#Palestinian culture and language and ... in general. it's

[anophelei]

The people unashamedly trying to take advantage of the thousands of innocent Palestinian people murdered in Israeli war crimes, twisting the knife in the back of Palestine for an opportunity to remind you that you still have to vote for Joe Biden, undoubtedly counting among the people with the most blood on their hands, have already made it clear they do not care about anyone but themselves, and have gone out of their way to prove it.

Somehow they've managed to sink even lower, and are genuinely, in all earnesty, justifying their continued support for Biden in the wake of him pledging his unconditional support of genocide, with the exact same fucking line they used almost 3 fucking years ago to pressure people into voting him into power in the first place. It was already obvious they had no intention of "Pushing Biden to the Left", that they didn't give a single shit about any of the people they were so ardently claiming to be protecting from Trump, and that they would go to the ends of the earth to justify anything and everything he could possibly do.

And now that he's chomping at the bit about aiding and abetting Israel in raining down hell and phosphorous and napalm on innocent people, now that thousands of people have lost their loved ones to such irreverent cruelty, they've decided it's time for an important reminder; Genocide doesn't change anything, and not only do you have to get out and vote for someone complicit in every single atrocity, every single casualty, you have to do it for the same pathetic excuse we made last time, "because we can push Biden to the "left"", even though there hasn't been a single shred of progress, or even any attempt to do so in the three years since we said this last time. You could say that participation in actual, ongoing genocide, is a catastrophic failure in that metric; that we might as well have been pulling this whole fucking time; and right this very moment is the most unbelievably selfish, entitled, petulant and self interested, and abhorrent, manipulative, cruel, spiteful, bitter and fucking disgusting time anyone could have possibly chosen to say this, when people are entirely cut off from their loved ones with no way to know if they are okay, it's important to remember that you're the bad person here due to your belief that supporting genocide in any capacity is an unforgivable crime. The real crime is NOT voting in support of genocide, when the other option is Literal Fascists !!

I'm not even fucking joking, this entire thing started because this piece of shit thought a Palestinian calling people out for supporting Biden was akin to "thinking the entirety of one side is bad", which due to a complex reasoning and nuanced understanding of "this conflict", he was able to realise that was far too simplistic, and now enlightened, knew that attacking enemy toddlers was wrong. So too did he share his nuanced and complex understanding with OP, since they were understanding things too simplistically. "American politics is not that simple either"

Just like killing babies is wrong even if they're on the enemy team, American politics is not as simple as you thinking I am disgusting and selfish for supporting genocide. #nuance

#genocide #Gaza #Palestine #joe biden #free palestine #biden thinks people will cool down come electon. biden supporters think people are stupid enough that they're just going to forget what #“we can push him to the left AFTER the election is over” looked like #it looks like genocide. it sounds like bombs you can hear from 80km away. it smells like pulverised concrete and blood. #it tastes like it smells made worse by parched throats and thirst. #i cannot even begin to imagine what it must feel like. #if you for some reason read the whole mess and are sus about the “biden may not be a fascist” etc it's half just saying that and half for #ambiguity being useful rhetorically. of course they were too oblivious to anything I'd said that they didn't even realise i hadnt said it #idk what i would categorise biden as though. the müller comparison is apt to some extent at least. #also please let me know if any of the phrasing is inappropriate ? I don't really know to what capacity “martyred” n “martyrs” are used #and idk how to use them appropriately therefore didn't use them. the same goes for anything else and i apologise for my ignorance of #Palestinian culture and language and ... in general. it's #unfortunate but I only know the occupation - the Resistance - and their histories - as things I know well. I will do my best to fix that #but for now if I may ask for your help with letting me know. Feel like a yt person for having to ask lol. #from the river to the sea palestine will be free

[hussyknee]

People seem to think this is fake because it's written in English. Apart from the racism in believing that Arab doctors and nurses aren't fluent in English (a second or official language for half of Asia), Palestinians have deliberately been addressing their audience in English on every social media, from journalists to children, because they know speaking English to Westerners immediately makes people more human in their eyes. Because language is one of the ways the imperial cultural hegemony conditions us (yes, everyone in the world) to see who qualifies as "people" and who are simply a mass of bodies who were always made to suffer and die. Gazans know this deeply, which is why they have been using English to beg and plead through social media, "We're not numbers! We're not numbers! We're people like you, we speak your language, we deserve to live!" all the while they're systematically slaughtered.

Israeli forces also encircled Al Shifa Hospital yesterday and bombed it for several hours while shooting dead anyone trying to flee including medical staff moving between buildings. Not sure whether it's still continuing because WHO lost all communications with its staff there a few hours after. The last new report said that thirty-nine babies had been removed from the incubators before the power went out. It's extremely unlikely they will survive.

Please understand that these atrocities depend on the war of attrition between governments and public attention. The momentum of public outcry is difficult to sustain through repeated stonewalling and bureaucratic intractability. When we're flooded with these reports and a sense of futility and despair replaces the anger, it allows compassion fatigue to set in and the violence to become normalized. Massacring hospitals, killing sick children and openly targeting humanitarian aid workers (Netanyahu just declared the UNRWA is in league with Hamas) will become simply more news articles that fade into the background, and open genocides will soon become part of the "lesser evil".

Take care of yourselves how you can, take distance where needed, but please never tune out and give up on the two million people for whom we are the only witness and hope. Never stop boosting and sharing the news and posts you find, never stop getting out there and joining every protest you can, however small. Anger burns out, which is why activism must depend on an immovable sense of justice and uncompromising value for human life. It's not just about Gaza, it's about the kind of evil our generation will be coerced into accepting as unchangeable and inevitable hereafter.

