“The House Of Resistance

This is my mom’s home in Kashmir. It is located in the beautiful city of Bandipora, in a small village called Onagam. Her house is on a hill known as “Pir Both”, overlooking Kashmir. It’s quite picturesque and can make anyone fall in love instantly.

However, this house has it’s tragic tales to tell. Once upon a time, this house was bustling with voices and people. Now, it is ghostly, with the walls of the house slowly crumbling. Everything in the house that remains was purchased in the late 80s/early 90s. The last time this house was filled with voices of love, laughter, and happiness was at my mom’s wedding in 1987.

My family has always been vocal about injustice since the beginning of the fight for azaadi which originates in 1931. This has cost them serious trauma that can’t ever be healed. My family has voiced for peace, helped minorities in their community that felt threatened, and demanded that the voices of the people of Kashmir be heard.

In return, the young boys of my family were tortured, beaten, arrested, and detained. In some cases, even after 30 years they are unable to live healthy lives as the torture is physical, mental, and emotional which they are unable to overcome.

Then there are my cousins whom I only know through my mom’s wedding album. My mom speaks of one of her nephews, she says she thought for 10 years that one day she’d hear some news of him, but alas hope dies a tragic death. It was the hardest pill to swallow, knowing someone you love so much would never return nor could you find out what happened to them. I scroll through my mom’s wedding album, and can’t help but notice his beautiful smile and the life that was taken away from him, from us.

Then there were the boys we buried with our own hands, and to this day the pain never left us. The void can never be compensated for.

My mom’s elder brother has spent countless years in jail being tortured, eventually having to flee in very scary measures. My mamujaan is a teacher, a writer, and a freedom fighter. He has written many books on Kashmir. He speaks about the torture and the pain of being forced out of his land 30 years ago as a result of Indian terrorism. His last interrogation was in 1990, when he was booked under PSA (Public Safety Act) at interrogation center Harinawas, Srinagar. This traumatic interrogation which is still seen in Kashmir has roots in the early 80s. Despite all this, my mamu still wanted to continue talking about Kashmir and the injustice, and he took the step to leave his land. He didn’t want to spend his years in jail, he wanted to tell the world about what Kashmiris are facing, and that we don’t have a voice. After his unfortunate departure in 1990, he didn’t see his family or unborn daughter till 1999.

With my mamujaan leaving Kashmir in 1990, the Indian army kept terrorizing our house and took away my mamu’s only teenage son in to custody under PSA and brutally tortured him at Kotbalwal, Jammu. To this day, he is unable to speak of the torture as it is traumatic to even having to relive that reality. He was forced to flee Kashmir in 1995 as his life was threatened.

Following that, the harassment from the Indian army did not stop, with 4 daughters and no male in the household, the Indian army constantly harassing them, the womenfolk had no choice but to leave in 1999.

My grandmother refused to leave, she reiterated till the day she died that she would hold the doors open of this house for it’s children. She went on to live the last 10 years of her life all alone. Everyday for 10 years, she would first put out her son’s plate for lunch/dinner and would wail “kanh doh aasay suteh yelih beh sherrih yettih Farooq sabas batteh” ~ “will there ever be a day when I’m able to feed Farooq (her only son) at home.” Our neighbours would tell us how she would hold the plate of her son dreaming of the day she would be reunited with him, including a few hours before her death. This was a routine for her, even though nobody was there, she would talk to her son, and would make sure all his things are kept the same way as when he left.

On the day of her death, one of our relatives was visiting her and she said that I’ve heard there is a statement that all those displaced from Kashmir in 1990s are allowed to return. My cousin laughed and said, “you’re dreaming.” My grandmother was indeed dreaming, a few hours after this conversation she passed away. She couldn’t imagine having to lock the doors to her house, she couldn’t imagine that she’d be separated from her son till death.

In an unspoken way, we accepted my mamu and his family wouldn’t be able to return, nor did we ever speak of it.

Today, there is a man that still lives in this house. He was brought as a kid in the 60s to help out around the house. He spent his whole life caring for people of this house. After my grandmothers death, we thought he would leave and a lock would be placed on the doors. Rather, he has spent the last 13 years all alone, waiting for his children to return. When I show him pictures of my cousins, he holds them and wails. He says he could never leave and as long as he is alive the doors to his house will be open, and it’s children will be welcomed back home. Knowing what each one of us likes, he makes sure to prepare it, and when we come home, the love in his eyes and the pain is both a testament to what he has witnessed. Every time I visit, I feel like my grandmother is there with us. If only, for a minute.

I will never forget the sacrifices that this house has made. This house is a testament to the freedom struggle and the sacrifices made by countless Kashmiri households.

We are all a witness.

Esih chi saari shahid.”

–Ifrah Sahibzadi
January 26 at 2:11 PM

Palestinians don’t need to read the Trump regime’s entire 80-page ‘peace proposal’ to know it’s a scam & an electoral snow job. It is not a ‘historic milestone’, as Israeli leaders are calling it, but a commitment to accelerate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank & genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. It is an update of the Oslo Accords which formulated the conditions of Palestinian surrender & legitimized occupation & expropriation.

