Cassandra Voices

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  • Archiving Gaza in the Present

    Review: Archiving Gaza in the Present: Memory, Culture and Erasure. Edited by Dina Matar and Venetia Porter (Saqi Books, London, November, 2025). 

    While Israel has made Gaza synonymous with its genocide, a rich cultural heritage, now largely destroyed, paints a completely different picture. The introduction to Archiving Gaza in the Present: Memory Culture and Erasure states that the book serves as “a reminder that Gaza as we see it today in the media’s live-streaming coverage of the war, miserable, shattered and deformed is not the Gaza that saw the unfolding of many civilisations.”

    The book is a compilation of papers and visual material presented at a two-day conference in November 2024 in London, a little over a year since Israel unleashed its genocide in Gaza. The level of annihilation and erasure – not only of Gaza’s infrastructure but also of its historical sites – made archiving and preservation more urgent. Palestine’s historical and cultural heritage is presented in the book through the contributions of various artists, historians, lawyers, curators, archaeologists, poets and journalists. Described as an ‘archive of Gaza in the present’, the book illustrates the process of archiving even as Israel continued to wage its destructive campaign.

    There is also an urgency to archive. In 2024, halfway through the genocide before the ceasefire announcement, which Israel has now violated hundreds of times, the world was witnessing a replica of the 1948 Nakba. This time they were using sophisticated military technology resulting in unprecedented destruction of Palestinian lives, culture and heritage in Gaza. For example, camps established in the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, during which thousands of Palestinians fled to Gaza, were bombed in Israel’s genocide: “The names of camps are becoming those of mass graves.”

    With each massacre, Israel erases a part of Gaza. The compilation of essays and visual material in the book show not only the magnitude of destruction, but how much of that destruction is unknown to the West.

    Salman Abu Sitta, for example, notes that Gaza is the only place in Palestine which never took down the Palestinian flag since before the Nakba. Gaza was also the first to play a central role in the anti-colonial struggle and refugee political organisation. Gaza’s traits are largely overlooked due to the colonial impositions inflicted on it. Indeed, as Abu Sitta notes, the term ‘Gaza Strip’ is a product of this recent colonisation.

    An aerial photo of displaced Palestinians waiting in northern Nuseirat to return to their homes in Gaza. © 2025 UNRWA Photo by Ashraf Amra

    A Decolonial Act

    Archiving Gaza is a decolonial act, happening at a time of political and demographic erasure. Many artists in Gaza have had their studios destroyed in Israel’s bombing, their work decimated, yet continue to express themselves and their wider communities in Gaza.

    Thus, art became a way to document the genocide, using whatever materials were available. Some artists directed their efforts towards art therapy. One particular collection of images that stands out in the book is Ahmed Muhanna’s art work, drawn on the packaging of humanitarian aid boxes: “He began drawing on them, incorporating the stamped warning ‘Not for Sale or Exchange’ into his compositions – reframing it as an artistic and philosophical element.”

    Several artworks now deal with memories of genocide, memories of Palestinians killed by Israel, memories of being still alive amid the erasure. Maisara Baroud states: “In my work, I express the story beyond the official narrative. It is the story of war that produces a tremendous capacity for harm, conquering distance, geography, and even the speed of sound to bring death to more people in less time.”

    Prior to the genocide, Gaza was a thriving art hub, with residencies, art programmes, exhibitions and grants for artists. The art department at the Al-Aqsa University in Gaza was established in 1995, the same year the university was recognised, and it played a major role in promoting art through academic programmes. In 2021, recognising the restrictions as well as earlier destruction, the concept of the Sahab Museum (The Museum of the Clouds) was implemented, preserving material and digital works in a curated virtual space that is also an act of resistance. It decolonises Gaza through Palestinian memory, “providing an attempt to respond to the destruction of cultural archives, which lies at the heart of colonial policy.”

    The book also documents Gaza’s deceased artists. One example is Fathi Ghaben, who died after inhaling white phosphorus. His paintings are synonymous with Palestinian resistance,  depicting the Palestinian flag as well as other cultural symbols in his art, leading to his arrest and detention by Israel in the 1980s. Another Palestinian artist from Gaza, Mahasen al-Khatib was killed in October 2024, just hours after publishing her last artwork depicting Sha’ban al-Dalou, who was burnt alive following a strike on the tents outside al-Aqsa Hospital.

