#palestinians have hopes and dreams just like the rest of us

[sakurai96]

MEALS OF HOPE-GAZA

I know people may have grown tired of us, and that we have become a burden on the world, but we are just trying to survive. All of us in Gaza once had lives, homes, gardens, money, friends, and neighbors—just like you. The idea of collecting donations weighs heavily on my heart; we’re not used to asking for help. But ever since we were expelled from Gaza and I was fired from my job in Europe, I haven’t given up. I work tirelessly, 24/7, but with the rising costs of everything, I feel lost and uncertain about what to do.

But I am certain that if the situation were reversed, and any of you were in need, I would be the first to give every day. Before this war, I used to divide my salary—part for families in need, part for myself, and the rest for my family. Even now, I continue to send part of my salary to the people of Gaza, even though I am from Gaza and might end up on the street! But I cannot turn a blind eye to my people in Gaza. We are all one family in Gaza.

Here are some photos from my latest campaign on August 15, where we provided food for families in need and distributed essential items like milk for babies and some funds. I don’t have much, but I live by a principle: you don’t have to be rich to give; you just need to be generous. The more you give, the more God gives back, and God has blessed me in ways I never dreamed of. Thanks to your support, my family has been saved from imminent death.

I know you might be getting tired too, but please don’t forget about us. Don’t stop talking about Palestine. One day, we will be liberated, and we will open our homes and hearts to all of you. I called it "Meals of Hope" because my name, Amal, means "hope" in Arabic. Amal Abushammala

[help-rawan-muhammad]

🇵🇸 PLEASE DO NOT SCROLL! 🇵🇸

Below is a written piece by Rawan Muhammad, a Palestinian woman who needs our help. Please read her writing and donate to her GoFundMe. If you cannot donate, please, please, please share her words and her donation link!

FIRST PIECE-GOFUNDME WRITEUP

My name is Rawan Muhammad, and I am communicating with you from northern Gaza. I am studying in my third year in the Engineering Department. My future, my dreams, and my university have been destroyed. I am seeking to restore my unknown future because of this damned war, like the rest of the world’s students. My family and I are facing unimaginable hardships. Imagine an entire sector without water or electricity. There is no food, hospital, education, or home. We are on the verge of famine in the north. The terrible loss of our entire family shattered our lives. Our home was completely destroyed. Not only that, we became homeless forever because it was taken into the entity's buffer zone, we were left with nothing, leaving us alone in a world full of uncertainty and despair. With no source of income or support, we find ourselves navigating through these difficult times amid the ongoing atrocities of the occupation. Every second a new massacre is committed and rings of fire that no person in this world can bear. During this ordeal, I appeal to you to extend a helping hand to us, and to offer hope and comfort in our darkest hours. Your generosity can make a profound difference in our lives, providing us with the means to rebuild and forge a brighter future.

Can you describe this and focus with me for a moment, but try the feeling of every Gazan among us. 8 months ago, this damned war on the Gaza Strip began. It did not come out of nowhere, but rather because of the siege we are living in in this beautiful city. There are no free crossings open to us like other countries, no trains, no jobs, and no people’s most basic rights. Simple in any country, everything is controlled by a murderous Zionist entity that controls us

Every Gazan among us had dignity and self-esteem that was distributed to the whole world, and he sat at home happily, despite the sorrow we were experiencing. We were satisfied, relaxed, and thanked God for the little things. Everything was simple and made us happy. Our demands were simple, despite what made our specializations under this, including usurpation. It was considered... He made a great effort in the Middle East and stood alongside the largest countries in the world with the largest weapons in the world towards simple adaptation that did not have the equipment and equipment, but always relied on God.

Come, listen and focus on what Al-Ghazawi has been experiencing since October 7. No one has remained in his home since that day. We have all become displaced from place to place, under the belts of fire, under the remains of innocent women and children, under the rubble of houses that have become graves for their people. During this period, only one ambulance was able to go out. Anyone who left as a martyr was directly targeted, even if he was under international protection

They did not spare an ambulance or a journalist to broadcast the truth and the crimes committed by this accursed occupation. They were doing so to conceal the hideous truth that they were committing against our children, our women, and our elderly. I remember during that period, I did not sleep for just a single day due to the intensity of the bombing, the fire belts, and the hideous massacres. I was saying every second, “Here it comes.” It was our turn. We were all bearing witness to ourselves. Perhaps it was our last breath. No one would accept us to sleep alone. We were gathered in the same room. You can imagine why, so that none of us would feel sorry for anyone.

It was committing massacres in a very crazy way. The sound of the drones and the warplanes did not leave the Strip for a single day. Imagine, 24 hours a day, you hear that sound. Dear listener, our people were deceived into leaving to the south, considering it a safe area. More than 2 million people were displaced to this area. They tasted the scourges of torment in this small, inexhaustible outpost. It can handle this number due to its small area and the army entering every area and destroying it. After they used to rest in their homes, they began to move in tents from one area to another every now and then due to the ground entry of the occupation. Have you tried living in a tent and enduring its extreme heat, dear? You can imagine since that day there is no internet. In the Gaza Strip, there is no reassurance transmission, and there is no drinking water, and since that day, this city has not been illuminated

We now walk very long distances to obtain water. Our most basic rights are not potable water, but rather well water. We use it for drinking and other means. We no longer have a washing machine to wash clothes. All of this happens in the hands of the women of Gaza. We cannot fill a single barrel to use it to rinse the utensils. We fill the utensils and wash them. You can imagine. How difficult this is. There is not a single gas point in the Strip to use for cooking. We buy wood at very high prices for cooking. There is no electricity to charge the phone or battery to use for lighting. You have to walk some distance to find someone who uses solar energy to help you charge to meet your needs at nominal prices. Can you imagine? This suffering is not the hunger that afflicted us for months in northern Gaza because no aid truck has entered since the beginning of this aggression.

Everything has become insanely expensive due to high prices. The Strip has become on the brink of famine. Imagine your child waking up to get a living and you cannot meet his request in northern Gaza due to the lack of a living. My people in the north were going under death, under tanks, and over the bodies of martyrs who rose to get food. Every night, a new massacre was committed against these civilians who went to silence their starving children. Otherwise, they were deprived of their education, as their schools became shelters for the displaced, and there were no banks from which to spend your salary. If you wanted to receive your salary, you would receive half of it because of the high commission, so the sector became on the verge of poverty. Due to the lack of banks, everything in Gaza was destroyed. There was no house, street, mosque, hospital, school or university left to complete my dream and future that I started with. Everything was completely destroyed and nothing remained in Gaza except the complete destruction of the infrastructure. This is the goal of this damned war 😭

To this day, we cannot buy anything. We were deprived of all kinds of vegetables and fruits for 8 months in the northern Gaza Strip. Even if they are available in small quantities, their price is so crazy that you cannot buy them. You can imagine all these crimes happening in a small city in exchange for an organization that relies on God. Save what is left of us in This great city conveyed our voice to the world 💔😭

The situation is very bad in the north. Famine is hitting us again. We cannot really get food now. There is no gas or wood for cooking. The situation is very bad. We do not have our most basic rights. For 8 months, we have not eaten meat, vegetables, fruit, or anything that is found in malls, such as chocolate and chips. 💔 And we were satisfied. We ate the grasses of the earth and animal fodder here in the north for 5 months, and here the famine returns again.

