century CE upon a visit Ganikas, another entertainer, are a public dancing girl (very common in cities from the Vedic period upward) who received classical arts training (most obviously dancing) and often performed from public settings up to royal private ones - and would compete to become Nagarvadhu - the most beautiful woman and most highly talented in forms of art (dance mostly).

Many young girls would leave or were taken to be taught these skills, and yes, there were schools for this too as well as private tutelage. People don't often realize this, but Ancient India was a place of extreme learning with all kinds of schools for different disciplines. A place of academies. Something I've talked about, like places like Nalanda, the world's oldest residential university that attracted people from far as Greece to Japan anyways, Tawaifs were so successful and sought after, that records show they were consistently among the highest tax payers.

Records also show that their wealth was used (by their consent/given) to help fund rebellions against the British Raj - enough so that the British passed laws to strip them of their ability to work as courtesans and left them only with sex work, which is sadly why some stories today only speak of them as prostitutes and not knowing their full, complex, and impactful history.

It's said the art of all this came from Urvashi, an Apsara (celestial being of dance, song, seduction/temptation, art, music).

[fandom-blahs]

It’s funny how rarely people bat an eye but when someone tries doing the same with ~other cultures~

“Generically medieval” (inoffensive) and “Oriental setting ” (offensive)

There’s something kind of fun about trying to spot what parts of a culture a creator decides to create a weird concoction of

“Generically medieval”, by which we mean our peerage is French, our castles are German, our weapons are Italian, and everybody speaks English.

[totallyhussein-blog]

To walk in the footsteps of strangers

Back in 2020, the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies announced the release of Turath, a path-breaking virtual exhibit that maps the rich mosaic of early Arab American culture through music, literature, poetry, art, performance and journalism.

Turath offers a broad and momentous collection of material for general interest and specialized researchers alike. But the broader and more important goal is to honor the rich and diverse cultural lives and accomplishments of early Arab Americans (1880-1950), whose stories have largely been untold.

In addition to highlighting well known cultural figures, this exhibition introduces an expansive and unprecedented perspective incorporating women writers, geographies outside of New York, while highlighting non-literary productions such as art, performance, music and the media.

Just south of the World Trade Center district sits the location of a forgotten Manhattan immigrant community. Curious outsiders called it Little Syria although the residents themselves would have known it as the Syrian Colony.

Starting in the 1880s people from the Middle East began arriving at New York’s immigrant processing station — immigrants from Greater Syria which at that time was a part of the Ottoman Empire were among those people.

But who were these Syrian immigrants who made their homes in New York? Why did they arrive? What were their lives like? And although Little Syria is long gone, what remains of this extraordinary district?

[sayruq]

Women have been at the forefront of Palestinian life throughout the region's modern history, serving in just about every aspect of society, from community organisers to political negotiators. Palestinian women are among the most educated in the Arab world with a 94 percent literacy rate and girls outperforming boys in academic testing. In keeping with trends elsewhere in the Arab world, women are well represented in so-called STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), often surpassing male participation in subjects, such as physics.

[genderkoolaid]

Mustarjil is an Arabic term meaning “becoming [a] man.” Although it can be used derogatorily to refer to women who are perceived as having a masculine appearance and/or mannerisms, in Iraq’s marshes, it existed as a gender identity. Within the context of the Ahwari community, Mustarjil was a common gender identity, where people assigned female at birth decide to live as a man after puberty, and this decision was generally accepted in the community. The Mustarjils were one of many similar third gender categories around the world, such as the Hijras in South Asia. [...] “One afternoon, some days after leaving Dibin, we arrived at a village on the mainland. The sheikh was away looking at his cultivations, but we were shown to his mudhif by a boy wearing a head-rope and cloak, with a dagger at his waist. He looked about fifteen and his beautiful face was made even more striking by two long braids of hair on either side. ln the past all the Madan (Ahwari) wore their hair like that, as the Bedu still did. After the boy had made us coffee and withdrawn, Amara asked, ‘Did you realize that was a mustarjil?’ I had vaguely heard of them, but had not met one before. ‘A mustarjil is born a woman’. ‘She cannot help that; but she has the heart of a man, so she lives like a man.’ ‘Do men accept her?’ ‘Certainly. We eat with her and she may sit in the mudhif. When she dies, we fire off our rifles to honour her. We never do that for a woman. In Majid’s village there is one who fought bravely in the war against Haji Sulaiman.’ ‘Do they always wear their hair plaited?’ ‘Usually they shave it off like men.’ ‘Do mustarjils ever marry?’ ‘No, they sleep with women as we do.’” Thesiger continues to narrate several other accounts of mustarjils within the same community, as well that of a “stout middle-aged woman” who wanted to remove her male organ in order to “turn into a proper woman.” Thesiger later mentions: “Afterwards I often noticed the same [person] washing dishes on the river bank with the women. Accepted by them, [she] seemed quite at home. These people were kinder to [her] than we would have been in our society.” Around that time, Britain was still living under the shadow of Victorian norms, and gender non-normative people were still stigmatized and shunned. Communities such as the Ahwaris, presented an alternative model that created space for communities like the mustarjils, despite the dominant gender binary. 