    The striking discrepancy between Ghaben’s paintings and the art produced during the genocide illustrate both devastation and displacement. Apart from the bombed buildings, burnt vehicles, what stands out is Gaza and its population as a multitude of barely discernible figures. Masses of people awaiting food, landscapes of tents. Upon viewing the images, one pauses to think of the population’s individual identities in the midst of these scenes, and that is where the horror surges through.

    Fathi Ghaben 1947-2024.

    Rich Cultural Heritage

    Shifting from past to present and back to the past again, the essays in the book attest to both Gaza’s rich cultural heritage, ancient civilisations and Israel’s erasure. Six thousand years of history have been battered into oblivion by Israel to sustain the myth of a barren land ripe for colonisation. Hosting two hundred archaeological sites, Israel targeted Gaza prior to the genocide in a bid to assert its fabricated narrative of ownership over the land through archaeology and excavations. The first archaeological discovery was made before the British Mandate in 1879 in Nuseirat – a statue of Zeus which now forms part of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. From 1967 onwards, excavations were carried out by the Israeli military.

    Jawdat Khoudary, a Palestinian from Gaza, started his own private collection of antiquities after finding an Islamic glass coin. With over 3,000 artefacts dating back from 2000 BC to the Ottoman Empire, Khoudary eventually decided to establish the region’s first archaeological museum in 2008. In February 2024, the museum was completely obliterated by Israel.

    The book refers to Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin who coined the word genocide and who identified eight dimensions: political, social, cultural, economic, biological, physical, religious and moral. Israel’s eradication of Gaza illustrates how each of these components is intertwined in the systematic erasure of land and generations of people.

    The erasure also limits the Palestinians people’s struggle for self-determination. Israel destroyed numerous libraries in Gaza during the genocide, but before that, it had already looted most of Palestine’s archives during the 1948 Nakba, which are now held in Israel’s State Archive and the National Library. Quoting Palestinian scholar Mezna Qato, the book notes that Palestine’s history is under Israeli state surveillance: “To tell a history of Palestine now often requires seeking access through Israeli state keepers.”

    The Islamic University of Gaza in 2021.

    As a result of Israel’s colonial violence, Gaza’s exclusion from the rest of the world is amplified in several ways. Education is one example – Western universities do not engage with Gaza’s universities, as Israel’s colonial narrative is increasingly upheld in academic institutions. The exclusion of Gaza can also be traced back to the British Mandate and the 1948 Nakba, during which the entirety of Palestine faced restrictions on curriculum expansion and resources. Since October 2023, however, Israel moved from destruction to annihilation of Gaza’s education system. Other parts of Gaza’s history are also overlooked and largely unknown to the world, such as the history of aviation in Gaza and how this was also linked to Zionist colonial violence.

    Archiving Gaza in the present, as the book title states, represents quite a contradiction. Archiving in the face of erasure primarily presents one dilemma, as the book states in the case of archaeology, “Given the ongoing humanitarian, economic and environmental crises in Gaza, identifying new archaeological sites is not currently a priority.” However, the altered landscape requires an urgency to channel efforts towards preservation.

    But altered land presents a major problem. As the book shows, so much of Gaza has been lost that its very survival as a distinct entity has been placed in peril. Amid striving to safeguard their own survival in a land reduced to rubble, Palestinians are also aware of the necessity of preserving what can be salvaged, at a time when they are also preserving their own history of the genocide. International humanitarian law has failed Palestinians, as the book asserts. A Palestinian oral history thus becomes not only central but imperative. As the international community rallies behind the U.S. 20-point plan for Gaza, which upholds the Zionist narrative of a barren land in the current genocidal erasure, reclaiming Gaza in recollections, and wider Palestinian narratives, is an important part of decolonisation.

    In complete defiance to the Zionist narrative, this collection of essays and photos stand as testimony to Gaza as Palestinians know and remember it.

    Feature Image: Forced Displacement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip devastated by Israeli bombing, January 29, 2025.

  • Review: Displaced in Gaza: Stories from the Gaza Genocide

    Gaza’s history since the Nakba of 1948 is punctuated by waves of forced displacement. The enclave has been the epicentre of Palestinian refugees since 1948, having welcomed Palestinians from all over the colonised territories. Since Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza began in October 2023 its entire population of over two million, in a territory of just 151 km2, has been rendered internally displaced persons.

    Displaced in Gaza: Stories from the Gaza Genocide, Edited by Yousef M Aljamal, Norma Hashim, Noor Nabulsi, and Zoe Jannuzi (Haymarket Books, 2025) is a collection of twenty-seven testimonies of Palestinians living in Gaza enduring the genocide. An immediate response upon reading through the chapter titles is: to what extent have we become desensitised as spectators or activists? And, moreover, what is the link, or disconnect, between this wider perception of a genocide occurring and a person living through it?