What is disturbing is that at a time of accelerated genocide, there is so little action in defense of Palestinians because of divisions over Syria in Palestinian solidarity & energy taken from organizing forums & rallies given to campaigning for Bernie Sanders. Election years always take a toll on independent political action as ‘lesser evil’ advocates chase down the candidate they see as savior. But this declaration of genocide by the Trump regime requires we think outside the electoral box to stand with Palestinians at a critical time in their struggle for self-determination. Not just self-determination, but survival against snipers, bombs, wholesale expulsion from their lands & the demolition of their villages.

This photo is a mural in Gaza City of Trump with a footprint stamped on his face to show what Palestinians think of his ‘peace plan’.

(Photo from AFP)

To endlessly ask why repressive regimes in Muslim-majority countries do not defend Muslims sustaining war, occupation, & genocide makes as little sense as asking the regimes of Christian, Buddhist, or Hindu-majority countries why they engage in war, occupation, & genocide.

There are a whole lot of prominent figures in history & politics whose obituaries would not withstand the scrutiny of a #MeToo investigation. The socialist movement has its own share of such unsavory types who if they didn’t assault women treated them as far lesser human beings. With resentment at the posthumous honors they received, I kept my distance from the eulogizing & memorials when they died & I’ll do the same for Kobe Bryant. To my mind, rape & diminishing women are mortal offenses, not minor peccadillos. Giving accomplished men impunity for crimes against women gives young men the wrong message. Call me a feminist hard-nose, even call me a feminazi, but if you don’t recognize women’s humanity, I won’t really miss you when you croak.

“A colonizer does not formulate laws to provide a sense of order to the oppressed. The legislation is made to decriminalize occupation. The judiciary exists to legalize injustice. Like when my mother calls me from prison, the authorized time is twelve minutes. But they rarely allow us to talk that long. It is to tell me that they’re more entitled to my mother than I am. They violate their own laws and disregard their own dicta, to put in our mind that there is no “system”, or “law” that we can count on. Occupations are incapable of fair governance. As Fanon asserts: Violence is the ‘natural state’ of colonial rule.”

–Kashmiri Ahmed Bin Qasim whose parents are both political prisoners

2G internet services in Kashmir, by Mir Suhail Qadiri

It’s politically antiquated to keep asking why the regimes in Muslim-majority countries are not standing with Kashmiris, Rohingya, Uyghur, & the millions of other Muslims facing war, occupation, genocide. The repression of the Arab Spring uprisings by the governments of Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, now Iraq, the repression of the Turkey, Iran, & other regimes make it absolutely clear that there is a massive disconnect between the regimes in Muslim-majority countries & the political, economic, & social aspirations of their citizens.

Those repressive governments are not guided by a commitment to Islam but by capitalist realpolitik. To suggest theses murderous regimes are guided by Islam impugns the faith of those millions of Muslims in the leadership of fighting inequality, repression, & war.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians flee Syrian & Russian bombing of Idlib.

The corona virus which originated from the city of Wuhan, China is not karmic payback for the genocide of Uyghur Muslims. The people of China, who face massive political repression & often extreme poverty, are not responsible for the genocide. The Chinese Communist Party regime is responsible & we can be sure have hermetically sealed themselves from contact with the virus. It is likely that public healthcare in China which favors the privileged in this so-called classless society plays a role in the spread of the virus.

Holocaust survivor, writer, & ardent Zionist Elie Wiesel is frequently quoted about not remaining silent against oppression. Without question, the quotes are powerful & inspirational but they are entirely self-serving & self-aggrandizing. Wiesel took out full page ads in several major international media in 2014 to justify the eleven-week Israeli bombing siege of Gaza by claiming Palestinians used their children as human shields. He reduced the horrors of the Nazi holocaust to propaganda for Israeli genocide.

Wiesel was a central figure in ‘the holocaust industry’ which was anatomized by Norman Finkelstein in his book of the same title (before he went south politically by expressing opposition to BDS & contempt for Palestinians). In an interview about the book, Finkelstein said “The expression “there’s no business like Shoah-business” is literally coined” for Wiesel. Finkelstein was asked “Isn’t it a cheap shot to attack him (Wiesel) on his lecture fee of “$25,000, plus limousine”? He answered: “Why is that a cheap shot? He’s turned it into a business where he casts himself as a person who’s doing all this from anguish & pain & personal sacrifice while he has made a fortune out of it….Thanks to Elie Wiesel we have a distorted & disfigured & frankly meaningless version of the Nazi holocaust & we only know about those genocides that serve the interest of the US & Israel & we forget the ones that don’t. The only way we can learn from the holocaust is by restoring it as a rational object of historical inquiry & the only way we can do that is by putting the holocaust industry out of business.”

Finkelstein, who lost most of his family in the Jewish holocaust, is no genocide denier. When he skewers Wiesel, it is not to impugn or diminish the horrors of the holocaust but to challenge Zionist misrepresentation, profiteering, & making it an exceptional atrocity in human history rather than a continuum with the savageries of US-European colonialism all over the world. It was only an exception because it happened in Europe. It had been going on in Africa, the Pacific islands, the Middle East, the Americas, Asia for hundreds of years.

In its foundations, Zionism rejected uniting the struggle of Jews against persecution & pogroms with the broader struggles against racism & colonialism. Because it is an elitist & supremacist ideology, it chose instead to link the destiny of persecuted Jews with colonialism. Wiesel played a central part in that historical deceit & political betrayal. The grieving of Palestinians, the tears of Palestinian children speak far more eloquently to holocaust & genocide than a fraud like Elie Wiesel ever could.