— Recovering Arab Trans History: Masoud El Amaratly, the Folk Music Icon from Iraq’s Marshes by Marwan Kaabour

[metamatar]

In 2005, the tellingly named studio After Stone wall Productions released a film titled Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World. Featuring interviews with various LGBT activists from different countries outside the West, spliced up and lumped together haphazardly, the film delivers the following overarching messages: that it is not safe to be queer in the "developing world," that what queer spaces do exist in the "developing world" are to be found in certain metropolises: Cairo, Kuala Lumpur, Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro—and that these sites trace their genealogy to the Stonewall riots. Furthermore, according to the film, queerness/gayness and sometimes transness (when it is acknowledged) were invented in the West. Epistemic breaking points such as the Stone wall riots and canonized locales such as San Francisco and Greenwich Village are the originating points of this innovation against the backdrop of a timeless, pervasive heterosexism. This cosmopolitan gayness/queerness then "spreads" from the metropole to the periphery, forming a web from city to city This coincides with Jack Halberstam's (excruciatingly white) analysis in his book In a Queer Time and Place: the idea of "metronorma tivity" that "the rural is made to function as a closet for urban sexualities in most accounts of rural queer migration" and that "the metronormative narrative maps a story of migration onto the coming-out narrative" (2005, 36-37). We can extend Halberstam's analysis further and see the ways that the closet/rural/(post)colony as well as out/urban/metropole get col lapsed onto each other—the queer is always pulled closer to the heart of capital.

The overarching savior narrative occurs towards the end of the film, when each interviewee, in clips spliced together, tells his or her story of emigrating to the West. After a particularly heart-wrenching story of Ashraf Zanati's departure from Egypt, the narrator comments that "Ashraf Zanati left Egypt. Ashraf had become part of a planetary minority." Although the film purports to care about the status of queers in the "developing world," it actually forms a wounded attachment that fetishizes displacement and bifurcates the queer from his or her society. This narration of non-Western countries as inherently unsafe for queer subjects produces the very displacement it describes, in a manner similar to the ways nine teenthcentury colonial archaeology laid the foundations for Zionism and the dispossession of Arab Jews. Writing about the European "discovery" and destruction of the Cairo Geniza—a building that had housed pieces of paper documenting centuries of jewish Egyptian history—Shohat (2006) shows us that the discursive/ archival dislocation of Egyptian Jews by the forces of European/Ashkenazi colonialism anticipated the later dislocation of Egyptian Jews. This dislocation would form part of the backbone of Zionist historiography's production of a "morbidly selective 'tracing the dots' from pogrom to pogrom." The fetishization of queer displacement, as projected by Dangerous Living, performs a similar historical flip to the one Shohat documents: "If at the time of the 'Geniza discovery' Egyptian Jews were still seen as part of the colonized Arab world, with the partition of Palestine, Arab-Jews, in a historical shift, suddenly became simply 'Jews'" (Shohat 2006, 205). Through various colonial practices, there was a discursive bifurcation between the "Arab" and the "Jew"; in the case of case of Dangerous Living there is a similar bifurcation between the "Egyptian" and the "Queer."

Papantonopoulou, Saffo. “‘Even a Freak Like You Would Be Safe in Tel Aviv’: Transgender Subjects, Wounded Attachments, and the Zionist Economy of Gratitude.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 1/2, 2014, pp. 278–93. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24364930. Accessed 11 Nov. 2024.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Conversation between me, and another high educated Jewish women whose opinions I respect

Her: What's missing here are the facts. If we stuck to the facts there wouldn't be so much intensity surrounding this issue. Me: But you and I are both highly educated Jewish women, and we can't even agree on the facts regarding the history of Palestine as a place name, ethnic identifier, and nation. If we can't even agree on those facts, how on earth can facts help anyone move forward?