[lilstrawberryghost]

Dear Friends,

I write to you with tears in my eyes and a heavy heart. After 188 days of displacement, constant fear, and struggling to survive, we managed to escape with our lives and reach Egypt. But the pain didn’t stop there. Just yesterday, we lost my children's grandfather 💔, not due to direct war, but because of malnutrition and the lack of basic life necessities. We couldn’t save him, just as we couldn’t save our home or our dreams.

The rest of my family is still trapped in the war, suffering the same harsh conditions that led to the passing of my children's grandfather. We are here trying to build a new life, but we have lost everything. We lost our home, and my children were deprived of their schools and universities. Even my eldest son, who worked so hard to build his future, lost his job and saw his dreams shattered.😔

We are now in desperate need of your help. We seek to secure a safe home that will provide us and our children with basic needs. Life in Egypt is extremely difficult, and prices are soaring beyond our reach. All we ask for is a chance to rebuild our lives and secure a better future for our children.🙏🏼

From the depths of my heart, I ask you to stand by us in these difficult times. Your support means hope and life to us.🙌🏼🇵🇸

https://gofund.me/59e9578a

Palestinians like Majed and his family still need help even if they have escaped Palestine!

[david-goldrock]

I have a genuine question that I hope is okay to ask - feel free to delete if not.

Recently I was told that a one state solution with Israel being the one state is something that is advocated for by the majority of right-wing Israelis who don't believe peace is possible with Palestinians as things stand. Is that true? And if so, I was also told this was not a particularly practical resolution because then you'd just have them in your country. Other states have made it extremely clear that they will not take in Palestinian refugees so the only way this ends without either two states or an Israel teeming with people bent on revenge who will never voluntarily integrate or give up their dream of an Islamic state in eretz Yisrael is if they are mostly killed.

But say that Israel managed to do so without the rest of the world intervening to stop it first. Wouldn't Israel truly be a pariah state then, if it survived the venues of the rest of the world?

Wouldn't that make it ultimately less practical for Israel (ignoring, obviously the human cost here) despite the drawnacks of the other solutions?

well... you don't have to convince me that this plan is stupid XD

I wouldn't say most right-wing Israelis call for that. some call for the annexation of area C only

Some call for a federation as well

as for those who call for complete annexation...

Since I don't agree with their solution even a little, all I can do is to let their leader talk and to translate; that I can do. here is an interview of Betzalel Smotrich, the leader of the "Jewish Might" party, by, mainly, Lior Shlein, a semi-leftist comedian whose partner is the leader of the "Labor" party, conducted in 2016 (3 wars ago)

I will color code the text. the red is me giving clarifications and comments

Friends, most of the nation understands that the land of Israel belongs to us, the same way that most of the nation understands, that one must not give areas of the land of Israel to the arabs

yes-

Most of the nation understands, that one must not allow the establishment of a Palestinian country

Okay

And so- most of the nation will come to us; so it went to Bibi (Nethanyahu, the leader of the right-winged "Unity" party and the prime minister at the time) Because Bibi has managed to trick it

But wait a minute... when you say that...

And to tell it how "right winged" he is

When you're saying it here...

And it will return to us swiftly

When you're saying it, who are you {trying to} convince? us, yourself? for, there is a world, there is a reality, there are millions of Palestinians

My solution says that we are finishing the conflict {in our favor}

yes

Not continuing to manage it like we are doing for 100 years in a bloody way

yes

This solution says that we are finishing it {in our favor} by actions, and it means that we establish...

Is your solution that we'll win? that's...

Establishing the sovereignty -

it's not...

No, no, first of all, first of all, yes, friends, don't be so scared from the word "victory" -

Up until now we are with you, Really with you, Up until now we are with you-

By the way, the left is the one that very much liked the word "Victory" up until now, right? the V15, that was for Victory, I think that that was the title -

I don't know, we'll have to ask the left when we'll interview it

We very much like; we will finish this conflict {in our favor}, we'll establish the Israeli sovereignty all over the expanses of the land of Israel and Judea and Samaria, And then a few options emerge to what shall we do with the arabs who live there today

Option 1 behind curtain 1-

Option 1...

If they are loyal to us, they remain here

One option, they can remain as citizens-

Option 2.

Second option, can remain not as citizens but to get some kind of autonomy

Option 3.

Third option, to remain as residents, like the arabs of east Jerusalem; Let's put the options on the table, and talk and discuss and argue about the with no fear, up until today there is only one option on the table

And how would you... And how would you call this solution in 4 words- "No arabs no terror-attacks"? or "No brain, no worries"? How would you... How would you define this game show you just invented?

I would call it "The finishing {in our favor} plan". It's the only thing that has a chance to bring peace and quiet to the citizens of Israel. It's the only thing that can bring, Lior, to coexistence between arabs and jews-

And if 2.5 million palestinians say "Smotrich! we're with you, we are loyal" would you give them the right to elect (to the knesset)?-

I don't know. I think not. Tell me for a moment, in the USA... (Oh I wanna know what did he want to say so much)

It went so quickly from the mere shock of the question to the decisiveness of "I don't know" and then "No"

I already said that there are 3 options.

yes

That I don't want to make a call between them right now. I want the Israeli public to discuss them, to argue about them; up until today there is only 1 plan on the table

But you're making another 2.5 million palestinians to Israeli public!-

Wait a minute! Up until today...

That's what I am telling you!

But that's not what I said.

Why not?

Up until today, there is only 1 plan on the table. The same way that there are 2 apartments for 2 partners, y'all want 2 countries for 2 people (A jab at Lior, who lives in a different apartment to his partner)

Who's y'all?

That's a not-realistic solution

Who's you? You want 2 delivery rooms for 2 nations (A jab at Smotrich, who said he doesn't want his wife to give birth in the same room as an arab) Stop it, may god help us! (Similar to the english "Jeez") You know...

You understand, though, You understand, though, Smotrich, that the reality doesn't show what you're showing, It shows us 2 options: either you don't give the arabs the right to vote and that's an apartheid, or you do give them the right to vote, and then immediately there will be in the Knesset a giant party, of religious fanatics, and that hates women, and gays, aren't you scared they will take your votes? That's what I am...