    It begs the question, when reading through the testimonies, after more than two years how much can our mind take before the experiences themselves, narrated by survivors, merely become background noise? With the daily recounting of Israel’s kill toll being reduced to statistical data – a roll call similar to the reporting of Covid cases that gradually desensitised the listener – can our minds link back to the human tragedy?

    Of course we should. For the chapter titles speak of a shattered, mundane reality. Birthdays morph into atrocities. Education is ruptured by bombs. A woman is widowed by targeted assassination. A husband is killed while searching for food. Entire families are wiped out. The details are so mundane, so quotidian, yet genocide is an immense, unforgivable laceration in both its experience and the memory if it. That memory should, and must, extend to the rest of us. Narratives can combat desensitisation, as long as we know what to prioritise.

    In the foreword to the book, Ahmad Alnaouq writes:

    Everyone on Gaza is now a citizen journalist, determined more than ever to confront and challenge the Western media narrative – the demonising and dehumanising of the Palestinians, the lack of agency recognised, and the distortion of truth.

    This collection of testimonies directly challenges the Western hegemonic narrative which, even while reporting the official genocide kill toll, still finds ways of sanitising bloodshed and diminishing the humanity of Palestinian survivors. The kill toll is represented in two ways – as a statistic that either supports sporadic calls for accountability or offered in support of Israel “finishing the job.”

    Yousef Al-Jamal references the Palestinian poet and academic Refaat Alareer, who was killed by Israel in 2023, and for whom storytelling was an integral component of Palestinian history.

    A Poem for Refaat Alareer

    ‘For centuries,’ AL-Jamal writes, ‘Palestinians have tended the rich oral history of Palestine, preserving cultural heritage, including folktales and stories about the land.’ This collection of narratives from the Gaza genocide is a contribution to Palestine’s oral history, and one that, due to its international dissemination, cannot be destroyed by Israel.

    The personal narratives in this book speak of a disrupted simplicity, but not a disrupted normality. This includes death or killing, displacement, hunger, the tribulations of living and enduring life under a highly militarised genocide. We find the disruption of education and attempts to teach, as well as the full spectrum of forced displacement including of a Nakba survivor, along with attempts to rebuild a semblance of normality even as Israel destroys Gaza’s infrastructure. Even before the genocide, Palestinians in Gaza faced immense hardships and restrictions which were normalised into manageable deprivation, even by international institutions.

    For many Palestinians, as evidenced by several contributors to this anthology, the large scale killing meant that families were welcoming other relatives into their midst. At times it was orphaned children, as was the case with Aisha Osama Abu Ajwa, a mother of four children who began taking care of two children whose parents were killed when Israel bombed an entire residential block. In her description of forced displacement, Abu Ajwa writes, ‘The children witnessed dozens of martyrs’ bodies strewn on the ground. They cried intensely, while blood covered the streets.’

    ‘I hope war ends soon. Eight months of continuous killing exhausts us,’ writes Fidaa Fathi Abu Yousef, whose son was killed while riding a bike just 800m away from the family home.

    Another recurring horror is Palestinians fleeing to supposedly safe zones, while Israel bombs move in the direction the displaced are heading, leaving not only a trail of displacement but bloodshed. The killing of Palestinian children, as described by the narrators of this genocide, encompass all ages. The visibility of Israel killing children is magnified when the writers note the dead children’s ages. Thus removed from the general term, the children take on meaningful identities; allowing the reader to recognise how Israel has attempted to obliterate Palestinians through its killing of the younger generations. Children killed on their birthday, children killed while sleeping, the tragedy is portrayed through the eyes of the living, bereaved and those unable to process their loss due to a perpetual quest for survival.

    Their attempt to persist in living instead of perishing at times makes the writing of these recollections and experiences become slightly devoid of emotion. Emotion almost becomes a luxury when surviving a genocide, but the almost matter-of-fact narratives in this collection make grief all the more important, not only to grasp but experience. Israel has not only wiped entire families out and lacerated others beyond repair, it has also obliterated entire psychological processes that are necessary when experiencing traumatic events. In the midst of a genocide, Palestinians are unable to experience the grieving process.