There's the question. Not just for Jews, but for everyone involved in, or concerned with this conflict. How do we move forward if multiple sides of the room dispute the veracity of such basic statements as:

-Jews are a globally oppressed minority ethnic group, the hatred of which is deeply embedded in Western thought and rhetoric.

-The Naqba was a period of ethnic cleansing in which the government and military of the new State of Israel expelled Palestinian Arabs from their homes and property; a dispossession and a series of events which continue to traumatize and negatively impact the lives and livelihoods of Palestinians.

-The Holocaust was a traumatic event in the history of the Jewish people, the legacy of which is embedded in the psyches, world views, and collective trauma of the Jewish people, and invariably impacts how this group views global issues.

-Palestinian Arabs had a full developed sense of identity and statehood before the British Empire fucked off, and made their discomfort with increasing Jewish emigration clear to the British before the outbreak of the Second World War.

-Jews had nowhere to go before, during, or really, after the Holocaust; and the governments of many Arab States ethnically cleaned their own ancient Jewish communities in retribution for the creation of the State of Israel.

-The State of Israel does not exist because the Holocaust happened, or as an "apology" for said event.

THIS POST COMPRISES A SERIES OF RHETORICAL QUESTIONS MEANT TO MAKE US APPRECIATE THE DEPTHS OF THE DISCURSIVE PROBLEMS HERE; NOT A POST FOR "DISCOURSE" AND HATEFUL, AGGRESSIVE SHIT.

If you feel you have to do that, copy & paste into your own separate post.

[bfpnola]

IMAGE DESCRIPTION ADDED. REBLOG THIS VERSION AND THANK YOU @lab-labrava FOR WRITING IT!

ID: An infographic from the Instagram account @letstalkpalestine consisting of 10 slides. Image 1: The title page of the infographic. The text says: "Let's talk Anti-Zionist Jewish History." A smaller subtitle underneath the title says: "Jewish solidarity with Palestine until today." End ID.

Image 2: The infographic continues to the next panel. The text says, "As long as Zionism has existed, so has Jewish resistance to it. While today the majority of Jewish people and communities worldwide still have a Zionist connection, more and more Jewish people, especially from the younger generation, are unlearning Zionism & speaking out. Swipe to learn more about just part of anti-Zionist Jewish history - since there's more than we can fit in 10 slides." A semi-transparent image is overlayed in the background, of someone holding up a sign that reads: Jews for Palestine! #Free Sheik Jarrah. End ID.

Image 3: Icon of a location tag next to the words Eastern Europe. In large, blue text is the word "The Bund" and the subtitle describing what it is, "A Jewish Socialist movement, established in 1987." The following paragraph says, "Opposing Zionism from the start, its 50-year tenure saw hundred of thousands of members across Eastern Europe advocate for workers' rights and cultivate a Yiddish culture." Location tag and the title, "North America." The paragraph says, "After mass immigration to the US in the early 20th century, [American Jewish Labor groups] (highlighted in chalky blue and bold white text) criticized Zionism for its colonial, nationalist, and bourgeois nature." Next to this text, is a circle with women protestors holding up signs. End ID.

Image 4: The title, "Middle East and North Africa." The paragraph states, "In 1945 a group of Iraqi Jews founded the Anti-Zionist League. They recognized Zionism as a form of colonialism linked to Western Interests. They hosted events and published pamphlets throughout the Middle East about the difference between Zionism & Judaism. They warned that Zionism is dangerous to Arab Jews, forcing them to split their Arab and Jewish identities, and urged the UN to create a unified Palestinian state.

Image 5: The panel is titled, "Anti-Zionist Jewish figures." A faded image of Hannah Arendt's visage is in the background. Overlayed on top, the following paragraphs discuss her. "Before 1948, several prominent Jewish leaders and scholars came out in opposition to political Zionism. Writers like Hannah Arendt turned against the Zionist movement and opposed a Jewish state. They correctly predicted a dark future if Zionism continued on the same path in Palestine. End ID.

Image 6: The day after the Deir Yassin Massacre in 1948, when Zionist militants wiped out the Deir Yassin village & its inhabitants, Albert Einstein wrote: "When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations built up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people." The former paragraphs are imposed against a tan, parchment fragment, in typewriter font, and the letter ends with Sincerely yourn, Albert Einstein, both his signature and typed name. End ID.