Look... I... I mainly am seeing what the reality teaches, reality, yes?

yes

The real one, teaches us that for years we are fantasising that we have someone to talk to (about peace) and we don't have someone to talk to (about peace). The solution, though, of 2 states isn't realistic, it never was realistic, the maximum that the most far left in Israel is willing to give, is much less than the minimum that the most modest leader among the arabs will agree to accept and remain alive for 2 days, this is a fiction-

What did you come to convince us, the the palestinians, some of whome are terrorists and they don't want...

I came to... no, no, not some of them, all of them. I came to convince...

All of them? All of them?! okay, fair enough, okay, and then?

I came to convince that there is no chance for a model that is based on the division of the land, therefore we need to move to a model that's based on the unification of the land, and that means establishing sovergnity, and that means uprooting the Palestinians the hope for fullfilling nationalist aspirations here, in the land of Israel, they have a bunch of ISIS around to search where to do that, not here. It means this land is ours. What to do with them in the day after? {it's a} question, I said earlier at least 3 options, let's talk about them, let's argue, I don't want to set rivets

Okay, you got us convinced, what about the reality, Smotrich? - We can uproot their... - What about the world?

Lior...

You understand, the you merely equating, no for real, because you don't need to convince... we are jews, we are Israelis, we are in the same boat, we suffer from terror, we suffer from the BDS, we suffer from antisemitism. You understand, that these kinds of talks by a respectable knesset member like you, they only cause more antisemitism, more BDS?

I think the exact opposite.

You understand...

no

That you are putting the BSD (Besiata Deshmaya- with the help of god, something said before making statements by some religious jews) in the BDS?

I think... Lior, I think the exact opposite. I think that the real reason for the great international pressure of the world to us to establish a palestinian state, is because we are saying that that is the solution. The prime minister of the right, not of the left, stands, and says the vision of the 2 states... by the way, last week he said that he has some kind of dream to make this vision a reality. so the world tells us "guys, for years you are busy at searching for excuses for why yes, but not right now. stop shitting us, if that's the solution, go for it". If we will go to the world and say that it's not the solution, I think that the world will recognize our right over the land of Israel, by the way in most of the religious writings of the world, which is mainly religious, the historical and religious right over the entirety of the land of Israel... by the way Abraham our forefather wasn't here in Tel Aviv and not in Herzeliya either, don't be offended, he was in Schem, Hebron, Alon More, these are the places where the nation of Israel had risen

Let's show the scene. let's see, Abraham our forefather, in Schem and Hebron- I promise to get- Lior realistic solutions, a temple, stuff like that, let's talk about concrete stuff, and not delusions like a state for a nation! let's, let us be...

From you, I expect not to disparage the bible-

I didn't disparage the bible-

Forget it, these ashkenazis that have disconnected and drifted apart for I don't know how much time, from you...

What is this Smotrich, from Tzan'a? (Smotrich is ashkenazi too, Tzan'a is where many Yemenite jews came from) from where?

Firstly, they kidnapped me, so the damage has already been done (a joke about the fact that in very early Israel yemenite children were kidnapped by ashkenazi families and the government had left that covered for years), Secondly... - me, my problem with the plan, I have no problem, I am with you. you say to win, to defeat them. my problem is that if that doesn't happen... we'll lose, we won't defeat them

This cannot be

Can't? but I have news for you...

Listen friends, in this land, for over 100 years, there exist 2 contradicting national aspirations. The left's fantasy, is that it is possible that they won't exactly contradict, but will rather divide the land and all will be fine. factually speaking, all throughout history...

yes

we, by the way, always agreed to compromise. we agreed not to finish the conflict {in our favor}. from the {UN's} division plan to Barak and Olmert, yes? each with their fantasies.

okay

The other side had always rejected it. when there are 2 contradicting national aspirations that fight all the time, there's blood {spilled} all of the time and that's bad and immoral for everybody. There is only one solution: to finish this conflict and it is that one of the side will lose hope on its hope and aspirations. I can't imagine that we'll give up

And you can imagine that they will give up.

I can imagine that

It worked up until now

I can imagine that they will give up in despair and will have to give up.

What did you say? that you want to make the arabs despair? If there is something that's dangerous for us it's a despaired arab.

No, no, I do not...

To despair them is not good

I certainly want to...

not good, a despaired arab is not a...

I certainly want to...

is not a dead arab (a pun on the extremeist call "a good arab is a dead arab" that Smotrich's supporters might call. Smotrich obviously didn't get the jab as his response is:)

I always knew...!

Oh! that a jewish heart...

I always knew that at the end of the day at the end of the day at the end of the day , the leftists are the least moral and the most racist, and that we are the ones who are more moral than all. We literally want that they will despair from the ability to fullfill their national hope, and by the way, then, then, and I must finish this move, at this moment, there will be a different hope for them for a good life, to enjoy the plentifulness and the progress, for, between us, what was here before we came?

Nothing, but knesset member Smotrich-

Swamps, maleria, we came, we brought here progress, technology, plentifullness, they all enjoy it, by the way, they have good lives, they don't have any realitve 360 degrees around, in no country, that has good lives, with rights and with democracy, such as they have here, even if they won't have the right to vote (What the fuck does democracy mean without the right to vote Smotrich? what are you talking about? you mishmashed 2 ideas!)

Do you understand that the CEO of your party...

And wait, wait, wait, why?

Had launched this week a plan for teaching 5 units (the best standart of high school) of english-

I am asking you, wait a minute, why

And It isn't relevant because in a moment nobody talks with us in this world?

why...

You are convincing me, and him-

We just were in Africa-

And yourself! but there is a world, there is reality!

You are convincing yourselves. The state of Israel is far from being isolated, the prime minister just returned from a week of elephant travels in africa

Of course, all of our friends in africa, ah? really my great friend is

We are connections... We are connections with the world, by the way, I want to tell you, if you haven't heard, that the republican party in the USA has removed its support in the 2 state solution-

It's Trump! You are hanging up your safety on Trump?

Very well may be-

Sir, in europe ugly phenomenons of antisemitism resurface, there is a financial boycott, there is an acacdemic boycott on Israel, it looks like Israel is doing nothing to fix that; I very much hope that we aren't counting on the mercy of heaven, because if you were embarressed that Bibi fell asleep in africa, wait and see what happenes to god in europe. what... will stand between us and all of that if I, god forbid, don't believe in g-od?

G-d

Not in him either.

First of all I want to tell you, that even if you don't believe in him he exists, and he loves you and cares for you. You know, to the arabs we say "no duties no rights", with him it isn't like that.

You mean to say that god belives in Lior?

Even when there are no duties, even when there are no duties, there are rights, he loves you, because you are a jew, you got fucked, that's first of all. second of all, he who looks at the process of Israel from holocaust to sovergnity in 68 years (the age of Israel in 2016), we did something here that no nation in the world has done. by the way, we and India and us got independence around the same time, they got it in '47

Okay, but what do they have? they have buddah, it's some kind of statue, come on

Wait, wait, wait, what is this, bro you are completly right. that's the reason that here, see what there is, and there when you go abroad, what do you take from home? toilet paper, right?

yes

that's the difference between us and india

Just don't call me "bro" and keep your hands off my sister. okay...