    Incessant worry about family members displaced in different locations around Gaza is another hardship Palestinians must endure. Without means of communication for the most part, relatives receive no news of each other. ‘Gaza is small, yet we have not seen each other since the war began. We have not reunited. I know nothing of my sons. My life’s dream is to reunite with them in one home before my death,’ Yusra Salem Abu Awad states in her narrative.

    The script flips to a twelve-year-old boy, Youssef Qawash, writing about how he has lost his father and uncle in a bombing and not knowing whether his father’s remains will ever be discovered. ‘My uncles have searched in Deir al-Balah and Maghazi, but no one knows where my father is buried,’ Qawash ponders, noting that his father might still be buried under the rubble of destroyed houses.

    Ireland and Palestine: A Crucial Vote Awaits

    The ramifications of starvation are reflected in Najlaa Al-Kafarna’s story. Her husband was killed while searching for food for the family on the third day of the genocide, which was their second day of forced displacement. Six other relatives were also massacred in their search for food. Her special needs son, Muhammad, is malnourished and lacks medication and physical therapy sessions.

    Throughout most of the narratives in the book, the cry for food recurs. So does the lack of basic necessities, and the wearing of the same clothes through different seasons. We find the rationing of flour, and the shelling of a school while forcibly displaced Palestinians are baking bread. The deprivation is exacerbated by employment being almost non-existent during the genocide. Profound mental health issues as a result of ongoing trauma (Palestinians cannot speak of post-traumatic stress disorder) are also a common experience.

    ‘This war is larger than the 1948 Nakba. I am 91 years old,’ Mohammed Abdul Jabbar Abu Seif says. Aged fifteen, he experienced the first Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine and he notes the differences between the specific targeting of Zionist paramilitaries in 1948, and the widespread destruction of the current genocide in Gaza. One of the few remaining survivors of the Nakba, he narrates his experience of displacement in 1948 and how his family settled in Gaza in the Nuseirat camp. ‘My testament to my children and grandchildren is to never leave Gaza. We cannot leave Gaza, and we cannot migrate again,’ Abu Seif asserts, noting the miscalculation in 1948 of an eventual return and of leaving to save their lives.

    Narrating the Israeli colonial aggressions he has experienced throughout his life, he describes the genocide as ‘a war of extermination and destruction of humans and nature.’ The description is far more tangible than the word genocide will ever be, particularly now that the international community has diluted its meaning to preserve Israel’s impunity. A destruction of humans and nature is something that anyone anywhere in the world can easily envisage. This narrative brings the consequences of destruction, as well as fear, to the reader’s mind.

    The entirety of this anthology also serves to highlight what a vibrant society Palestinians in Gaza had created before the genocide. Education stands out in particular as one of their achievements. Indeed the tenacity to attempt to study and teach throughout the genocide is remarkable. Ambitions are currently stilted, but dreams are still cherished, An awareness of the many hurdles to overcome in order to create a healthy society post-genocide is also to the fore in many narratives in this collection. As the UNSC hands over the rebuilding of Gaza to the U.S. administration, thus prolonging the genocide, these testimonies will stand in opposition to the U.S.-Israeli narrative. More importantly, they are a sliver of testimony from Palestinians that neither the U.S. nor Israel, have the power to annihilate.

    Feature Image: Ahsanul Haque Z

  • Lebanon: 5,000 Kilometres Away

    Beirut, Mar Elias, 26 November, 7pm.

    Despite the cold wave that hit the city this week (8 degrees Celsius is equivalent to 0 in the Mediterranean), my mother and sister left all the windows and doors open, to prevent the worst. They are – as I type – sitting in my sister’s room in the middle of the apartment. They moved away from the balconies, from the saloon, where chandeliers could fall on their heads. They sat there with a heater and they said they were praying. Praying? I come from a family that does not pray. Well, my sister has started a tradition lately. Transmission in my family is inverted it seems….

    We talked for 15 minutes and then, short of words, I stayed there. I’ve been 45 minutes on the phone, not talking anymore, just in the background, just listening, tele-transporting myself to the house, trying to be present for them, for the neighborhood, for my childhood, for my upbringing, for myself in fact, in silence. A phone call to hear silence, and to witness a bombardment. Waiting with them, for the bombardment. To add some absurdity to the absurdity, I do not want them to wait alone, so I am waiting from afar with them on the phone. Waiting for the sound.

    My mother and sister are also waiting for my other sister, who is blocked in the Hamra traffic. Since the evacuation order was issued an hour ago, people ran off and are acting according to the “safety” measurement. An urban nightmare. My mother and sister are 600 metres away from a location listed as a targeted spot, as part of a list of targeted spots. My mother and sister believe and trust that they are okay and that they will be okay and that everything will be alright.