Image 7: Titled "Anti Zionism Today." Blue sketchy image of someone's hand gripping jail bars breaks up the following paragraphs which say: Jewish solidarity with Palestinians is growing around the world, including even some Israelis who take the basic step of refusing Israeli military service. As punishment, Israel imprisons these conscientious objectors — but unlike Palestininas, they have a fair trial & often severe relatively short sentences of a few months . This is a first step towards solidarity and has the real consequence of depriving the occupation state of its soldiers. End ID.

Image 8: Titled "Israel's Crackdown on Jewish Anti-Zionism" Behind this text are a picture of handcuffs. In the corner is a picture of Jonathan Pollak. The following text says: Jonathan Pollak is a Jewish Israeli and long-time anti-Zionist activist. Israel has detained him several times, most recetly in January as he protested with Palestinians in Beita, (a Palestinian village) for allegedly throwing stones. Jonathan has been violently attacked for his activism. In 2018, Jonathan was slashed across the face by settlers who ambushed him outside his workplace. Earlier, in 2005, Israeli soldiers shot a tear gas canister. directly at him, causing internal bleeding in his brain." End ID.

Image 9: Semi-transparent image of an umbrella behind the title text is "Jewish Anti-Zionism isn’t one ideology. It’s an umbrella movement that encapsulates multiple communities and beliefs towards decolonizing Palestine. Some motivations or Jewish anti-Zionism include: 1. Pursuing millenia of Jewish tradition as a diasporic community 2, Detachibng religious and cultural tradition from political nationalism. 3. Socialist visions of a Jewish Society. 4. Believing in the right to self-determination for Palestinians Standing up to Zionism is: 1. Standing up to apartheid and colonization. 2. Standing up for a liberated, equal, and just Palestine from the river to the sea.

Image 10: An ending quote, and call to action, by the Anti-Zionist League. It says: "Jewish Men! Jewish Women! Zionism wants to throw us into a dangerous & hopeless adventure. Zionism contributes to making Palestine uninhabitable. Zionism wants to isolate us from the Egyptian people. Zionism is the enemy of the Jewish people. Down with Zionism! Long live the brotherhood of Jews and Arabs!" --The Anti-Zionist League. End ID.

[fuck-hamas-go-israel]

Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? Apartheid?

Throwing around these buzzwords to describe the Israel-Hamas war because you’ve seen them on social media doesn’t make you right, and it doesn’t make you an activist.

It makes you ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and lazy for parroting biased talking points with no concept about what these terms actually mean.

What is apartheid?

Well, it was first used to describe the political system in South Africa and today’s Namibia whereby racism was institutionalised. This manner of governance meant that clear racial segregation would occur, in a manner that benefited the white race and would actively oppress those who had darker skin.

This meant that there were white-only spaces, white people would get prioritised when it came to education and jobs, and relationships/marriages between white peoples and coloured people were illegal.

Is Israel objectively an apartheid state? There are no laws that actively favour one group over the other. There is a sizeable population of Israeli Arabs that can thrive in the same way as the Israeli Jews can. There are laws against discrimination on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Palestinians from Gaza are allowed to work in Israel through a work permit system. There are about 150,000 Palestinians working in Israel, most of which live in Israel and some come from Gaza/the West Bank. They aren’t denied rights institutionally.

Is it harder to get a job or education in Israel if you’re a Palestinian from Gaza? Sure, because of different governments. It’s like how it’s a lot easier for you to find a job in your own country (in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy) than overseas. But you’re not denied the right to apply.

Of course, if you have a history of violence, a criminal record, or your family has ties to terrorists, then it’ll be a lot harder to get an approved work permit. But that’s not apartheid. That’s common sense, and a regulation practiced by all countries that minimally desire to protect their own population from danger.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide

These two concepts can go hand-in-hand. Ethnic cleansing refers to the mass expulsion or killing of a group of people based on their ethnicity. Similarly, genocide is the purposeful killing of a group of people solely with the intention of annihilating them.

Famous examples? The Holocaust, of course, where the Nazi regime believed in the superiority of the Aryan race and decided to declare genocide on the Jews, Romanis, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, people with “Asian features”, and many many other groups. Anyone who they didn’t think was “pure”.