Are you just shitting on india right now? you just found a country and said "let's shit on them"? what is this thing? -They are still with us - these indians, no toilet paper

What we did here in 68 years... what we did here in 68 years is a bunch, and its obvious that is is, let's say, unnatural even, we don't need to be scared that we didn't finish the job in 68 years

you're right

A great place, there is a way to go

I know guys who finished the job in a week. - in much less, yeah- in one week! had created -Come on, let smotrich be a Prime Minister and he'd finish the job in a week - yeah- 68 years to built, how quickly can one destroy? it's like that- like that

You are trying to destroy for a while....

And then the discussion shifts to a different subject

I hope this helps?

[apollos-olives]

Yeah, it seems like the only Arab countries attempting to help are Yemen and Lebanon. Yemen more directly than Lebanon as of now, but I fear that the Israeli government is getting to cocky by bombing the borders of Lebanon and attempting to further their destruction into inner Lebanon and Hezbollah is preparing to enter this situation and turn this into a war. Wallahi this will become full on war. This is why I believe that Israel has no way to win this (Not that they should). The remaining parts of Palestine have no military and no actual government, so that’s why Israel can do what they are doing. Israel wants the whole Levant. Despite the failures of the Arab world, I really doubt that they will let Israel take over this countries. Israel is chasing an impossible and fruitless dream. Their cockiness makes them think they are above the Arabs. No amount of aid from the West is going to help them when this escalates. The Palestinians will have their land back soon.

you're right in that yemen is helping more than lebanon. my dad said something about lebanon the other day.... something about "lebanon is a country that won't fight back" or smth like that. it's sad to see, but anyway i hope yemen gets rewarded for their decency. as much as i'd like to avoid war, i do think that it is inevitable in some form, because there is no way the un is helping us at all, and most western countries will have to fight the rest of the world. and you're right about the fact that israel wants all of the levant. netanyahu said he wants israel to expand into a "greater israel" that is just all of levant, naming the whole region as israel. arab countries hardly have any decency but i truly don't believe they'll let israel take their land, and with how most of the world is turning against israel, it won't be long until palestine is free.

[upsidedownsoup]

I Come From There

I come from there and I have memories

Born as mortals are, I have a mother

And a house with many windows,

I have brothers, friends,

And a prison cell with a cold window.

Mine is the wave, snatched by the sea-gulls,

I have my own view,

And an extra blade of grass.

Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,

And the bounty of birds,

And the immortal olive tree.

- Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet born on the 13th of March, 1941 in al-Birwa, located in Western Galilee. His family was displaced during the First Arab-Israeli War but they returned to a different part of Western Galilee because his birth village was destroyed by Israeli forces. Darwish grew up to be involved in a number of writing positions namely working as an editor for a couple of literary periodicals. By then he had already been writing professionally, publishing his first collection, Asafir bila ajniha (Wingless Birds), at just 19. Throughout his life, Darwish was an avid voice of Palestine. His works often included themes tied to resistance and the homeland. He was an active participant in political activism having joined the Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO in the early 1970s. He was subsequently banned from entering Israel. Later he served on the PLO Executive Committee. Darwish believed in the possibility of peace between Israel and Palestine and hoped for the future mending of the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis.

Mahmoud Darwish and poets like him remind me of the eternal need for and importance of poetry. Not only for its unique ability to amplify voices but also for its incredibly far reach. Many poems by Mahmoud Darwish have reached the hearts and minds of people all across the world, from a teenager in Sri Lanka to an old woman in Canada. And if we, most of us who have never had to face half the things Palestinians have for the past 75+ years, continue to consume and enjoy his poems without acknowledging the person, the past behind the words, then who are we? Why should we be allowed to benefit from his words if we are not willing to stand up in solidarity and to use our voices where we can? Poets can only do so much, we, the readers, must take what we are given and do what we can in return. Whether that’s through monetary contribution or raising awareness- do something.

I’m reminded of a poem by Olav H. Hauge-

From the War

A bullet skittered to rest on the hall floor.

I weighed it in my hand.

It had gone through glass and

two timbered walls.

I had no doubt it could kill.

From The Dream We Carry: Selected and Last Poems of Olav H. Hauge Translated by Robert Bly and Robert Hedin

During World War II, my ancestral village and Olav H. Hauge’s home of Ulvik, Norway was nearly completely burned to the ground on the 25th of April, 1940. Poetry if often born from violence. We need poets like Mahmoud Darwish and Olav H. Hauge who spoke of the horrors of war and forceful occupation. We need their voices because otherwise too often the everyday pain and minutiae of war get lost to time.

[raplinesmoon]

tw: long post (thankful if you spare a moment to read)

if you know me irl, you know my little sister is my absolute best friend in the whole world. we’ve grown up side by side, being two halves of the same soul, and we’ve never been far apart from each other in terms of distance (probably due to our mutual dependence on each other). which is why I was both proud when she got into the school of her dreams this past summer, and devastated when it meant she had to move across the country. for the first time, i couldn’t just drive over or take a train to her when i needed her.

i remember my mom being worried sick at the thought of her having to move so far away. it was right around Eid, a holiday we’ve always celebrated together as a family, and we knew she wouldn’t be able to come home this time. and it broke our hearts that distance meant we couldn’t be together, couldn’t take care of each other like we used to.

she found a roommate. a roommate who happened to be Palestinian. she has family in Gaza, family she can trace back for generations. we were honestly worried how’d they’d get along, but it turns out we didn’t need to be worried. because when my sister was spending her Eid alone, missing her family, her roommate’s mom brought her ma’amoul just so she wouldn’t feel the absence of a mother that day. when my sister is tired from studying for exams, her roommate will make her breakfast, so she can have the joy of a warm meal on days where she can barely take care of herself.

i think about this girl, who i barely know, and how she takes care of my sister in a way that brings me to tears. and then i think about her, and her family, and i wonder who’s taking care of them. i wonder if when this is all over, they’ll even be able to sit down at a breakfast table together. or send each other ma’amoul on Eid. after living through generations of brutal oppression, i want them to find a family in the rest of the world, just like my sister found a family in them.

i write this because i’ve seen too many numbers and statistics in the media, and i know how desensitizing seeing them can be. how it can feel like something going on so far away from the fabric of our ordinary lives. if you read this, i hope you remember this story, and if you’ve heard others, those stories as well. these are real people. they’re fighting for the chance to do the things we do every day - go to doctor’s appointments, do their homework, share dinner with family, listen to music, read books, walk peacefully on their streets. please keep them in your hearts.

[riondisease]

i completely understand why people are saying to “not forget about palestine” after palestine is free. the internet moves on so quickly. but i don’t understand how anyone could ever forget. there are children on the internet right now seeing the corpses of children their age, they scream and cry to their parents, they hug their friends and family. we will grow up traumatized and we aren’t even the ones in danger. i’ve felt so fucking disconnected from life for the last month. how could i ever be normal again after this.