    They asked me to hang up as my brother needs to talk to mother. I had to hang-up.

    I am 5000 kilometres away, yet I do not feel that I am okay nor do I feel that I am alright. Actually, I do not share their opinion. I am scared, just like last October, when I was scared when the tension started. I am scared like last November, when two monsters were threatening to “Flatten Beirut, like [they] are flattening Gaza”. I am not a geopolitical expert; I have good sensors though. My skin is full of those. I feel events, people and situations (precisely the reason why I am geographically away from Mar Elias at the moment). And what my mother and sister are living now, I also feel it so acutely. My mother’s tone of voice betrays her stoic words. This lady saw it all, she is strong but her voice is shaking. She cannot fake it any longer… I feel ashamed to be away and that she has to see more, more of it, more of the same. Shame. I returned to Beirut in 2018 and had my share until mid-2024. So all I can do is call back and stay on the phone.

    –  Please let me stay with you, do not hang up.

    I am a scared mother, I am scared. I am scared just like we had to hide in the corridor for long nights in 1989 when the “East-West” War was on. When, for some reason, we were stuck in a corridor despite being totally outside the “East-West” logic. I am scared just like in 1990, during the War of Liberation, when we had to run, father and I, from Verdun up-hill home, using walls as our only shelter, moving like lizards, from wall to wall until we reached home, when his forty-five-year-old body was hiding mine of 5 years old. It is striking how I can still remember his body twitching.  I am scared, just like in 2006, when our house was shaking like an autumn leaf because of its proximity to the southern suburb area.

    –   Mama, how do you feel? What did you eat for lunch?
    –   I cooked green beans and rice, and …

    Mother’s voice is cut, muted for a moment; it agonizes for seconds.

    –  Mama! Are you okay?
    –  I am okay. I think something blew off… the floor shook a bit.
    –  Mama, are you okay?
    –  Yes, yes, I am fine… It is done, it’s over. “That was it!”, she adds in a reassuring tone, as if nothing happened, not to scare me. 

    Then I hear the cry she tames. But I hear it. She swallows it, as she is so good at hiding emotions, suffocating them. I learned a bit of that from her. At least, only when it comes to crying… for the rest I am very explicit. I feel the silent water in my eyes, flooding water as silent as hers.

    Silence.

    That was it: the promised, announced, planned and advertised attack on my mother’s area. Not Hezbollah’s area, not a single-one-of-them area – I will forever refuse such a takeover of my area, as it is simply my mother’s area. That swallowing of something in her throat felt like a violent mutilation. I witnessed my mother’s breath cut by the IDF. My mother who had to silently watch the Israeli soldiers hiding in her parking lot, during the civil war when they entered Beirut West, and specifically our neighborhood, and regularly visited Ali Alwan from the Murabitoun – a collaborating spy. 1981. My mother, whose home office got hit by their bombing, when they were looking for Yaser Arafat, who was located a few buildings away. 1982. My mother, who is not knowledgeable of any military artillery, had a Milan (Missile d’Infanterie Léger Antichar) hitting her roof, and therefore she knows all about Milan missiles. Mother is an expert in Milan missiles actually. She recognizes those, as every militia man went up to observe it under her guidance, before collecting it from her place. She dealt, however, with the dusty remains of the aftermath alone.

    Then she remembered I am still here, as I remained silent and was only capable of writing frenetically. She overcame her emotions, with an unusual sharing of details:

    –  Lily, I am glad you are away. The air is polluted, dusty, black powder on all surfaces here. You cannot touch a surface. You cannot breathe well. Every day, I thank God for being alive and for you being away.

    –  Well, mama I know how cumbersome I am to you…

    –  No, you wouldn’t have been able to run. You wouldn’t have taken it.

    –  I cannot run anymore as much as I did since the Explosion, mama. Also, I am not only a runner… it is not the only activity I live for….

    –  Lily, water is scarce and cleaning your 15 meters’ balcony every day and planting bulbs and seeds weekly wouldn’t be easy… you would not have really dealt with the rationing …

    –  You didn’t tell me that last time we spoke.

    –  Do you really need to know everything? You’re tiring, you always want to know everything….

    She has been actually lying, since I left she has been lying. She avoids telling me whatever goes wrong. I always discover the truth later.

    Then she screams: “Nathalie, do not step on the balcony! Stay inside”.

    –  Lily, we need to take a phone call; someone is calling us.

    She hangs up on me for the second time.