Their aim was to ensure that the Aryan race propagated without having “impure” blood affecting the bloodlines. They even started a eugenics programme called Lebensborn to ensure that more pure Aryan babies were born.

More recent examples? The Rwandan genocide where the Hutus attempted to wipe out the Tutsis on the basis of ethnicity. They mandated that Tutsis mention their ethnicity on state-issued ID cards in order for the Hutus in power to be able to identify them and then kill them.

Or the Yazidi genocide which happened so recently, in which ISIL killed, raped, and sent thousands of Yazidis into conversion camps on the basis of their ethnicity. They also took Yazidi women as sex slaves and raped and tortured them.

Or the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine State in Myanmar, and how there was a mass killing and expulsion of them from the country, forcing them to flee to Bangladesh to take refuge, crating the world’s largest refugee camp.

Or how ISIS killed thousands of people from Christian groups in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Libya because of their faith, leading the US, EU, and UK to label this as religious genocide and condemned their actions.

Has Israel been practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on Palestinians all these years?

Well, the birth rate of the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank, and in Israel has been steadily increasing all these years.

So, no. No ethnic cleansing, no genocide. They are free to have as many children as they desire.

The UN Genocide Convention

The United Nations has 5 actions that constitute genocide.

1. Killing members of a target group

Israel is targeting Hamas officials with the aim of wiping out the terrorist group and ensuring that such a deadly attack on Israeli soil doesn’t happen again. I suppose you could call it genocide against Hamas, but they’re killing Hamas because they’re terrorists, not because they’re Palestinian. Shouldn’t everyone believe in genocide against terrorists?

But look at Black Saturday. Look at Hamas’ rhetoric. They repeatedly call for the annihilation of Israel and genocide of Jews. When will the media start believing what they say, word for word, instead of trying to spin it into “hmm maybe they want to kill all the Jews because they’re freedom fighters!”

War has collateral damage. Of course the innocent civilians don’t deserve to suffer just because of the actions of their government, but there have been warnings given to the Palestinian civilians prior to Israel striking the areas. There are consequences of attacking a country first, and then having that country attack you back.

2. Causing people of the group serious bodily or mental harm

The UN refers to sexual violence as the prime example of non-fatal harm.

Sexual violence has occurred. Hamas have kidnapped and raped women and even paraded the bodies of half-naked women around. But I f Israel had done the same, it’ll be the first thing appearing on everyone’s BBC push notifications (without even being confirmed as true).

3. Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group

Many people refer to the blockade that Israel imposed around the Gaza Strip as an example of this.

This blockade was imposed by both Israel and Egypt in 2005. Its aim was to prevent smuggling of weapons into Gaza, and isolate the reign of Hamas to the region. This was to ensure the safety of Israel and Egypt.

Did this blockade pose serious challenges to the Gazan civilians? Of course. But that’s a consequence of having a terrorist government. If you have a terrorist group running your country, don’t be surprised if neighbouring countries are extra careful about who or what they allow in or out of the borders.

Many authorities from other Arab nations have also expressed approval of Egypt’s border restrictions, and even encouraged Egypt to flood the terror tunnels that Hamas has dug under the city. As a side note, other Arab nations have not historically been very kind or welcoming to Palestinians. Syria has killed over 4000 Palestinians, and many Arab countries are now refusing any refuge for Palestinians. But no one cares about that because it doesn’t make Israel look bad. All they do now is use the images of dead Palestinians under the hands of Syria and reuse them to propagate fake news.

The blockade has been labelled as a human rights violation because of collective punishment. Many humanitarian organisations believe that the blockade has caused the Palestinian civilians disproportionate harm.

Contrary to popular belief, Israel isn’t disallowing humanitarian aid from coming through the borders. Fuel, food, hygiene products, clothes, and shoes have been coming through the borders regularly for years. The Gaza Strip also has electricity and internet access and water.

Do all these items reach the Palestinian civilians? Well, there has been evidence that Hamas has been intercepting a lot of the supplies sent by humanitarian groups. This is not surprising since the UNRWA tweeted that Hamas has stole fuel from hospitals in Gaza in order to launch more rockets at Israel (but quickly deleted it after realising that it goes against their agenda to paint Hamas in a bad light.) In addition, the returned hostages have mentioned that there are many aid supplies hidden in the terror tunnels by Hamas. Instead of giving them to the civilians, they are hoarding it for themselves.

