If you’re the daughter in this exchange, it’s a matter of life-long regret & loss. So when Mother’s Day comes, it’s hard to join the celebration since it seems to trivialize the loss.

The judges of the prize say they were “captivated with the investigation of contemporary cultural conflicts that Sasha played with veiling & unveiling, muslim & European motifs.”

The collection can be seen as transitions & investigations & inspirations but that’s only if fashion operates in a hermetically sealed universe where the burqa is not used as a political weapon to justify bombing entire countries to smithereens or to persecuting & denying civil liberties to Muslim women or to denying refugees asylum.

Whether Nassar or the judges understood it intellectually & politically (a doubtful speculation), on a visceral, intellectual, & political level this fashion collection is an affront to Muslim women–in particular those women wearing burqas in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, & elsewhere who were leading the Arab uprisings for democracy.

Diaphanous is lovely; it’s hard to go wrong wearing it to the prom or at a swanky beach party. But when it’s used to mock women who led the most momentous events of the past several years or Palestinian women opposing Israeli colonialism & apartheid, then it becomes cultural appropriation with sarcastic & malignant intent.

(Photo from runway in Vogue)

More than 370,000 of the refugees are children, including 90,000 unaccompanied children primarily from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, & Iraq. Their lives are in grave danger because of EU policies.

How long is the EU going to let this situation go on? There is less media coverage of refugees in Greece now since the deportation procedures are going to be aggressive, violent, undemocratic. There is already plenty of evidence for refugees aggressively resisting authorities. So the devil’s pact between the EU & Turkey to forcibly deport them from Greece to Turkey will not go well.

Refugee & immigrant rights are a touchstone in politics today. If you do not stand against wars & sweatshop economics creating refugees & if you do not stand resolutely with refugee & immigrant rights to asylum, you should abandon political activism & take up twiddly-sticks.

Immigration is a human right. Open the damn borders.

(Photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters)

But it’s the caption to this photo that takes the cake for duplicity. It reads: “Gaza City–A Palestinian man inspects a damaged vehicle at his workshop after it was hit by an Israeli air strike. Four Hamas sites were targeted, the military said, as tensions flared along the border of the Palestinian territories. The spike in cross-border violence has raised concerns for the ceasefire that has held since summer 2014

What Hamas sites were targeted? Actually, what is a “Hamas site”?
Since Hamas is the elected government in Gaza, is it a public building like a post office or the tax revenue office? What exactly was the nature of those flaring tensions at the apartheid wall between Gaza & Israel? What is that “spike in cross-border violence” all about? Did Palestinian kids throw rocks at heavily armed Israeli border guards? Or much worse, call them naughty names?

And what is this nonsense about a ceasefire–as if two parties were at fault in Israel’s massive genocidal bombing of Gaza? In the past two years, Israel has repeatedly sent bombing sorties into Gaza so they aren’t concerned about that “ceasefire.” But Palestinians & their supporters have every reason for concern that Israel is revving up for another siege of Gaza.

As supporters, our mission is to build BDS & prepare for public rallies & forums to protest Israel aggression & ethnic cleansing.

(Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)