#but also like it's a lot about us and especially you in the West #every bomb dropped on Gaza brings us closer to the brink of‚ if not a world war‚ an eruption of regional conflict #with devastating economic and environmental effects across the world #I'm tired of repeating this and my followers are prob tired of seeing it #but someone has to #war of attrition like I said #free Palestine #tw child murder #tw child death #tw baby killing #tw ableism #disability justice #war crimes #gaza genocide #save gaza #gaza under attack #palestinian genocide #israel is a terrorist state #knee of huss

[fiercynn]

poetry outlets that support a free palestine

after finding out that the poetry foundation/POETRY magazine pulled a piece that discussed anti-zionism because they "don't want to pick a side" during the current genocide, i decided to put together a list of online outlets who are explicitly in solidarity with palestine where you can read (english-language) poetry, including, except where otherwise stated, by palestinian poets!

my criteria for this is not simply that they have published palestinian poets or pro-palestine statements in the past; i only chose outlets that, since october 7, 2023, have done one of the following:

published a solidarity statement against israeli occupation & genocide

signed onto the open letter for writers against the war on gaza and/or the open letter boycotting the poetry foundation

published content that is explicitly pro-palestine or anti-zionist, including poetry that explicitly deals with israeli occupation & genocide

shared posts that are pro-palestine on their social media accounts

fyi this is undoubtedly a very small sample. also some of these sites primarily feature nonfiction or short stories, but they do all publish poetry.

outlets that focus entirely on palestinian or SWANA (southwest asia and north africa) literature

we are not numbers, a palestinian youth-led project to write about palestinian lives

arab lit, a magazine for arabic literature in translation that is run by a crowd-funded collective

sumuo, an arab magazine, platform, and community (they appear to have a forthcoming palestine special print issue edited by leena aboutaleb and zaina alsous)

mizna, a platform for contemporary SWANA (southwest asian & north africa) lit, film, and art

the markaz review, a literary arts publication and cultural institution that curates content and programs on the greater middle east and communities in diaspora

online magazines who have published special issues of all palestinian writers (and all of them publish palestinian poets in their regular issues too)

fiyah literary magazine in december 2021, edited by nadia shammas and summer farah (if you have $6 usd to spare, proceeds from the e-book go to medical aid for palestinians)

strange horizons in march 2021, edited by rasha abdulhadi

the baffler in june 2021, curated by poet/translators fady joudah & lena khalaf tuffaha

the markaz review has two palestine-specific issues, on gaza and on palestinians in israel, currently free to download

literary hub featured palestinian poets in 2018 for the anniversary of the 1948 nakba

adi magazine, who have shifted their current (october 2023) issue to be all palestinian writers

outlets that generally seem to be pro-palestine/publish pro-palestine pieces and palestinian poetry

protean magazine (here's their solidarity statement)

poetry online (offering no-fee submissions to palestinian writers)

sundog lit (offering no-fee submissions to palestinian writers through december 1, 2023)

guernica magazine (here's a twitter thread of palestinian poetry they've published) guernica ended up publishing a zionist piece so fuck them too

split this rock (here's their solidarity statement)

the margins by the asian-american writers' workshop

the offing magazine

rusted radishes

voicemail poems

jewish currents

the drift magazine

asymptote

the poetry project

ctrl + v journal

the funambulist magazine

n+1 magazine (signed onto the open letter and they have many pro-palestine articles, but i'm not sure if they have published palestinian poets specifically)

hammer & hope (signed onto the letter but they are a new magazine only on their second issue and don't appear to have published any palestinian poets yet)

if you know others, please add them on!

#poetry #free palestine #fuck you poetry foundation #palestinian poets series

[gael-garcia]

PALESTINE FILM INDEX

Palestine Film Index is a growing list of films from and about Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation, made by Palestinians and those in solidarity with them. The index starts with films from the revolutionary period (68 - 82) made by the militant filmmakers of the Palestine Film Unit and their allies, and extends through a multitude of voices to the present day. It is by no means a complete or exhaustive representation of the vast universe that is Palestinian cinema, but is only a small fragmentary list that we hope nontheless can be used as an instrument of study & solidarity. As tools of knowledge against zionist propaganda and towards Palestinian liberation.

The century long war against Palestinians by the zionist project is one waged not only militarily but also culturally. The act of filmmaking, preservation, and distribution becomes an act against this attempted cultural erasure of ethnic cleansing. The power inherent in this form as a weapon against the genocidal project of zionism is evidenced in the ways it has been historically & currently targeted by the occupation forces: from the looting & stealing of the Palestine Cinema Institute archives during the siege of Beirut in 1982, through the long history of targeted assassinations of Palestinian filmmakers, journalists, artists, & writers (from PFU founder Hani Jawharieh, to Ghassan Kanafani, Shireen Abu Akleh, Refaat Alareer, and the over 100 journalists killed in the currently ongoing war on Gaza).

It is in this spirit of the use of film and culture as a way of focusing & transmitting information & knowledge that we hope this list can be used as one in an assortment of educational tools against hasbara (a coordinated and intricate system of zionist propaganda, media manipulation, & social engineering, etc) and all forms of propaganda that is weaponized against the Palestinian people. Zionist media & its collaborators remain one of the most effective fronts of the war, used to manufacture consent through deeply ingrained psychological manipulation of the general public agency. Critical and autonomous thought must be used as a tool of dismantling these frameworks. In this realm, film can play a vital roll in your toolkit/arsenal. Film must be understood as one front of the greater resistance. We hope in some small way we can help to distribute these manifestations of Palestinian life and the struggle towards liberation.

This list began as small aggregation to share among friends and comrades in 2021 and has since expanded to the current and growing form (it is added to almost every day). We have links for through which each film can be viewed along with descriptions, details such as run time, year, language, etc. We also have a supplemental list of related materials (texts, audio, supplemental video) that is small but growing. We have added information on contacts for distributors and filmmakers of each film in order to help people or groups who are interested in using this list to organize public screenings of these films. The makers of this list do not control the rights to these films and we strongly urge those interested in screening the works to get in touch with the filmmaker or distributors before doing so. This list was made with best intentions in mind, and in most cases with permission of filmmaker or through a publically available link, but if any film has mistakenly been added without the permission of a filmmaker involved and you would like us to remove it, or conversely if you are a filmmaker not included who would like your film to be added, or for any other thoughts, suggestions, additions, subtractions, complaints or concerns, please contact us at [email protected]. No one involved in this list is doing it as a part of any organization, foundation or non-profit and we are not being paid to do this, it is merely a labor of love and solidarity. From the river to the sea, Palestine

#this is incredible #palestinian cinema #palestine film index #link on title!! #world cinema #film #dailyworldcinema #albertserra

[opencommunion]

"There is an inherit bias towards 'Israel' that sustains the continual colonization of Palestine. Christian theologians, in few cases consciously but in most cases subconsciously, keep using a 'biblical' language and producing 'theological' concepts whose 'Sitz im Leben' is blunt colonialism. They might do this 'innocently' because their minds are occupied with the Bible on the one hand and with a Western cultural narrative on the other.