There has also been video evidence that some people are reselling these aid items in stores at exorbitant prices in order to turn profits. This has been well-documented for the last 10 years.

Is blockading the region to mitigate terrorism a disproportionate response? Well, it’s like asking if heightened security and stricter border control at airports is a disproportionate response after 9/11. Is being cautious and worrying about the security of your country an irrational reaction to the constant threat of terrorism?

4. Preventing births

Gaza’s population growth rate per annum is about 1.99%, which is the 39th highest in the world! Their population is allowed to propagate freely.

Israel isn’t preventing births of Palestinian babies.

5. Forcibly transferring children out of the group

No, Israel hasn’t been taking Palestinian children and forcing them to convert/keeping young Palestinian girls as sex slaves. Like I said, if this was truly happening, all the news outlets would be so quick to publish the story before verifying it.

Can we trust the UN Genocide standards?

The UN is known for corruption and have been exploiting the Palestinian people by selling them the humanitarian supplies instead of distributing them for free, which they should because these supplies literally are donations.

The UN also has differing standards of what they would label as genocide. For example, they refuse to call what China is doing to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as genocide, even though the situation does fit many of their own criteria.

Hence, to all of you out there overusing these terms without knowing what they mean, make up your own mind about things. No one can force you to believe anything and no one can force you to change your mind.

But at the very least, do your due diligence and educate yourself before spouting tired buzzwords. Repeating misinformation doesn’t help anyone and can be very harmful.

[lightdancer1]

Khawla, OTOH, was a major war hero of the early expansion era:

She distinguished herself in particular in the Battle of Yarmuk, which was one of the most crucial clashes in the history of the Islamic world not least for securing a Muslim claim to both Jerusalem and for unraveling the southern flanks of the East Roman/Byzantine state. This underscores, as with Nusaybah, the simple reality of how the earliest versions of the Islamic world worked. The people who built it were armies and the leaders of armies, and it was possible to achieve great and lasting fame in the process.

[the-ind1gen0us-jude4n]

The Hypocrisy of the 'Palestinian' cause

If Israel says it is the only country in the MENA region which accepts the LGBT community and has laws favouring them - It's pinkwashing

If Israel plants trees and protects its environment - it's greenwashing

If Israel provides water to Jordan and makes breakthroughs in water technology - it's trying to deprive the MENA of water

When Israel was re-established - it was a European colony

When Israel points out that 50% of its population is Mizrachi, and over 20% Arab - the Mizrachi population are just 'Arab' converts (something you should NEVER call a Mizrachi Jew)

When Israel revives its ancient language - It's a fake language only made in the 1900s

When Israel has thousands of years proving it's history - it's revisionist history

When Israel says that its language is over 4000 years old - It's fake and Yiddish is the true indigenous language of the Jewish people (it's not)

When Israel has over 2 million Arab Israelis living in their land - They're being oppressed in an apartheid state

When Israel brings sick palestinian children into Israel to treat them - Israel is trying to harvest their organs

When Israel lets palestinians work in Israel - They're being brought in as slaves

When Zionism is mentioned - it's labelled as a vicious and disgusting ultra-ethnonationalist ideology. But when 'palestinian nationalism' is mentioned - it's a righteous and moral cause

When Palestinians rape and kill innocent Men, women and children - They're breaking out of a 'prison'

When Palestinians reject several two state solution plans - it's because they 'weren't fair'

When people are being viciously antisemitic - the Jews Zionists are just crying antisemitism and playing the Victim

When people call for the preservation of the worlds only Jewish state - They support genocide

When Israel invades Gaza to retrieve it's citizens who have been taken hostage and defeat a terrorist group - it's a genocide

There are so many more examples of blatant lies from this joke of a cause.

[nicklloydnow]

“May I be permitted to say a few words? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic & Islamic History under William Montgomery Watt & Laurence Elwell Sutton, 2 of Britain ‘s great Middle East experts. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge & to teach Arabic & Islamic Studies at Newcastle University . Naturally, I am the author of several books & 100s of articles in this field.

I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs & that, for that reason, I am shocked & disheartened for a simple reason: there is not & has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality should anyone choose to visit Israel.

Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that many students are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, & that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Hating Israel

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I’m not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel . I’m speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies & myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a “Nazi” state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws?

None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for. It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When?

No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is a way to subvert historical fact. Likewise apartheid.

No Apartheid

For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a day in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous this is.