A GIRL MY AGE WAS MURDERED AND I SAW A PICTURE OF HER WHEN SHE WAS ALIVE SHE WAS SMILING SHE HAD HOPES AND DREAMS AND ASPIRATIONS SHE HAD A FAMILY AND FRIENDS AND PEOPLE WHO LOVED HER SO MUCH SHE WAS ONLY FUCKING 15 YEARS OLD AND I CAN SEE HER FACE THEY KILLED HER THEY MURDERED HER SHES GONE AND SHE WILL NEVER COME BACK HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FUCKING LIVE WHEN SHE DIDNT GET TO

i’ve cried so much i try to tell my family what’s actually happening but they don’t believe me, they don’t listen. i’m not trying to make this about me, it’s not about the children in the west when children in gaza are dead. i just hope people understand i, and people all over the world, will never mentally recover from the murders of thousands of people. over a thousand children. we could never grieve all of them for the amount they deserve.

i know we won’t forget because so many children all over the world will grow up traumatized. we will be able to remember the faces and names and pictures of mutilated children our age that were murdered. we will grow up afraid, paranoid of the government above us that could decide to bomb us, to bomb other children, at any moment. we will remember for the rest of our lives. our lives that were arbitrarily deemed more important than the people of gaza.

we can cope but we will never be the same people we were. children in gaza, the people of gaza, have lost their fathers. their mothers. their siblings. their pets and their friends and the people they love. no matter if you choose to deny it or not. in the matter of a someone’s right to live, there is no difference between an arab child and a white one. we will not choose to distance ourselves from them. they are just like us and now they are fighting for their lives, or dead.

please, i know your afraid, i know you’re mentally devastated, but we cannot look away. we cannot force their suffering out of our minds. we cannot give up fighting just because we feel helpless. your trauma, your mental breakdowns, no matter how much it fucking hurts, we need to remember everyone in gaza who’s been murdered by israel and the us. no matter what it takes away from us. no matter how we change for the worse. they need to be remembered. and more than anything we have to keep fighting for the living palestinians. please keep going, keep fighting, keep grieving, no matter what.

[ardentperfidy]

Most of our internal disagreements center on the correct container for our grief. Our staff is not unlike the rest of the Jewish world in that many of us are only a matter of degrees from someone who died or was taken hostage. How can we publicly grieve the death and suffering of Israelis without these feelings being politically metabolized against Palestinians? ... In this way, Jewish grief is routed back into the violence of a merciless system of Palestinian subjugation that reigns from the river to the sea. ... ... “I do not rejoice over death. I rejoice over the possibility to live,” [writer and reporter Hebh Jamal] writes, and as such “I cannot condemn the militants if I believe even for a second that there might be a possibility of all of this finally coming to an end.” Hebh describes the sense of possibility that many Palestinians have felt in these events, as they have disturbed—perhaps only momentarily, it remains to be seen—the dominant paradigm in which they are condemned to die waiting for their freedom, as so many other nonviolent avenues to liberation have been punished or ignored. Hebh’s reaction appears common to so many of the Palestinians I know and trust that I must try to feel my way into it. ... But what Exodus reminds us is that the dehumanization that is required to oppress and occupy another people always dehumanizes the oppressor in turn. For people who feel like their pain is being devalued, it’s because it is; and that devaluation is itself a hallmark of the cycle of the diminishing value of human life. As the abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore has said, “Where life is precious, life is precious.” We are seeing the ways that Jews as the agents of apartheid will not be spared—even those of us who have devoted our lives to the work of ending it. (I am thinking of Hayim Katsman, zichrono l’vracha, killed by Hamas, an activist against the expulsion of the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta, and Vivian Silver, a hostage in Gaza, who is known to many of its residents as the person they meet at the Erez Crossing who advocates for and facilitates their transfers to Israeli hospitals for treatment.) ... One of the most terrible things about this event is the sense of its inevitability. The violence of apartheid and colonialism begets more violence. Many people have struggled with the straightjacket of this inevitability, straining to articulate that its recognition does not mean its embrace. I am reminding myself that it was from Palestinians, many of them writing and speaking in these pages, that I learned to think of Palestine as a site of possibility—a place where the very idea of the nation-state, which has so harmed both peoples, could be remade or destroyed entirely. And it was Palestinians who opened my thinking to multiple visions of sharing the land. On the left, I hope we do not mistake the inevitability of the violence for an inescapable limit on our work or the quality of our thought. Even if our dreams for better have failed, they must accompany us through this moment to the other side.

Full text:

This has been the hardest week we’ve ever had to weather as a staff at Jewish Currents. Events are moving so fast that there seems no hope of apprehending any of it fully, of saying the thing that will feel right for the moment which is already gone. With great effort, we finish a section of our explainer only for new information to surface and invalidate it. And it’s not just about the facts. Feelings and positions are in flux. There are political questions and fault lines that have been simmering under the surface in our organization—in the Jewish left, and I suspect the left generally—exploding to the fore, gumming up the works at a time when urgency feels paramount. Staff members are periodically bursting into tears, fighting with their families or with their friends, running on fitful sleep. A contributor’s son is a hostage. A contributor in Gaza texts: “Still alive. They are bombing everywhere. Nowhere is safe.”

Most of our internal disagreements center on the correct container for our grief. Our staff is not unlike the rest of the Jewish world in that many of us are only a matter of degrees from someone who died or was taken hostage. How can we publicly grieve the death and suffering of Israelis without these feelings being politically metabolized against Palestinians?

We have good reason to worry about this: As Israelis count their dead, politicians in Israel and the US call for Palestinian blood in direct, genocidal language. “We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant yesterday. “Finish them, Netanyahu,” said former Ambassador to the United Nations and Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. “Neutraliz[e] the terrorists,” said Democratic senator John Fetterman. Jews share memes about the highest number of Jewish casualties since the Holocaust, not bothering to ask who, right now, is being ethnically cleansed, or how many massacres of this size Gaza has seen in the last dozen years. This language deploys the bombs that fall on Gazans from the sky, leveling whole neighborhoods, wiping out families without warning, huddled in their homes because they have nowhere to flee. “There are body parts scattered everywhere. There are still people missing,” one man north of Gaza City told CNN. “We’re still looking for our brothers, our children. It’s like we’re stuck living in a nightmare.” We will likely soon see this genocidal impulse spread, as the Israeli government hands out automatic weapons to West Bank settlers, many of whom were already armed eliminationists. In this way, Jewish grief is routed back into the violence of a merciless system of Palestinian subjugation that reigns from the river to the sea. It is mobilized by US politicians who support Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist government, which has intensified Palestinian death and displacement and disappeared any hope of a diplomatic solution. It is marshaled to drum up support for sending weapons to Israel, even as we know that, as Haggai Mattar wrote in +972 Magazine, “there is no military solution to Israel’s problem with Gaza, nor to the resistance that naturally emerges as a response to violent apartheid.”