     

    Dublin, Portobello, 26 November, 6pm.

    I feel alone and lonely and utterly sad. I am in an early time zone, and I feel left behind, not only in space but also in time. I do not want to be there; she is perfectly right. My nervous system would not be up to it. She knows her kids well, despite the opacity and the thick curtains of hidden emotions we built between each other, her and I. She is tougher and so are my sisters. Maybe because I left at 22. They never left. She never left, she never left Lebanon, never left Mar Elias. It’s her hood, that made it ours, as per our matriarchy.

    I called again in ten minutes. They didn’t even talk to me; they opened the line and continued conversing. Nathalie tells mother: “The ceasefire has been announced”. My sister should be delusional. A ceasefire while we just got “raped”? How is that possible?

    I open my news channels. “Israel approves ceasefire deal with Lebanon, continues to heavily strike Beirut and various areas”, Beirut Today.

    It’s surreal.

    Middle East Eye (MEE) reports: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said his war cabinet had approved a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon that will pause fighting for 60 days. He promised that Israel’s war on Gaza will continue. US and Arab officials told Middle East Eye that under the agreement, Israeli forces will withdraw from south Lebanon. Hezbollah has agreed to end its armed presence along the border and move heavy weapons north of the Litani River, the sources said. The Lebanese army is expected to deploy in south Lebanon, with at least 5,000 troops set to patrol the border area along with an existing UN peacekeeping force. An international committee, including the US and France, will be established to supervise the implementation of the ceasefire agreement and UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last major war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. Hezbollah is yet to comment on the deal. US President Joe Biden will speak later on Tuesday. A senior US official told MEE that Israel will not be granted the right to attack Lebanon based on any suspicious movements”.

    I have not been sleeping well. I have been sleeping either little or lightly. I’ve also been having nightmares, night sweats and uneasy mornings. Last night, I slept light and little. I was late and have a deadline tonight. David, a recently made friend, texts: “Phibsborough this evening, we can listen to traditional music, do you want to join? “Music? The Irish’s best skill… I have not eaten yet, I had a work meeting. I am hungry, I also need to pee, and work and sleep early if I can, but the silence is heavy. Irish Music. It is like finding evidence of God when one was just doubting the concept. My eyes are itching. I scrub my eyes, bite my nails’ skin, it tastes salty. My eyes should be salty. I want water on my body and water in my eyes.

    I finally stand and walk in circles, something I often do when lost in my own cage of thoughts… I start looking for eye drops. I need eye drops for sensitive eyes and maybe to be around people making music. Because it’s been months of sonic booms, thunder of bombardments, knocks of explosives, bursts of war tokens, and ongoing buzz, yet all I need is music. My ears feel a deep, deep silence though: a silence similar to a soundless bombing. I imagine that I am deaf. What if I became deaf for real? The silent break in my mother’s voice swallowing the attack, absorbing the shock, stayed in a cochlear space in my body, more profound than any sound I have ever heard.

    It is silent peace time, and time for traditional Irish lyre…

    Feature Image: Moment Israeli strike hits building in Beirut’s southern suburbs | AFP

  • Lebanon: Domestic Considerations May Prove Decisive to Hezbollah

    Media coverage of the war currently unfolding in Lebanon describe Hezbollah as an “Iranian-backed” group, and frame the conflict as one between them and Israel. In this reading, little attention is given to Lebanon beyond Hezbollah, nor that Hezbollah, for all its links to Iran, is first and foremost a Lebanese group embedded in Lebanon’s sociopolitical fabric. As Michael Young at the Carnegie Middle East Centre also points out, while Hezbollah’s military superiority enables it to act unilaterally, and undermine the Lebanese state at any given moment, the armed group must still weigh into consideration its relations with other domestic actors, both allies and adversaries, in order to secure its longer-term presence in Lebanon.

    War with Israel will strain these relations. Israel’s brutal response has already killed over 2,000 people, displaced over a million, and destroyed homes across Lebanon. Israeli atrocities will likely breath fresh life into the Lebanese resistance, birth a new generation of Hezbollah fighters, and contribute to an even greater level of anti-Israel sentiment across Lebanon. But simultaneously, the damage inflicted on Lebanon will make many call into question Hezbollah’s unilateral course of action in launching rockets into Israel since October 7th last year.

    So far, the only material result of these attacks has been to bring harm to Lebanon, with no obvious benefit to the Palestinian cause beyond the symbolic show of solidarity with Hamas. And Lebanon has enough problems as it is. The country continues to suffer in the wake of a gargantuan economic collapse that has hollowed out state institutions, and sent poverty rates spiralling over the past five years.