The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country’s 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha’is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan & elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; or anyone else; the holy places of all religions are protected by Israeli law.

Free Arab Israelis

Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population). In Iran , the Bahai’s (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren’t your members boycotting Iran ?

Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa. They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews — something no blacks were able to do in South Africa.

Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews & Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

Women’s Rights

In Israel, women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men & women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays oftn escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.

It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel & say nothing about countries like Iran, where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief.

Intelligent students thinking it’s better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

(…)

I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel. I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations.

(…)

Israeli citizens, Jews & Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations & call for no boycotts against Libya , Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , & Iran. They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world’s freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the ME that gives refuge to gay men & women, the only country in the ME that protects the Bahai’s…. Need I go on?

(…)

Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more.”

[caesarsaladinn]

much like single combat, women warriors seem to be firmly in the cultural milieu of the medieval Arab and Byzantine worlds, but I don't think I've seen them referenced in histories at all. fighting an amazon is a central trope of the Akritic Cycles, and the Delhemma is told from the amazon's perspective, kicking male ass all the way to Constantinople. it may be a purely literary invention, something used for its novelty or to contrast the big masculine hero Digenis

though it's tough to image the Delhemma didn't inspire a bunch of girls to take up jihad and desert banditry.

[matan4il]

My grandparents were all Holocaust survivors. A large part of my family was murdered in that genocide. I chose to deal with the family trauma by becoming an educator on this subject. I give tours, lectures and workshops on the Holocaust, on antisemitism and on Jewish history.

Intellectually, I'm perfectly aware of how the massacre that Hamas perpetrated is NOT like what the Nazis did. More Jews were murdered over the course of just two days in Babi Yar (33,771 men, women and children), which is just one Nazi shooting pit out of almost two thousand, than during the entire Israeli-Arab conflict. Even after the carnage brought on by Hamas, this is still true. The Nazis were far more systematic (which eventually made them turn industrial) in carrying out the genocide of the Jews than Hamas has been. There's no comparison in terms of scale and industrialization.

And yet emotionally, I can't help but be hit by the similarities in terms of the immediate brutality of the murderers and the experiences of the Jewish victims. Because I am listening to the testimonies and some are so eerily similar to my research, I simply can't process how these are from recent days, not 80 years ago.

Jewish kids hiding from their would be murderers, scared to make a sound for fear of being discovered and killed.

Jewish families completely wiped out.

Jews asking themselves how did they survive and the person next to them did not.

Jewish people executed in droves, their bodies piled up.

Jews begging to be spared, to no avail.

Jewish women raped, most of them then killed.

Jewish babies executed in barbaric ways.

Jews being burned, some after being murdered, some while alive.

Jewish communities devastated. Take kibbutz Be'eri for example. It was founded before the State of Israel. Despite many terrorist attacks, it has continued to thrive in Israel's south. A small, close knit agricultural community. Over 100 people (at least) have been slaughtered there. Homes were destroyed. Everything the kibbutz's economy was based on was laid to waste, too. Be'eri has become synonymous with the worst of the carnage. IDK how they'll build their lives again after the war is over. IDK if they can. A community of almost 80 years, quite likely gone.

Foreign reporters who had been to kibbutz Kfar Azza all talked about the eerie silence and the stench of death rising from the bodies. Eerie silence is exactly how visitors to the sites of the shooting pits describe those places, while the allied soldiers who liberated the Nazi camps talked about the stench of death there.

Some of the reactions to this massacre also remind me of the Holocaust. Even though the Nazis, the murderers themselves, documented their extermination of Jews, there are those who deny the Holocaust happened, painting the Jews as liars. Similarly, even though Hamas documented themselves, and released the footage themselves, there are people going around denying the atrocities, painting the Jews as liars.

Then there's the justification of the mass murder of Jews by insinuating they brought it on themselves... Back in 1943, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aware of the plight of Jews under the Nazis, told government officials in Allied-liberated North Africa that the number of local Jews in various professions “should be definitely limited” so as to “eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany.” Understandable complaints. Understandable complaints of Germans against Jews. Roosevelt, the liberal president, said that while Jews were being exterminated by the Germans. In the same manner, we're seeing people justifying the murder of Jews at the hands of Hamas, even though it's a known antisemitic terrorist organization which has repeatedly called for the murder of all Jews in the world. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a reportedly Hamas affiliated Imam declared, "If the Zionist state were to move to the other end of the Mediterranean, our war would not be over, for the enemy is the Jew.