For Palestinians, including the Palestinian Christian community, Palestine is a real land with real people; it is our homeland. For Christians in the West, Palestine is an imagined land, a land that they know mainly from the Bible. It has little if anything to do with the real Palestine. When Christian pilgrims visit Palestine, they want to reinvent the Holy Land of the Bible. They are excited about how the Bible comes alive in Palestine. Nineteenth-century archaeologists, while digging in Palestine, were looking for the Bible. This is true also for theologians. When Christian theologians write about Palestine, their minds are occupied with the Bible and a Western dominant narrative. They write about the Land as if it exists in a vacuum; they strip it from its socio-political context, from its real people, and they rarely think about how such a theology has been and is being used to enhance settler colonialism. These occupied minds reinforce the continuing occupation of Palestine. Here, I’m not talking about evangelical theologians or Christian Zionists alone, but I’m concerned about those who are well-regarded, mainline, and accomplished theologians of many denominations. In the last seventy years, many theological concepts were developed and occupied the minds of several generations of theologians worldwide. Many of these concepts might have been well intended at some point, but they mean something totally different in the current context of occupied Palestine. Theologians in their naiveté are still using a language and concepts that support current Israeli settler colonialism. ... It is incomprehensible to me when the occupation of Palestinian land is not seen as part of modern European colonial history, but as part of biblical and thus salvation history. It is very disturbing when theologians ignore the ways in which biblical ideology is used as a political claim with major colonial consequences. ... Christian theologians have been playing, consciously or subconsciously, a major role in aiding the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land and people. The land theology was one of the theological tools used for Palestinian dispossession and oppression. Christian theologians failed to see that the promised land is but the confiscated land."

Mitri Raheb, "The Occupation of Theological Minds: The End of Innocence," in Resisting Occupation: A Global Struggle for Liberation (2022)

The main terms Raheb critiques in this essay are "the Temple Mount" and "the Promised Land" (or simply "the Land"). He also touches on the conflation of the biblical Israel and theological concepts of Israel with the state of Israel, the ethnonationalist notion of "God's chosen people," and the narrative that Joshua's conquest of Canaan was divinely ordained and salvatory. He identifies in these concepts an overarching "theology of conquest" that also informs other European settler colonial projects.

#palestine #zionism #colonialism #theology

[palipunk]

Hey there sorry to bother, but I’m very interested in traditional Palestinian tattoos but I can’t find any good sources or information on them. Do you have any recommendations? Thanks so much in advance ! I’m Palestinian, but was raised so distantly from our culture I’m hungry for more if you know what I mean ♥️🇵🇸

Not a bother!

I will be honest, there really aren't many resources online that go into detail about them. A lot of information about them just hasn't been recorded and they've faded away, as older generations of Palestinians die, their tattoos and their meanings have gone with them. A lot of the Palestinians still wearing these tattoos are older Bedouin women.

I uploaded this post a few years ago with some illustrations and I answered an ask about it with some links and discussed traditional tattooing practices in West Asia between Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, and Yazidis (there are some overlapping symbols and meanings with the tattooing throughout the region). Tattooing in Palestine is hard to document because we've been forcefully exiled all over the world. A lot of Palestinian traditions, including tattooing, were uprooted with the destruction of Palestinian society during the Nakba. There are a few different terms for it, depending on what language or what dialect of Arabic you speak, but dag/deq/dakk/daqyit are all ones I've seen used.

I also have to say that many of the meanings within the tattoos were discussed either only between the tattooer and the client or were based on one's own community or tribe. Just for example: Some tattoos or combinations of markings can distinguish a person's tribe (this is something more common for tattooed Bedouin women) or village or it could be for health, protective, religious, or cosmetic reasons. My Great-Grandmother had them for cosmetic reasons, it was just something they did in her village according to my father - sometimes tattooing is regarded to be like jewelry.

The tattooing itself would be done with a needle and the ink would be made of ink or smoke residue (sometimes breastmilk was included) and then punctured into the skin. The few articles or books I've seen it referenced in have made note that the tattooers were usually Domari artisans.

He's in the second link but I will always highlight @siinlayth 's work on cataloging tattoos in West Asia, he's a bedouin artist and has spent lots of time putting this carrd together if you'd like to browse: https://southwestasiantattoos.carrd.co/#gallery

I'll just include some more images here:

{I haven't posted about traditional tattooing in a while (none of this is directed at you butchorc) but the last time I uploaded stuff about tattooing in Palestine on my blog, I had people (who were not Palestinian in the slightest) reblogging it with tags saying it was for DND inspiration and putting information about our tattooing practices on their DND blogs for "character reference" - do not do this. Please treat our customs respectfully, this is a dying practice that we are trying to preserve- I will block anyone I see doing this.}

I hope this was at least a good starting point! I hope things go well for you and you can learn more about your culture, best wishes!

#ask #palestine #butchorc

[jewishvitya]

hei. i enjoy your blogs, i hope you could clear something up for me., i just saw someone claim to be "zionist as in i believe jewish people have the right to self determination in their indigenous homeland",, ive actually seen the claim that jewish ppl are indigenous to israel and are somehow denied that identity as a form of anti semitism and erasure of jewish experience multiple times.. and it always confused me so much cuz like israel was set up as this nationalist project in 1948, before the region was a mess mostly under the rule of the ottomans, but the palestinian culture and ppl were always there. how can someone be indigenous to a region if they werent there before? is there any truth to the claim or is it just co-opting leftist language again?

its so evil how the state of israel could jist completely legitimize itself by co-opting jewish culture and pretending like being in support of it is a fundamental part of jewishness :(

Thank you!! I'm glad you do.