We can’t let our grief be bent to these purposes, but it’s not clear where else to put it. Anyone who has been working in this space knows that our movements are not prepared to manage the emotional and political fallout. We watch as Jewish people and groups we thought we had pulled into our struggle, or at least begun to move politically, suddenly close ranks, profess support for the IDF, retreat into despair. Already complex and fragile relationships between Palestinian and left-wing Jewish activists—as well as factions within both of these groups—are being challenged as we struggle to derive the same meaning from the images coming across our screens. Friends and colleagues on all sides find themselves hurt by one another’s public reactions, or by their silence. A veteran anti-Zionist activist I spoke to wondered if a “chasm” was opening up between Palestinian and Jewish activists, especially as the current moment has made visible diaspora Jews’ tangible connections to that place and those people that are, inconveniently, not just the stuff of Israeli propaganda. Over the weekend, many avowed anti-Zionist Jews found they could not join solidarity protests because they needed something the protests could not provide: a space to grieve the Israeli dead, to struggle with their own place in the coming political process. It is a situation none of us have ever before confronted in earnest, amid a long history of vastly disproportionate death tolls. And now, when we need it most, we find ourselves struggling with a lack of emotional and political vocabulary.

On October 7th, my own feelings fluctuated wildly. My first feeling was fear. To listen closely to the genocidal language of this Israeli government over the past year has been to live in terror of the day they would find the excuse to pursue it. Writing in n+1, Jewish Currents contributing editor David Klion recounts the words of a campus activist in the wake of 9/11: “They’re already dead,” he’d said on the day Bush declared war on Iraqis, their fates sealed. I felt these words in my body, sobbing loudly in front of the screen. There were also bursts, very early on, of awe. I watched the image of the bulldozer destroying the Gaza fence again and again and cried tears of hope. I watched Palestinian teenagers seemingly out joyriding in a place half a mile away that they’d never been; a Gazan blogger suddenly reporting from Israel. But these images were quickly joined by others—the image of a woman’s body, mostly naked and bent unnaturally in the back of a truck; rooms full of families lying in piles, the walls spattered in blood. I wanted desperately to keep these images separate—to hold close the liberatory metaphor and banish the violent reality. By the time I began to accept that these were pictures of the same event, I was distraught, and contending with a rising alienation from those who did not seem to share my grief, especially as the scope of the massacre came into view.

“I have anti-Zionist Jewish friends who are rightfully scared,” writer and reporter Hebh Jamal wrote in a recent Mondoweiss article. She observes how, despite all their sympathy for Palestinian suffering, this may be the first moment such allies are tasting the fear—and the state of mourning—that has been real for Palestinians for decades. She has also lost someone this week—a cousin, 20 years old. “I do not rejoice over death. I rejoice over the possibility to live,” she writes, and as such “I cannot condemn the militants if I believe even for a second that there might be a possibility of all of this finally coming to an end.” Hebh describes the sense of possibility that many Palestinians have felt in these events, as they have disturbed—perhaps only momentarily, it remains to be seen—the dominant paradigm in which they are condemned to die waiting for their freedom, as so many other nonviolent avenues to liberation have been punished or ignored. Hebh’s reaction appears common to so many of the Palestinians I know and trust that I must try to feel my way into it.

As I watched people online debate the models of anti-colonial struggle, raising comparisons to Algeria and North America and South Africa, I found myself returning to the foundational Jewish liberation myth: the Exodus. It was hard not to think about the moment in the Passover seder when we lessen the wine in our full cups with our pinkies as we recite the plagues. This ritual has materialized as an indispensable touchstone, insisting that to hold onto our humanity we must grieve all violence, even against the oppressor.

But I also thought of the plagues themselves, particularly the final one, the slaying of the first born—children, adults, the elderly. It seems that hiding in our liberation myth is a recognition that violence will visit the oppressor society indiscriminately. I know that I have many friends, and that Currents has many readers, who are asking themselves how they can be part of a left that seems to treat Israeli deaths as a necessary, if not desirable, part of Palestinian liberation. But what Exodus reminds us is that the dehumanization that is required to oppress and occupy another people always dehumanizes the oppressor in turn. For people who feel like their pain is being devalued, it’s because it is; and that devaluation is itself a hallmark of the cycle of the diminishing value of human life. As the abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore has said, “Where life is precious, life is precious.” We are seeing the ways that Jews as the agents of apartheid will not be spared—even those of us who have devoted our lives to the work of ending it. (I am thinking of Hayim Katsman, zichrono l’vracha, killed by Hamas, an activist against the expulsion of the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta, and Vivian Silver, a hostage in Gaza, who is known to many of its residents as the person they meet at the Erez Crossing who advocates for and facilitates their transfers to Israeli hospitals for treatment.)

That question of how we recuperate this humanity is ultimately an organizing question. People have repeated over and over again over the last few days that you “cannot tell Palestinians how to resist.” To me, it seems there is a very literal dimension to this axiom: They are not asking. Part of what has made the experience of this event feel so different from the status quo—and so different to Palestinians and Jews—comes from the fact that Palestinians were undeniably the actors, for once, not the acted upon. The protagonists of the story. I consider it an enormous failure of our movements that we have not been able to build a vehicle for that kind of reversal in any other way thus far. Our Jewish movements for Palestine were not powerful enough to stop other Jews from gunning down Palestinians in peaceful marches at the Gazan border fence, or to keep Palestinians from being fired, harassed, and sued for speaking the truth about their experience or—God forbid—advocating the nonviolent tactic of boycott. And now, we do not have a shared struggle able to credibly respond to these massacres of Israelis and Palestinians. With all of the work that many Jews and Palestinians have done to reach toward each other over the years, I believe at heart it is this failure that is now driving us apart. There is no formidable political formation that I know of that can hold the political subjectivity of both Jews and Palestinians in this moment without simply attempting to assimilate one into the other. No place where Jews and Palestinians who agree on the basics of Palestinian liberation—right of return, equality, and reparations—are poised to turn the synthesis of these two subjectivities into a coherent strategy.

One of the most terrible things about this event is the sense of its inevitability. The violence of apartheid and colonialism begets more violence. Many people have struggled with the straightjacket of this inevitability, straining to articulate that its recognition does not mean its embrace. I am reminding myself that it was from Palestinians, many of them writing and speaking in these pages, that I learned to think of Palestine as a site of possibility—a place where the very idea of the nation-state, which has so harmed both peoples, could be remade or destroyed entirely. And it was Palestinians who opened my thinking to multiple visions of sharing the land. On the left, I hope we do not mistake the inevitability of the violence for an inescapable limit on our work or the quality of our thought. Even if our dreams for better have failed, they must accompany us through this moment to the other side. We need to imagine a movement for liberation better even than the Exodus—an exodus where neither people has to leave. Where people stay to pick up the pieces, rearranging themselves not just as Jews or Palestinians but as antifascists and workers and artists. I want what Puerto Rican Jewish poet and activist Aurora Levins Morales describes in her poem “Red Sea”:

We cannot cross until we carry each other, all of us refugees, all of us prophets. No more taking turns on history’s wheel, trying to collect old debts no-one can pay. The sea will not open that way.

