It’s not an exaggeration to say the most compelling photojournalism today is from Kashmiris. They are brilliant in conveying the brutalities of military occupation not by displaying the gruesome so much as by showing us resistance & the humanity of occupation. That is not so we can turn away from the gruesome realities that Kashmiris live with but because they can be more terrifying & discouraging than motivating to political solidarity. It is that we can more easily identify with Kashmiris as our own.

This grieving man attends the funeral prayers of Parvaiz Ahmad in Pahoo village, Pulwama district, south Kashmir. We needn’t see what the Indian army has done to young Ahmad; it is enough we see how Kashmiris feel about his loss.

May Parvaiz Ahmad Rest In Peace. Our sincere condolences to his family & friends.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo by Basit Zargar)

It was July 2014 when Israel launched its seven-week carpet bombing siege of Gaza & July 2016 when a six-month Indian military siege tried to crush the uprising after the execution of BW, the man whose name & image are censored on FB but whose funeral was attended by over 600,000 people. Those two sieges (they can hardly be called events) were a living hell just to witness so words fail in describing what it must have been for Palestinians & Kashmiris to endure.

Facebook draws up our archives every day & images from Gaza 2014 & Kashmir 2016 are now appearing. It may be worthwhile to repost some of them because the extremes & the forms of violence have not ceased in either place.

They are monumental struggles & some say hopeless struggles. They are only hopeless if we continue to let them stand alone against such massive military might. But even without phalanxes of international support their intransigence is not defeated. Like indigenous tribes in Brazil fighting neoliberal scorched earth economics & Syrian revolutionists against the Assad dictatorship, Palestinians & Kashmiris are teachers of social transformation. Their struggles are our struggles because solidarity is not a one-way street of noblesse oblige. It is the iron law of social transformation.

My wonderful 82-year-old friend from Canada was overwhelmed with the kind offers of money to replace her broken-down computer but is gratefully accepting the laptop offered by another generous friend & fellow Canadian. Thank you so much for your offers & especially to my friend for giving the computer so that our sister can continue to follow the struggles of the oppressed & express solidarity. 

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