I can try, but I'm not sure how good I'll be at explaining this. Maybe someone else can add to this. If I repeat things I said before, I apologize.

That is a definition of zionism used by many zionists who lean politically to the left. I don't subscribe to these softer definitions of zionism because saying it's just "the right to Jewish self determination in our ancestral homeland" ignores that in practice over the last century the next words are "to the exclusion of others." I define zionism through its practical outcome - which is what we did to Palestinians.

Jewish people originate here. Our religious laws and practices (many of which are regularly disregarded by Israel and by settlers when they do things like destroying olive trees and water sources) are tied to this specific land. There are holidays and religious rituals that are either fundamentally changed or can't be practiced at all if we're anywhere else in the world. Culturally most branches of Judaism maintained this connection throughout our history. And we didn't leave willingly. An empire expelled us from the place that was our land. When the point of indigeniety comes up, this is why. You'll see arguments like - when does indigeniety expire? How many generations until you no longer have a claim to the ancestral homeland you were driven away from?

So this is the cultural context for Judaism. This is something that I also can't really ignore. I can't pretend I don't care about this land and the connection we always had to it.

That said, I still see this as using leftist terminology inappropriately.

To talk about Israel, a lot of us talk about colonialism, and specifically settler colonialism. I lived in the West Bank settlements so to me this really resonates. The argument I get at that point is that an indigenous group can't colonize their own land.

And this is why I'm saying it's a misuse of terminology. We're using that label to absolve ourselves. As if the word "indigenous" is a stamp of approval we get to apply to our actions while we repeat the violence of colonizing forces in history.

Ethnic cleansing, occupation, building settlements - and now also genocide. The tools we use resonate with indigenous people all over the world, because they suffered through similar kinds of oppression. Always with differences and different contexts, these things are never 1:1, but there's a reason indigenous groups around the world are in solidarity with Palestinians. I shared about a video from a Korean person talking about how colonialism by Japan broke the thread of their history - old buildings that had to be rebuilt instead of being preserved, historical cultural practices and art forms being lost or changed due to the loss of artisans. These are things Israel is doing now.

So to me, this is using the word "landback" and "liberation" for a violent takeover of land from an indigenous group. You mentioned the Ottomans - Palestine has been conquered over and over throughout history. Those regimes, sure, fighting them off can be liberatory, if the intent isn't to become the conquerors in their place. But there's nothing to liberate from Palestinians, because they're not colonizing anything. They belong in this land.

I'm really angry that so many of us try to deny the Palestinians their own connection. They have roots here, a long and rich history shaped by life in the land. While we destroy so much and say our claim is so strong we get to kill or drive them away for it.

#riki babbles

[probablyasocialecologist]

Palestinians have historically cultivated the land, not just with olive trees, but also with figs, apricots, oranges, and dates. Yet, Zionist propaganda, though a concentrated effort to steal Palestinian land, has insisted on “making the desert bloom.” The desert has already been blooming and supporting its Indigenous population, as it has for thousands of years. Since the early twentieth century, Zionists have nevertheless co-opted the language of environmentalism and sustainability as a means of forcing the native Arab population off of the lands they covet. The Jewish National Fund (JNF), a self-described Zionist organization, has an explicit mission: to acquire land throughout Palestinian territories and plant trees—with “proud Jewish identity.” The JNF claims to have planted 240 million trees over 227,000 acres. This tree-planting crusade is detrimental to the land. Pine trees that constitute the colonist’s imaginary of a forest in Europe replace the native plant species and change the soil’s chemistry, such that agricultural crops cannot thrive. This further displaces Palestinians, as well as the nomadic Bedouin peoples, who rely on the land for grazing their cattle. Settlers want to extract from the “blooming desert.” In contrast, the Indigenous approach to land is one of mutual respect and nourishment: the land sustains life and culture, a culture that settler-colonialism wants to erase. To achieve this end, the Zionist occupation has used a variety of tactics to disrupt the Palestinian economy, including controlling water resources so that groves cannot be irrigated as needed, which is especially important now given the effects of the climate crisis. Additionally, the Zionists instituted a permit system that has prevented olive farmers from accessing their trees for all but a handful of days per year. This has made it difficult, if not impossible, to do necessary maintenance like pruning and weeding, greatly impacting the quality of the harvest. Most egregiously, the Zionists erected walls separating farmers from their groves, slicing up plots of land that have been in the same family for generations. Such measures have forced olive farmers to rely on olives of subpar quality. Because of the limited days that farmers are given to access their trees, they might be forced to pick the olives before peak ripeness, affecting the quality of the olive oil produced and therefore the prices that the oil will fetch. A 1994 New York Times article summarized the struggle succinctly: “The Palestinians planted tiny olive trees; the Israeli soldiers dug them up. The Palestinians lay down in the road to block a bulldozer; the Israelis carted them off to police vans.”

#israel #palestine #zionism #olive trees #greenwashing

[argyrocratie]

"In “Memory Voids and Role Reversals,” Palestinian political science professor Dana El Kurd writes of her jarring experience, hearing of the October 7th massacres by Hamas while visiting the Holocaust Tower at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. She notes the historic irony of Holocaust survivors seeking security from future oppression by expelling another people from their homeland by the hundreds of thousands, ghettoizing them in enclaves enforced by military checkpoints, and controlling them with collective punishment.

The irony of a state formed as the “antithesis” to the ghetto using ghettoization as a strategy of control is not lost on Palestinians. This infrastructure of coercion went hand in hand, of course, with ever-present physical violence — imprisonment, home demolitions, air strikes and more.

She quotes Aristide Zolberg’s observation that “formation of a new state can be a ‘refugee-generating process.’”

This is not only true of Palestinians. The Westphalian nation-state, which has been the normative component of the international system since the Treaty of Westphalia, necessarily entails (especially since the post-1789 identification of nationalism with the nation-state) the suppression of ethnic identity to a far greater extent than the expression of any such identity. Every constructed national identity associated with a “State of the X People” has necessarily involved the suppression and homogenization of countless ethnicities present in the territory claimed by that state. At the time of the French Revolution, barely half the “French” population spoke any of the many langue d’oil dialects of northern France, let alone the dialect of the Ile de France (the basis for the official “French” language). The rest spoke Occitan dialects like Provençal, or non-Romance languages like Breton (whose closest living relative is Welsh). The same is true of Catalan, Aragonese, Basque, and Galician in Spain, the low-German languages and now-extinct Wendish in Germany, the non-Javanese ethnicities of Indonesia, and so on. Heads of state issue sonorous pronouncements concerning the “Nigerian People” or “Zimbabwean People,” in reference to multi-ethnic populations whose entire “identity” centers on lines drawn on a map at the Berlin Conference.