This time that country is what we promise each other, our rage pressed cheek to cheek until tears flood the space between, until there are no enemies left, because this time no one will be left to drown and all of us must be chosen. This time it’s all of us or none.

[oh1thehorror]

The fact that the number is now 30,000? Just a few months ago it was 9,000. This is a rate of death greater than the US-Afghanistan war. This is a rate of death that should not be happening in the first place. By this point, if the genocide doesn’t end now, and Palestine isn’t freed now, then they might not make it till the end of this month.

(Those 30,000 people- that’s about 30 UK high-schools worth, if that helps you visualise it- ALL of them, we’re people. All of them had hopes and dreams and loves. Maybe some of them liked the same books as you and me. They all were looking forward to a future we all deserve. 30,000 people. Gone like they’re nothing, and gone in the most brutal, disgusting of ways. Allah, rest their souls.)

Need I remind you, Ramadan is just around the corner. The Holy months are just around the corner. The sparse defences that Gaza has- if you can call men dressed in no protective gear, fighting with makeshift weapons that- to slightly lessen those Israeli attacks will have to fall away, because we are not allowed to fight in those few months. We all know Israel isn’t going to honour religious traditions; certainly not of the Palestinians, who they bombed in their churches at Christmas.

The Zionists will make a new massacre of them whilst they are defenceless, no doubt turned in prayer to God to receive them because if the ceasefire doesn’t come by then, it will never come.

It’s nothing short of the violent 75yr occupation we’ve seen for so long. It’s nothing short of the Nakba. Every year, it gets worse, and every year until this one, there was little discussion about it. The regime should’ve died without the blood of 30,000+ martyrs staining it.

I'm never forgetting the Palestinian babies that were left to starve to death then rot in their beds by the IOF.

I'm never forgetting the Palestinian doctors surrounded by bodies of dead children begging the world to stop the slaughter.

I'm never forgetting the Palestinian children who held a press conference in English to beg the world to stop murdering them because they want to live.

I'm never forgetting the Palestinian Priest who said "We will not accept your apology after the genocide" to the world.

I'm never forgetting the Palestinian Imam who used the speakers of the Mosque, not to call people to prayer but to call out to God while the world around them was burning from American supplied Israeli bombs.

I'm never forgetting the grandfather who held his dead grandchild in his arms. Or the father carrying the remains of his two children in plastic shopping bags. Or the mother holding her dead child in a shroud. Or the father sitting among the rubble after he lost his whole family. Or the girl trapped under a broken building begging for people to save her family first. Or the boy who cried when he saw his brother alive. Or the girl who asked if she was still alive after being pulled from the rubble. Or the boy who carried the remains of his brother in his backpack. Or the old man the IOF used for a photoshoot before they shot him dead after getting pictures. Or the little boy wearing plastic gloves to pick up the remains of his family. Or the graves desecrated. Or the body of that small baby girl left alone in a tent because no one knew who she was or if her family was alive, small and alone and not one person who knew her name to bury her. Or the young boy who was shot in the street while his sister watched from the window. Or the men and boys who were stripped naked in winter. Or those tortured. Or those made to stand in open graves. Or the people who were raped by IOF soldiers. Or Palestinian workers kidnapped by the IOF and then labeled with wristbands, each one reduced to a number, then made to walk back to Gaza to be killed in the world's largest open air concentration camp. Or the people of Gaza starving because Israeli Zionists are blocking aid trucks. Or the Israelis dancing and celebrating the death of Palestinians. Or the lies spread by Zionists and their supporters. Or the people profiting off the oppression and deaths of Palestinians. Or the people of the West Bank being killed or kidnapped by the IOF. Or old woman who was older than the creation of the terror state of "Israel" who was shot by snipers for saying that. Or the Israelis dressed up as Palestinians to enter a hospital and kill three Palestinians in their beds. Or every single Palestinian currently kept in an Israeli prison. Or the journalists, doctors, poets, men, women, children, and the unborn all massacred. Or the fact that WCNSF exists now. Or the woman who refused to wash the blood from her hands. Or the dead, unburied and unmourned.

I'm never forgetting those who chose silence in the face of a genocide.

I may not know all their names but I will not forget the over 30,000 Palestinians dead. Or the over 60, 000 people hurt. Or the unknown number of people missing, still lost under the rubble. Or the 12,000 children slaughtered. An entire generation crippled or murdered.

I will never forget these things when Palestine is free.

[jasontoddsthickthigh]

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[krimsonkatt]

Dear Friends,

I write to you with tears in my eyes and a heavy heart. After 188 days of displacement, constant fear, and struggling to survive, we managed to escape with our lives and reach Egypt. But the pain didn’t stop there. Just yesterday, we lost my children's grandfather 💔, not due to direct war, but because of malnutrition and the lack of basic life necessities. We couldn’t save him, just as we couldn’t save our home or our dreams.

The rest of my family is still trapped in the war, suffering the same harsh conditions that led to the passing of my children's grandfather. We are here trying to build a new life, but we have lost everything. We lost our home, and my children were deprived of their schools and universities. Even my eldest son, who worked so hard to build his future, lost his job and saw his dreams shattered.😔

We are now in desperate need of your help. We seek to secure a safe home that will provide us and our children with basic needs. Life in Egypt is extremely difficult, and prices are soaring beyond our reach. All we ask for is a chance to rebuild our lives and secure a better future for our children.🙏🏼

From the depths of my heart, I ask you to stand by us in these difficult times. Your support means hope and life to us.🙌🏼🇵🇸

https://gofund.me/59e9578a

Obvious scammer is obvious. This isn't the place to advertise your go fund me, especially since this is most likely a scam. Go do it somewhere else. Regardless, if you are actually legit, I'm sorry for your loss and I hope life gets better for you. I will not donate however, because it is very likely that this is a scam profiting off the recent war to make bank off people's suffering and other's sympathy. Utterly disgusting if that is the case.

In terms of my personal beliefs on the conflict, I 100% stand behind a ceasefire in the Israel/Palestine conflict, and I hope that a peaceful two-state system can be found. I do not support Hamas, but I don't support the Israeli government's genocide against innocent Palestinians either. Both organizations (Hamas and the Israeli State) are equally bad, and we need to reach a peaceful solution to this terrible war and fast so that no more innocent lives are hurt.

TLDR if you see this, DO NOT DONATE TO THIS GOFUNDME. IT IS MOST LIKELY A SCAM.

