Think it’s about time I changed my profile picture since the old one is a couple years old. I’m now toothless & look like Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies but ever since that hunky Kashmiri called me hot I’m reluctant to challenge his assessment. My vanity has been riding on it for months.

The only other photo I have is from the same time & is also a laughing one. My political nemeses have used my frivolous nature against me by calling me a “laughing bitch” but I have observed that those who disagree with me tend to be a joyless, constipated lot so maybe I’ll go with it. No selfies for this girl. At my age you need glamor shots.

Henry Lowi, formerly a soldier in the IDF & a committed supporter of BDS, on Zionism & self-determination for Palestinians:

“For the Palestinians to freely decide for themselves, the Israeli military occupation and blockade would need to end, Israeli army, police, and undercover agencies would need to be removed from all communities inhabited by Palestinians, all political prisoners would need to be released, and all refugees and displaced persons would need to have the real opportunity to return. In short, overthrow and dismantlement of the Zionist regime. Then, and only then, will the Palestinians be able to freely exercise their right to self-determination. Nothing wrong with suggesting that they choose a democratic and not an undemocratic regime, a secular and not a theocratic regime, a regime in which Jews and Arabs can live peacefully and not at each other’s throats. Zionism is the obstacle that needs to be overcome.”

Many get all bent out of shape when Chomsky & Norman Finkelstein are referred to as Zionists because they have so righteously exposed the crimes of Israel. Sam Charles Hamad is bent out of shape at the suggestion that he is a Zionist & some are falling over themselves to assure him he is not.

Zionist is not an epithet of abuse. It is the designation for someone who believes Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish-only state. Chomsky, Finkelstein, & Hamad fit that description to a tee. If they’re uncomfortable with the designation, they should be because it means identifying with colonialism, apartheid, & ethnic cleansing. The solution to their discomfort is not to hold their hands & soothe their wounded egos but for them to reject Zionism & accept the Palestinian proposal for a democratic, secular state where Palestinians & Jews can live as brothers & sisters.

Cynics claim such a state is a pipe dream but those who grew up in the US under segregation & saw the transformative power of the civil rights movement know that human beings are more suited for harmony than discord. It took massive efforts to reverse the achievements of the civil rights movement because even whites preferred unity to social hatred & a false supremacy.

Sam Charles Hamad blocked me for criticizing his attack on BDS before I was finished kicking his ass so I went to the article on The New Arab website & continued my offensive in the comments section:
*****
Hard to pack more ignorance and libertarian sniveling into one article than Hamad has managed to do in this piece. It’s like a toxic waste dump. At least Hamad ought to try to get his facts about BDS straight and leave his petulant animosities against the left out of clear view–all the better to fool us that he gives a rat’s ass about Palestinian self-determination but doesn’t expose his arrant Zionism and political affinities with the rightwing and some from the very left he detests. One cannot tell the difference between Hamad’s views on Israel and those of Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, also contemptuous opponents of BDS and supporters of a Jewish-only state.

Hamad comes out slugging as an apologist for Israel & equivocal about apartheid. What’s with the “apartheid-esque” designation? In the style of, resembling apartheid? Most people would say if it looks like racist persecution, perhaps that’s what it is. Is “apartheid-esque” less racist, less violent, less discriminatory than outright apartheid? When Israeli police gunned down those three young Palestinians at Al Aqsa mosque last week, did those “apartheid-esque” bullets feel less deadly? Were the families of the young men relieved that they weren’t outright apartheid bullets?

Hard to pretend you’re a sophisticated secular scholar when you support a medieval structure like a Jewish-only colonial-settler state. But harder to pretend you have any sense of democratic principles, or any principles at all, when you support bantustates for Palestinians after watching 69 years of expropriations, settlements, military occupation, blockades, carpet bombing. Is Hamad even minimally informed about the character of the Oslo Accords? Or is talking through his hat the level of his investigative powers?

How can anyone who understands the character of the Zionist state, the history of Israel, and the role Israel plays as a fortress against democracy in the Middle East possibly oppose the economic and cultural boycott (BDS) of Israel? How can anyone watch Palestinians, vilified as terrorists, stand unarmed for 69 years against one of the most powerful militaries in the world and still oppose the international solidarity of BDS? How could anyone express as much ignorance about the Palestinian initiative, organization, administration of BDS as Hamad?

This is a shameful piece, rubbish, shabby apologia, intellectually impoverished. On the wrong side of justice.

Came across this delicious bon mot from July 19, 2013:

“You offer someone a sincere compliment on their
mustache & suddenly she’s not your friend
anymore.”

–Sanjana Kaushik

It took a while for my less than 15-pound Chihuahua mutts to stop being afraid of the two 70-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback rescues I took in. But today they nuzzle, roughhouse, chase each other. It’s so sweet to see the two galoots act like little puppies but they never had a home before. The two bambinos are another story. They’re part bulldog & all bully. They’re a work in progress & quite frankly way over my capabilities.

In indignation at Sam Charles Hamad’s scurrilous & ignorant attack on BDS, I wrote an email to The New Arab journal which published it & suggested they request a Palestinian who, unlike Hamad, actually knows something about the subject to write an article in response, or at least in defense of BDS. The journal bears responsibility for publishing this piece of rubbish.

If anyone else would like to give the journal their views on this betrayal of Palestinians, please write them at: info@alaraby.co.uk

“On Wednesday Radiohead will perform in a Tel Aviv stadium built over the ruins of the Palestinian village of Jarisha. It is a sad fact that Radiohead have failed to engage with Palestinians who have called for them not to play, & that Thom Yorke’s comments are devoid of any reference to Palestinians at all.

As the lights go out in Gaza & Palestinian cancer patients die because they are denied travel permits by Israel, while a Palestinian poet in Israel lives under house arrest for a poem she wrote on Facebook, while a young circus performer from the West Bank languishes in administrative detention without charge or trial–Thom Yorke speaks loftily about “crossing borders” & “freedom of expression.” One has to ask, freedom for whom exactly?”

–Mike Leigh, Film Director

Ilan Pappe calls the siege of Gaza “incremental genocide.”
Haidar Eid calls Gaza “the Guernica of the 21st Century.”

Support the economic & cultural boycott of Israel. Buy nothing with barcode beginning 729 & check the label on every product since the market is inundated with Israeli products from attire to foods to cosmetics.