When I say official national languages were established through the suppression of their rivals, I mean things like the residential schools of the United States and Canada punishing Native children for using their own languages. Or schools around the world shaming students with signs reading “I Spoke Welsh (or Breton, or Provencal, or Catalan, or Basque, or Ainu, or an African vernacular instead of the English, French, etc., lingua franca). And so on.

And when we consider the range of artificial national identities that were constructed by suppressing other real ethnicities, we can’t forget the “Jewish People” of Israel. Its construction occurred part and parcel with the suppression of diasporic Jewish ethnic identities all over Europe and the Middle East. The “New Jewish” identity constructed by modern Zionism was associated with the artificial revival of Hebrew, which had been almost entirely a liturgical language for 2300 years, as an official national language. And this, in turn, was associated with the suppression — both official and unofficial — of the actually existing Jewish ethnicities associated with the Yiddish, Ladino, and Arabic languages.

The centuries-old languages and cultures of actual Jewish ethnicities throughout Europe were treated as shameful relics of the past, to be submerged and amalgamated into a new artificially constructed Jewish identity centered on the Hebrew language. 

Yiddish, the language spoken by the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe — derived from an archaic German dialect and written in the Hebrew alphabet — was stigmatized by Zionist leaders in Palestine and by the early Israeli government. According to Max Weinreich’s History of the Yiddish Language, the “very making of Hebrew into a spoken language derives from the will to separate from the Diaspora.” Diasporic Jewish identities, as viewed by Zionist settlers, were “a cultural morass to be purged.” The “New Jew” was an idealized superhuman construct, almost completely divorced from centuries worth of culture and traditions of actual Jews: “Yiddish began to represent diaspora and feebleness, said linguist Ghil’ad Zuckermann. ‘And Zionists wanted to be Dionysian: wild, strong, muscular and independent.’” 

This “contempt for the Diaspora” was “manifested . . .  in the fierce campaign against Yiddish in Palestine, which led not only to the banning of Yiddish newspapers and theaters but even to physical attacks against Yiddish speakers.” From the 1920s on, anyone in Palestine with the temerity to publish in Yiddish risked having their printing press destroyed by organizations with names like the “Battalion of the Defenders of the Hebrew Language,” “Organization for the Enforcement of Hebrew,” and “Central Council for the Enforcement of Hebrew.” The showing of the Yiddish-language film Mayn Yidishe Mame (“My Yiddish Mama”), in Tel Aviv in 1930, provoked a riot led by the above-mentioned Battalion. After the foundation of Israel, “every immigrant was required to study Hebrew and often to adopt a Hebrew surname.” In its early days Israel legally prohibited plays and periodicals in the Yiddish language. A recent defender of the early suppression of Yiddish, in the Jerusalem Post, argued that Diasporic languages threatened to “undermine the Zionist project”; in other words, an admission that actually existing ethnic identities threatened an identity manufactured by a nationalist ideology.

If this is true of Yiddish — the native language of the Ashkenazi Jews who dominated the Zionist settlement of Palestine — it’s even more so of the suppression of Jewish ethnic identities outside the dominant Sephardic minority. Golda Meir once dismissed Jews of non-Ashkenazi or non-Yiddish descent as “not Jews.” 

Consider the roughly half of the Israeli population comprised of Mizrahi Jews from Middle Eastern communities (including those living in Palestine itself before European settlement). Although the Mizrahim are trotted out as worthy victims when they are convenient for purposes of Israeli propaganda — the majority of them were expelled from Arab countries like Iraq after 1948, in what was an undeniable atrocity — they are treated the rest of the time as an embarrassment or a joke, and have been heavily discriminated against, by the descendants of Ashkenazi settlers. For example former Prime Minister David Ben Gurion described Mizrahim 

as lacking even “the most elementary knowledge” and “without a trace of Jewish or human education.” Ben Gurion repeatedly expressed contempt for the culture of the Oriental Jews: “We do not want Israelis to become Arabs. We are in duty bound to fight against the spirit of the Levant, which corrupts individuals and societies, and preserve the authentic Jewish values as they crystallized in the Diaspora.”

Current Prime Minister Netanyahu once joked about a “Mizrahi gene” as his excuse for tardiness. And an Israeli realtor ran a commercial appealing to “there goes the neighborhood” sentiments by depicting a light-skinned family having their Passover celebration disrupted by uncouth Mizrahi neighbors.

Nationalism and the nation-state are the enemies of true ethnicity and culture, and built on their graves. There’s no better illustration of this principle than the Zionist project itself."

-Kevin Carson, "Zionism and the Nation-State: Palestinians Are Not the Only Victims"

#kevin carson #zionism #nation state #yiddish

[stil-lindigo]

Did you see? Movement and marches on the streets to create caliphates in Germany and France? To recreate Kristallnacht? I told you democracies are losing!!! They already lost the information war because they will be crushed by 2 billions Muslims wanting to erase Israel and turn EU into a Caliphate! They already won demographically.

anon, I say this with as much sincerity and empathy I can possibly muster - please, question the sources where you get your news. Or perhaps, if you feel comfortable, send me a couple of your sources and we can talk about them! I just think it’s important to remember that even though horrible antisemites ARE exploiting this wave of Palestinian support to manufacture consent for their bigotry, the vast majority of people marching for Palestine do not hate Jews. When people march against Israel, we do not oppose them for their faith but because they are carrying out senseless and horrific genocide completely unopposed. The fact that so many Jews, Israeli and non-Israeli, some who are even Holocaust survivors, walk with us speaks volumes.