    Criticism of Hezbollah is valid, but should not be allowed to reinforce Netanyahu’s narrative that Lebanon has been “kidnapped” by Hezbollah, or that if Hezbollah were out of the picture, a process of normalisation could begin between the two countries. While it is true there are some political actors in Lebanon who secretly harbour a desire for normalisation, most notably the Christian far right, it is equally true that Palestinian solidarity, and an appetite for anticolonial resistance against Israel, extends beyond Hezbollah to wider Lebanon.

    The opening years of Lebanon’s Civil War in the mid-1970s showed this. A pro-Palestinian coalition of Lebanese groups led by Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt formed an alliance to challenge the Christian far right who were trying to expel the Palestinians from Lebanon. It is also worth noting how today, US-led funding for the Lebanese army is deliberately limited, with no supply of the sort of weaponry that could render them a match for Israel. It may be argued that the non-state position of resistance to Israel is inevitable, given the West’s unconditional support for Israel would never allow the Lebanese army to assume such a position, even if it enjoyed a democratic mandate to do so.

    Domestic criticism of Hezbollah and opposition to Israel are not mutually exclusive. Over the past decade, Hezbollah’s revered status as the resistance to Zionist aggression has depreciated. The group’s stances towards various events in Lebanon and Syria have exposed them as being part of a corrupt political establishment that it so often claimed to stand apart from. Hezbollah’s decision to enter the Syrian Civil War in support of the Assad regime was hugely controversial and pitted it against Sunni Islamist opinion both in Lebanon and regionally. Indeed, news of Hassan Nasrallah’s death prompted scenes of jubilation in Idlib, the last holdout against the Assad regime in post-war Syria.

    Mass Protest Movement

    More recently, in 2019, when a hugely optimistic mass protest movement erupted in Lebanon demanding an end to the country’s corrupt sectarian system, Hezbollah intervened decisively against the protestors, denouncing the movement as a plot by foreign embassies trying to destabilise Lebanon. In late 2019 and into 2020, Hezbollah-affiliated gangs were commonly seen confronting street protestors in Beirut, thuggishly trying to intimidate them off the streets.

    Hezbollah’s thuggery was made visible once more in 2021, when a prominent Hezbollah critic and civil society activist Lokman Slim was found murdered in his car in South Lebanon. The judicial case into the killing failed to make any progress, reflecting a culture of impunity that Hezbollah enjoys in Lebanon.

    Hezbollah impunity was the focus of heated criticism in the aftermath of the massive explosion at the Beirut port in 2020, which came about when thousands of tons of fertiliser exploded in a warehouse, killing over 200 people and causing heavy damage to much of the capital. Many believed that the suspicious presence of such a fertiliser which can been used to make improvised explosives, was somehow linked to Hezbollah operations. The unexplained failure of repeated bureaucratic efforts to remove the dangerous material from the port, hinted at opaque Hezbollah interference, possibly linked to Syria. The group was the first to publicly reject calls for an international investigation into the port explosion, further placing them under suspicion and above the law.

    Because of the port’s location in the city, the explosion did most damage to Christian neighbourhoods in East Beirut. This circumstance helped stir up anti-Hezbollah sentiment among Lebanese Christians. This is significant because one of Hezbollah’s major domestic allies since the mid-2000s, has been a Christian party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM). The alliance with the FPM was informally articulated through the Mar Mikhael Agreement, that effectively gave Hezbollah political cover and greater legitimacy for their armed presence in Lebanon.

    The FPM’s longtime leader Michel Aoun became president of Lebanon in 2016, further securing Hezbollah’s position. But his presidential term ended in 2022, and he is yet to be replaced as political power brokers, including Hezbollah, fail to agree on a successor. Lebanon’s current presidential vacuum is casting uncertainty toward Hezbollah’s place within domestic politics.

    Meanwhile the FPM have been heavily criticised by other Christian parties including the Lebanese Forces, for aligning themselves with Hezbollah and failing to protect Christian interests, as the devastation from the Beirut explosion served so well to demonstrate. With parliamentary elections scheduled for 2022, the Lebanese Forces sought to capitalize on anti-Hezbollah sentiment and courted Christian voters frustrated with the FPM’s passive collaboration with Hezbollah. This meant adapting a bullish attitude towards Hezbollah, particularly in relation to the Beirut explosion.

    Funeral of the Hezbollah members killed in the clashes.