I ask that anyone who is able to REPORT this gofundme, especially if you live in the UK or EU. They already scammed $5000+ from people. This needs to be stopped!

[jentledaisies]

I am Amira, the breadwinner for my family after my father's death. We were forced to flee to the southern part of Gaza after the war intensified. Our home, my university, and my workplace were bombed😢.

We are now in desperate need to escape this danger and continue my dream and educational and professional journey💔. I kindly ask you to donate or share the campaign link. Your support can save our lives and give us a chance to live in peace🍉.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart🙏.

I am so sorry this took me so long, Amira. I wanted to ensure that I could properly amplify your voice the best I could to anyone who sees my blog.

For those who are unaware:

Palestine is going through a genocide by the apartheid state of Israel, a false state created by zionist infiltrators who stole the Palestinian land from those who sheltered and protected them. They have locked the people of Palestine from their homes, trapped them in small corners, forced horrors upon them, starved them, raped them, tortured them, and murdered them. And they had done so all while reveling in their pain. They have stolen their lands, their culture and their right to life, and they have done so with the help of propaganda aimed at religion, race, and false narratives.

Much like Amira, The people of Palestine have been driven from their homes, witnessed the brutal deaths of their families and friends, and have been forced to flee from their ancestral homes. They are being exploited by those who can promise safety across their borders by being forced to pay enormous prices, just for a glimpse at life.

I encourage all who see this to donate if possible, share the donation links, educate yourselves on what is happening, and keep your eyes on Palestine.

Amira, I hope your father rests in the highest place in Jannah.

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!

[LINKS]

[ amira's gofundme ] https://www.gofundme.com/f/amiras-story-between-hope-and-resilience-a-call-for-soli

[ to donate to a randomized Palestinian gofundme ] gazafunds.com

[ a compiled list of gofundme's ]

[ Palestinian support resources ] https://linktr.ee/palestineasdiqa

[taxfraudhousewife]

might i rest in your hands a while and soak up all your light

might i drink the sweat from your palms and the blood from your hangnails

only for a moment

might i hear you scold me for giving up

might your words be fierce with fire and put fire back in me

if i read and learned and hoped and prayed

would i even find you

some internet people are saying the whole israel thing is driving the masses to revert

seemingly normal internet people talking about how they read the quran

it makes me think the price will be high

equal if not more

i know there’s not a finite number of muslims that can exist at the same time

still isn’t there

what if in a hundred years the masses revert

in exchange for forty thousand palestinians

what if it has to be more to buy the masses

what if there really is an order to things

no i am not converting to replace your weight in the islamic equilibrium

thought about it considered it realized i’m being fucking crazy

if you were here if i converted you’d be pissed off at me

say you’re not muslim jesus and you don’t hear my prayers

still the thought of buying future muslims with current muslims is terrifying and fills me with dread

that an order exists and it’s cruel and inconsistent

i hope it means nothing

it does mean nothing unless you can buy current lives with future ones

maybe they mean your god will reward someone (???) for enduring (???) genocidal carnage

by making more random muslims (???)

that’s a can of worms

one that leaves me incredibly grateful i’ve only learned how to worship men

at least plain ol men can’t be blamed for allowing (????) ethnic cleansings to happen on their property

at least on that big a scale

i’ve been kind of a muslim weeb lately

it’s a joke but now it’s getting weird

you’d think its weird

like i keep saying inshallah in russian sentences

and every time i think how if you could hear me you’d roll your fuckin eyes

and call me stupid

i don’t know why i’m obsessed

you muslims are curb stomping my heart

i broke up with the iraqi girl

i think your god made us to torture each other

it was november and i wanted to ask you what to do

half of my decision was prompted by israel

i think the other half was just what happens when you’re far away

only i could watch a genocide and feel sorry for myself

when the bombs fell the shrapnel tore open a scab on my lip

i couldn’t stop the bleeding (never could)

all i could taste was burning skin and wet steel

unwelcome alcohol and terrible adults

i longed for the comfort of you

and sought it in her

you fuckin muslims know how to chew up a fuckin heart

you muslims you men you humans

starting to think IM the problem

you men and girls and dead will turn me inside out and tear me to shreds

it’s down my throat back in my chest where it belongs except it’s different this time

it just hurts without the righteous angry enthusiasm

it’s just going crazy in my room at night

i’m so angry

but in the bad way like the way i’m not supposed to be

in the way that the angry boy who won’t answer the phone is always simmering

did you used to be that too

what did you do how did you stop being a boy how did you man the fuck up

cause i can’t

i miss you dog

i’m trying so hard to be like you

you’re everything i could ever dream of being

you’re so fuckin cool

i can’t replace you in the islamic equilibrium

no one can i know it doesn’t have to be me

i wished it hard

but still if i can’t be like you then what the fuck is anything

deadass i think a lot of happy hopeful thoughts when i think about you

i think you’d like that

got me dreaming about glorious revolution and shit

and garlic nang and you in your truck in the wild west

my toga is so fuckin cool

i sing it to myself

to mushu i tell him your toga asaan was a smart ass guy

he was a socialist and he read books and shit

would it be crazy if i named my first born after you

would i be setting them up for failure with a name like that

it’s crazy and stupid and not a name for me to give

i know

still i relish the idea of people asking why my heir has such a strange name

and telling them he’s named after an esteemed and accomplished anti imperialist activist

cause i can’t say you were good cause that’s basic and i would cry

i’m not man enough to replace that goodness

you can’t replace a guy who saved actual lives and also drank too much nyquil

if you were here i’d bully you for it forever

i’d never shut the fuck up i still never shut the fuck up about it

just incase you can hear me bullying you

you fuckin harami ass i see you now

i hope to giggle with you over our addictions one day

i hope to try hashish with you i hope to watch you hit a fifty nic disposable for the first time

to drink too much with you and ask you what you think of nine eleven

i don’t need to ask everything but at least that

and maybe a summary of what you were really getting into

[rossdphotography]

Due to the terrbily sad and horrendous war in Gaza and Palestine, I have started a humanitarian project called 'The Forgotten'. 

Much of the world does not know the backstory of this conflict or does not care. My project aims to increase awareness and hopefully through the international community and public pressure, governments will take action to stop this genocide. 

Palestinians suffer terribly just to live a normal life, and now with a child dying every 10 minutes, the "The Forgotten' project aims to remind the world that the Palestinians are humans just like the rest of us with hopes, dreams and families. 

I could not simply sit by and do nothing, so with my camera as a tool I aim to shed light on the often forgotten issue that in so many ways affects us all. 

All participants in the project come from Palestine - Gaza, Palestine - West Bank, or a war or genocidal background. This project will be a published book and exhibitions, hopefully large news outlets and other means.  

I am currently looking for any interested parties, investors and those willing to be involved in the project in anyway. 

I hope to hear from you as soon as possible. #Gaza, #war, #be-informed,#help, #humanity, #Palestine