I’m worried that, from your language, you’ve already bought into the islamophobic angle that targets all Muslims and casts them in only one role - terrorists - and I’d like to remind you that this kind of homogenous thinking, where people take people and their faith and turn it into a monolith, is exactly the kind of rhetoric that hurts you as well. Muslims are not all violent terrorists who hate Jews just like not all Jews are fascists who want to ethnically cleanse an entire population. Palestinians are just people. They want to be doctors, lawyers, photographers, artists. They want to have families, romantic relationships, they want to travel to see the world, they want to watch anime and kpop and other silly things. They just want to live their lives. Gaza has one of the worst life expectancies in the world because of Israeli occupation - over 50% of their population is just children. And that was before the genocide started.

I know that there’s fear, so much generational trauma and fear of another Holocaust happening. But the truth is Israel is funded and backed by the most powerful colonialist countries out there. The mainstream news outlets benefit from the narrative that Palestinians are all terrorists because it creates a convenient smokescreen to say that all pro-Palestinian sentiment comes from antisemitism but the truth is faith is completely irrelevant for most people. It’s not about the faith, it’s about the actions the IDF have taken and the culture of dehumanisation that Palestinians suffer under. And if you’re committed to believing that narrative no matter what, I won’t be able to change that. But I’m begging you to look online and see these pleas for a ceasefire and find it in yourself to see the humanity in the thousands of Palestinians dead, the children who held a press conference to ask for mercy, the doctors who stayed in a hospital while it was being bombed in the hopes they could save even one more life, the journalists who give their children their bulletproof vests to try on just to see a smile, anything.

#that’s all. #israel #palestine #free palestine

[swolesome]

What if I told you that the antidote to Islamophobia isn't Antisemitism?

CW for this post (you have seen the title.) I feel like this shouldn't need explaining, but merciful Brigid, some of the shit I have seen. It's time for Led Tasso to come out. I'm not Jewish, let's just get that out of the way first, but my position on Palestine is largely informed by Jewish people who have been protesting for decades about the horrific treatment of Palestinians being done by a settler colonial state appropriating their religion, culture, language, and trauma. Fascist governments weaponizing fear and hiding behind religion is a well known tactic, and the fact that so many people have put this readily available information from their minds, specifically in this conversation, speaks to how incredibly pernicious antisemitism really is. I'm treading lightly here because as someone who's not Jewish, it really isn't my place to explain the cultural complexities, trauma, or general experiences of Jewish people. But if you haven't seen those discussions crossing your feed, you should be looking inward and asking why. Because if you're not invested in Jewish voices right now (or in general), that's a red flag for the kind of rhetoric you've internalized and the struggles you take seriously. The position I can speak from, however, is one of being committed to challenging all forms of systemic violence and oppression. So from that stance, and I cannot stress this enough: If you are fighting for some at cost to others, you are reinforcing oppression. It is wild to me that "Nazi" has come to mean "The worst thing a person can be" without recognition of the fact that the ideology is inherently antisemitic, that this is its centrepiece, that Jews are the number one target. This separation is, once again, an example of how insidious this brand of hatred really is--blatant erasure of the way Jewish people are uniquely targeted. I know a lot of trans people follow me, so here's a fun fact: You know the "Doctors are transing our kids to damage fertility rates!" conspiracy? You can thank antisemitism for that, too! It's literally just a rebrand of the Great Replacement conspiracy, which is modernized "protection of Aryan bloodlines." The most recent chapter of "My Life as A Bigot" by Joanne Klan Rowling isn't just another gleeful display of her hatred of trans people, it's another addition to the laundry list of antisemitic beliefs and talking points she's been peddling for years. The Charlottesville "unite the right" Nazi rally was spurred on by the removal of confederate statues and anti-Black racism. What is it they were chanting, again? Anyone remember? Any of this ringing a bell? OH RIGHT. "Jews will not replace us." So many other forms of systemic violence are steeped in the poisonous rhetoric of antisemitism. Acting like this isn't the case damns our Jewish siblings who need us while weakening our understanding of the oppressive forces we're fighting. "One struggle" includes all of us. The fact that the Likud government uses accusations of antisemitism as a cover for their violence should make you more diligent about condemning antisemitism, not less. Because letting them weaponize something that is already so widespread and destructive makes it that much harder to dismantle.

Do not stop talking about Palestine. Do not stop speaking up against the horrors of settler colonial violence. But if you can't do this without throwing another group of oppressed people under the bus, you need to question where you learned your resistance tactics, because the company you're keeping there should disgust and terrify you.

#enough is enough #antisemitsm tw #seriously what the fuck #fuck jkr #none of us are free until all of us are free #stop antisemitism

[kawaiixchaotic]

i have been crying about this for days. the arabic language is so beautiful. i am both thankful to this artist for sharing this gorgeous song with us, and torn to pieces thinking about how much pain she must be in watching her home get destroyed and her people suffer.

she mentions sending peace on an olive branch. edit: "olive" means zaytun (زيتون) watch out for this word if you read/see/hear Palestinian art, the cultural context will help you understand the message more. besides the olive branch being a well known symbol for peace (it's even on the United States dollar AND the United States Seal) there is a rich historical and cultural context behind this lyric. for those who don't know, Palestine has been known for its olive trees for millennia. some of the oldest living olive trees in the entire world are in Palestine (although i really don't know if they are still standing at this moment). olives are well-loved and crucial to Palestinian cuisine, as well as being a major source of income, since many Palestinians are olive farmers and have been for generations. a symbol for peace, harmony, friendship, resilience, and perserverance, the olive tree represents Palestinian spirit, and olive leaf patterns are also featured on the Palestinian keffiyeh.

there is another lyric where she says "in the land of peace, peace is dead." one english transliteration of this arabic phrase is "fi 'ard alsalam mat alsalam" with 'ard (أرض) meaning land/earth, al-salam or more commonly salam (سلام) meaning peace, and mat (مات) being a conjugation from the word mawt (موت) meaning death. (I'm not sure in which tense, arabic has so many tenses and I don't want to spread misinformation, my knowledge of the arabic language is like 1st grade level and mostly from osmosis due to growing up Muslim and having early exposure to the language through the Quran and basic classes at Islamic school, and I'm not even a practicing Muslim anymore, so pls feel free to correct my mistakes) lyrically, it was this phrase that stuck out to me the most, because of the emphasis placed on "peace" through its repetition. in the land of peace, peace is dead; Palestine is The Holy Land in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. peace was the foundation of the land, not just peace meaning lack of war but peace as in spiritual peace, the kind of peace that fills your heart with love for this world and the people in it. now that this peace is being actively destroyed, Palestine is losing itself. Elyanna (the singer) is saying that her home is being gutted from the inside out, until it's unrecognizable, until it lacks the one thing that MADE Palestine; peace. It is heartbreaking.