And while I stand by my statement that the scale is nothing alike, the carnage that took place in Israel IS the biggest massacre of Jews since the end of the Holocaust. Not even during Israel's Independence War and some of the massacres of Jews that happened during it (like the Kfar Etzion massacre) were this many Jews murdered during a single day.

Just like so many were silent back then as Jews were being both killed for being Jewish AND blamed for their own murder, many are silent now as well. Don't get me wrong, there are A LOT of amazing people who reached out to their Jewish friends, who showed they care, who took to the streets, who held vigils for the massacre's victims! Many heads of state also condemned this vicious attack. But I'm looking at Tumblr specifically, and it is FULL of posts justifying Hamas' slaughter of Jews. They're being reblogged everywhere, spread in every fandom. People who claim to stand for social justice feel absolutely no shame sharing such de-humanizing posts on their blogs. And what do we do? Are we calling them out? Do we make it clear that it is morally unacceptable to blame Jews for their own murder? Do we unfollow these bloggers, so that at least the dropping numbers send out the message that it is unacceptable to justify the massacre of innocent people?

TLDR:

This massacre is not like the Holocaust, but the cruel antisemitism that motivated it is the same. Let's not let antisemitism thrive here. Please do what you can (whatever that is) to stand for what's right.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[fromchaostocosmos]

Claims that Israel has been committing a genocide of Palestinians date to long before October 7. Yet the population of Gaza was estimated to be less than 400,000 when Israel captured the territory from Egypt in a war against multiple Arab countries in 1967. It’s now estimated at just over 2 million. Population growth of almost 600% would make it the most inept genocide in the history of the world.

Those repeating the word genocide over and over, turning it into a mantra that penetrates the public consciousness, smearing Israel and anyone who supports it, ignore the facts of this war. This is not an unprovoked war, like Russia’s against Ukraine. It’s not a civil war between rival militias, like the one raging in Sudan — which, by the way, is being ignored by almost everyone, even though the UN describes it as one of the “worst humanitarian crises in recent memory,” where a famine could kill 500,000 people. No, Israel was attacked. On October 7, Hamas launched a gruesome assault on Israeli civilians, killing some 1,200 — including many women and children — and dragging hundreds of them as hostages into Gaza. Today dozens — including many women and children — remain in captivity. Those who keep saying that Israel’s response is an act of revenge rather than the strategic, defensive war that most Israelis view as a fight for national survival against a determined enemy backed by a powerful country are deliberately distorting reality. In doing so, they are perversely evoking the same false blood lust and grotesqueness embedded in the blood libel archetype.

Indeed, Hamas’ actions, which precipitated this war, don’t seem to exist in the minds of ostensibly humanitarian-minded protesters. Nor even the fate of the hostages, still captive in Hamas tunnels. Although the campus protests vary in their message and actions from school to school, we never hear protesters chant that Hamas should release the hostages or accept a ceasefire. Quite the contrary. Accusations against Israel at times include praise for Hamas, one of whose aims — the end of the Jewish state — is shared by some key organizers of the student protests. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said, “It remains astounding to me that the world is almost deafeningly silent when it comes to Hamas.” Accusing Israel of genocide and putting the entire onus for stopping the war, putting all the blame for the deaths, on the Jewish state is even more astounding because Hamas — designated a terrorist organization by the US, the European Union and many other countries — is a group whose explicit goal, according to its founding charter, is not just to destroy Israel, but to kill Jews. That is the definition of genocide.

Still, the death toll, even by the Hamas count, does not in any way suggest a genocidal campaign. The terror organization puts the total at about 35,000. The figure, disputed by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy among other think tanks and researchers, includes Hamas fighters. That means the number of civilians killed, whatever the total, is actually lower. Compare that to the death toll in Mosul, Iraq, where coalition forces uprooted ISIS from a city that had some 600,000 people at the time. Estimates of the exact number of deaths vary, ranging from 9,000 to 40,000 (the latter is the estimate of Kurdish intelligence). The lowest figure is on par with the rate of total deaths reported by Hamas authorities in Gaza that does not distinguish civilians from Hamas fighters, while the highest is four times greater. I don’t recall hearing the term genocide used there, or in any of the battles that led to more than half a million people being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq during America’s wars there. And yet, Israel has been repeatedly smeared with this damning accusation.