The reason I am sharing this song and breaking down this lyric is because I want to re-humanize the Arabic language and Arab culture. It has been demonized for far too long, and it was/is on PURPOSE. IDF soldiers bombing Al-Shifa hospital and claiming (lying) that they found a list of Hamas guards and hostages (that were never in the hospital) when it was a CALENDAR and the only names of "Hamas guards" listed were fucking Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, is exactly what I mean when I say that the world has been so successfully brainwashed against MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) that even the Arabic language itself, written or spoken, is perceived as inherently violent and threatening.

I hope this post has contributed in helping you unlearn the racism and anti-Arab/anti-Middle Eastern propoganda you have been taught.

From the river to the sea, Palestine 🇵🇸 will be free.

🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉

#palestine #free palestine #free gaza #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #i stand with palestine 🇵🇸 #arabic music #arabic art #respect the arabic language and the culture of those who speak it #they are not barbarians they are people #they are beautiful people who make beautiful art #afrodite speaks

[fairuzfan]

My country has only been independent for 39 years now. Generally, it is known to be a very boring and strict country, since there is not much to do here in terms of typical entertainment - no concerts, extravagant malls, and so on. Some want to move out once they can find a job overseas. There are also concerns that the youth are more fluent in English than our native language. It bothers me a lot and I am afraid we will lose our identity and culture.

However, ever since the recent surge in support of Palestine, my perspective has since changed on the matter. I have found myself deeply affected by how strongly Palestinians are fighting for their home. Rather than feeling pessimistic about a future possibility, I now feel I should channel all that emotion into appreciating our traditions and further understanding our language. And if I think about it, compared to those who want to leave, plenty of people are living happy and peaceful lives here, and so much of the youth if working toward the development of the country. Many of us will continue to be here like we always have.

We have an idiom - “hujan emas di negeri orang, hujan batu di negeri sendiri, lebih baik di negeri sendiri”, which roughly translates to “raining gold in a foreign country, raining rocks in your own country, it is better to stay in your own country”. It is our home after all and we belong here, and we must appreciate and protect what we have. Whatever happens in our land we will stay. It is only recently that I felt the meaning behind this idiom in my bones, and it is the Palestinians I must thank for it. Many of my people will agree with this sentiment.

I am still young. I’m still looking for a university to go to, and I have a whole life ahead of me. But I hope I can carry the conviction I found in these past few months with me for the rest of my life.

Insya Allah we will see a free Palestine in our lifetimes.

I hope truly, truly, that you have a wonderful life in your country as you flourish to do all the things you want to do while celebrating your heritage. InshaAllah we will all live in a world that is free and filled with self love. Thank you for sending this.

[chinesegal]

I'm not jewish, but I've been thinking about the claim that all jewish people can claim indigeneity to Israel/the levant because judaism originated from the area and traditional jewish prayers are directed towards Israel etc.

But this view of indigeneity feels a bit reductive to me. There's more to a culture than language and religion, and the two doesn't compare to actual material culture or relationship to land. In my mind, I ask myself how westernized jewish ppl from Europe and North America can claim to be indigenous to a place they and their close ancestors haven't stepped foot in for generations.

The population that lived in the region for centuries and farmed the land should be considered indigenous but I doubt the same can be said for the entire jewish diaspora who've developed very different material cultures due to where they live.

I've seen the statement by a zionist on tumblr that among other things such as holidays, prayers and language*, "the clothes we wear and the food we eat are all inherently tied to the land"*.

I doubt those last parts, because theres no way that fur-hats/shtreimels which are worn by orthodox jewish men couldve been developed in the levant. The Palestinian thawb and kuffiye are examples of traditional clothing worn by the native people and actually adapted to the climate of the region and carry with them symbols of cultural significance.

I felt nervous writing this, as I know its a controversial position to hold. Im not saying that no jewish person is native to the Levant, just that I doubt that religion and language alone makes someone "indigenous".

#palestine #free palestine #free gaza #israel #indigeneity #indigenous #judaism

[tamamita]

I think back to if I had been alive back then, I might have agreed with the creation of Isreal (with the Holocaust being so fresh in everybody's minds it makes sense that Jews have a reason to be concerned for their preservation) but learning of the Nakba and the continued occupation and treatment of the Palestinians (much in part thanks to you) I cannot support them. The Holocaust does not give Zionists a "get out of Genocide Free" Card.

Shifting gears a bit, I am Canadian, and our government has been put in an unfortunate position with India over the assassination of a man who was an advocate for the Khalistan Movement. Now while I intend to do my own research into it, I was curious your opinion (if any) on the creation of a separatist Sikh state?

I am against any ethnostate or/and states in general. Or in ML terms, I'm for the abolishment of states.

Nevertheless, being free from persecution does not require a homeland, and a Jewish ethnostate is contradictory, because JEwish people aren't monolith. Historically, Jewish people all over the world have come to create their own cultural, ethnical and religious identities that are vastly different from each other, the question then becomes a complicated one, how does one unify under one single homogenized state? If we look at Israel, then we know that they have systematically pulled efforts into erasing various Judeo-inspired languages, such as Yiddish or Judeo-Arabic, and it wasn't long ago when they forcefully sterilized Ethiopian Jews, who are still experiencing racism in Israel. I can't say I know much about how class differences work within the Jewish community, so I'll abstain from that. Nevertheless. It's obvious that for a state to become unified, there must be one codex of identity that all of them has to be identified under, while everything else is undesirable. This is the path to fascism, and you've already seen MPs in the Knesset expressing the desire for ethnic cleansing.

As for the Sikh state, I am against theocracies, ethnoreligious states or any state that adopts a de facto profanum/sanctum consitution.

[queenie-blackthorn]

tips for writing arab characters

writer here!! im a middle eastern writer whos noticed that theres a VERY significant lack of info on how to write arabs, so im here to help !! (however, keep in mind that im specifically gulf arab and may not be able to provide as much info on levant arabs or north african arabs. if there are any on here, feel free to reblog w more info !! )

dont get arabs mixed up w muslims. yes, a large portion of the arab population are muslim, but youd be surprised at the number of non-muslim arabs that exist. if you wanna write abt a muslim character, a post i made that might help is here 

list of arab countries, with the adjective:

algeria — algerian

bahrain — bahraini 

the comoros islands — comorans

djibouti — djiboutian

egypt — egyptian

iraq — iraqi

jordan — jordanian

kuwait — kuwaiti

lebanon — lebanese

libya — libyan

morocco — moroccan

mauritania — mauritanian

oman — omani

palestine — palestinian

qatar — qatari

kingdom of saudi arabia (ksa) — saudi

somalia — somali

sudan  — sudanese

syria — syrian

tunisia — tunisian

united arab emirates (uae) — emirati

yemen — yemeni

dialects/language:

dialects greatly differ—the egyptian dialect is the most common, followed closely by the levantine dialect

classic arabic is called fusha (fuss-ha), used in things like official documents, media, education. every arab knows it but its not used in day to day language except in media (all dialects basically come from fusha, but with slight changes)

'p' and 'g' (as in 'gurgle' or 'goal') dont exist in the arabic alphabet, theyre replaced with 'b' and 'j' 

depending on where theyre from, they may also learn a third language besides arabic and english (e.g. moroccans know french, a berber arab may know berber)

appearance:

arabs look different based on where theyre from. if theyre from the arabian peninsula, they have thick curly dark hair, tanned skin, and dark eyes. levant arabs are lighter skinned, and green/blue eyes are more common with them

adding on to previous point, arabs have a variety of skin tones, even if theyre siblings. using a real example, me and my older brother respectively look white passing and afro hispanic

dark irises are considered better looking than lighter colored eyes. eyes are usually thick-lashed, with big round slightly upturned eyes 

big noses are common, along with full lips (and hereditary dark circles for those with more tanned skin)

high cheekbones and well structured faces are also prevalent

culture:

varies depending on location

influenced by indian culture, IS NOT INTERCHANGEABLE WITH INDIAN CULTURE. that was aladdins mistake

poetry is so common, especially with romantic themes

songs also have romantic themes

youd be surprised at how romantic arabs are

dances vary extremely, from dabke (palestinean dance done in groups, consisting largely of leg/foot movements) to yola (emirati dance with battle origins, done using canes or fake guns) i recommend watching videos (tiktok has a lot of videos esp of dabke)

women also dance but you wont find a lot of videos of it bc its inappropriate

etiquette:

things such as giving someone your back, or facing the bottom of your feet towards someone are considered rude 

pda is also taboo (even with straight couples or even sometimes married couples)

cheek kisses are a common way of greeting, but not between genders

in some gulf countries, men greet each other with a nose kiss (not in an intimate way) just stubbing their noses against each other

genders do not mix at all. schools tend to divide girls and boys into two sections starting at a certain age (around age 10/11), and mosques are split into the mens side (usually larger than womens bc men use the mosque more)

having an extramarital relationship is very very taboo (even w hetero relationships) but it still happens. a lot. 

family dynamics (note that this is obviously a spectrum. this is the general dynamic, but obv it ranges from family to family):

NOT ALL OF US HAVE ABUSIVE PARENTS. sure theyll spank you if you skip school, but thats not necessarily abusive. its more strict, and youd be surprised at the amount of freedom some parents give their kids

yes, arranged marriages do happen. no, they arent necessarily forced, it just means that your parents had a hand in deciding who youll marry. yes, marrying cousins is a thing, but its much less prevalent now (also, ew)

fathers care. a lot. they dont show it, but they do. they also tend to joke around a lot

mothers tend to be the rule enforcers, and by far our moms are our best friends. we tell them EVERYTHING i swear 

aunties gossip a lot

uncles are a safety hazard

its not uncommon to have a large number of cousins (mainly bc arabs tend to have a lot of kids)

the average number of children 3 per woman, but from personal experience the older the generation the more kids (e.g. my great-grandmother had a whopping thirteen kids, my grandmother had seven, my mom has six, but a couple of my aunts only have one or two)

social class/work environment/school environment:

schools tend to be either arab curriculums but there is a high density of american/british curriculum schools

boys and girls tend to be separated in school around age nine/ten but some schools will be mixed genders up till graduation

yes, women work, tho admittedly some of them tend to have careers more than jobs (e.g. photographer, writer, etc while the men handle engineering, economics, etc)

no, not all of us are rich. in fact, countries like jordan, egypt, tunisia, morocco, and yemen (and infamously palestine) are acc struggling w poverty. its mainly just gulf arabs who are rich

furthermore, gulf arabs may be generally rich but a large chunk of them have the same lifestyle as an upper-middle class family in the usa. rich but not too rich. dont be fooled by the videos of guys wearing kandoras and driving lambos

speaking of kandoras...

outfits (keep in mind that spelling may vary since its all transliteration, and pronunciation may vary depending on region) (also keep in mind that even if we still live in the middle east, WE CAN WEAR JEANS AND HOODIES AND BAND SHIRTS. just, usually cover up more in public):

abaya: loose overgarment worn by women

jilbab/chandoor: also worn by women, type of long dress or tunic

the white robe all of yall know is known as a thobe, dishdasha, or kandora

the colored headscarf worn by men is known as a ghuthrain in the gulf, kevfiah in the levant. its kept in place with a black cord called a aghal, and under it they wear a skullcap called a thagiyah

those are the most common ones, however if youd like to get a lil more specific on clothong, the ultimate guide to arab clothing is here (it also has specified clothing for individual countries)

hope this helps, feel free to reblog w more info if you have any !!

#writing tips #writing arabs #arab #writer sources #writing help #writers on tumblr #writeblr #writing advice