    The Tayouneh Incident

    Tensions came to a head in October 2021 with the Tayouneh Incident. Hezbollah and its allies organised a protest to the Ministry of Justice in Beirut against the Beirut Port investigation. The protesters consisted of Hezbollah and its allies’ Shia’ supporters from South Beirut, many of whom were armed. When the crowd reached a major junction called Tayouneh, demarcating where Christian East Beirut begins, a segment of the protesters entered adjacent neighbourhoods and were fired on by Christian gunmen positioned in surrounding high rises, most likely affiliated with the Lebanese Forces.

    Street fighting ensued all afternoon, with six Hezbollah-affiliated gunmen killed. The incident put Beirut on a knife edge with many fearing the outbreak of a new civil war. The location of Tayouneh was ominously symbolic. It was here that a Christian militia attack on a busload of Palestinians in 1975 set in motion Lebanon’s fifteen year long civil war.

    The parliamentary elections went ahead in 2022. The FPM lost seats, and the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces made substantial gains, becoming the country’s largest Christian party. This, combined with the presidential vacuum, means the political cover that Hezbollah enjoyed under the Mar Mikhael agreement is no longer in place.

    Fast forward to current events and none of these political considerations seem immediately relevant. Israel has now brought the war to Lebanon and the country for the foreseeable future is locked into Hezbollah’s war of resistance. But Hezbollah has been hit hard. Its’ military strength, carefully accrued over decades, has been severely depleted.

    Some estimate that about half of the Lebanese group’s arsenal of rockets and missiles have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, though it is hard to be sure. Since early summer, a string of senior Hezbollah commanders have been killed by Israel, including the party’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah on 27 September. To kill Nasrallah, Israel dropped 80 American-made ‘bunker busting’ bombs, weighing 2,000 pounds each, on Hezbollah’s underground command centre in the heart of South Beirut.

    The attack shook the whole capital, levelling six residential buildings and leaving a massive crater of rubble, with Nasrallah and others dead and buried underneath. This devastation came just as Hezbollah was reeling from Israel’s attack on their communication systems, as hundreds of pagers and walkie talkies used by Hezbollah operatives, simultaneously exploded killing approximately 32 people, including children.

    A Rainy Night in Saifi – Luke Sheehan and Nadim Shehadi in conversation

    Infiltration

    Within the space of a few weeks, Israel has shown how devastatingly extensive their infiltration of Hezbollah has been over the past few years. Until now, analysts tended to emphasise how Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War enabled the group to expand and increase its strength. Now commentators are pointing out how the group may be over-extended.

    A recent article in the Financial Times pointed out how the need for more recruits in Syria, collaboration with corrupt Syrian officers, and Russian intelligence likely provided Israel with opportunities to better infiltrate the group. There are also rumours of an Israeli-planted Iranian spy who has gained close access to Hezbollah in recent years and potentially played a role in the killing of Nasrallah. The Israeli attack was based off real-time information regarding the former leader’s whereabouts. The use of AI in satellite and drone footage to detect Hezbollah locations, and of sophisticated surveillance systems like Pegasus have also likely played a part in giving Israel the clear upper hand over their rival.

    While Hezbollah may be weakened, they likely retain significant strength. An Israeli ground invasion will meet dogged guerilla resistance from thousands of determined and well-trained Hezbollah fighters with substantial, albeit depleted, firepower. Hezbollah are well dug in. Bogging down IDF soldiers in endless guerilla warfare will help them change the narrative that so far has gone against them.

    This narrative may play a part in shaping the Hezbollah that emerges out of this conflict. A major question will be Iran’s ability to support Hezbollah’s military recovery. Hezbollah relies on its military superiority within Lebanon to coerce other Lebanese actors into forming political arrangements that favour Hezbollah.

    Events in recent years have, however, destabilized these arrangements and brought Hezbollah and Lebanon to an uncertain political juncture. Now, the war with Israel threatens Hezbollah’s military superiority. Together these developments raise uncertainty as to how Hezbollah will emerge from this conflict and whether they will be able to retain their dominant political position in Lebanon once the dust settles. Such domestic considerations may ultimately prove more decisive to Hezbollah decision-makers than the current confrontation with Israel.

    Feature Image: Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, May 2023

  • The Austrian Mind

    There still exists – even today – a yearning, a nostalgia for European solidarity, a solidarity of European culture. Regrettably, solidarity itself no longer exists, except in hearts, in consciences, in the minds of a few great men at the heart of each nation. European consciousness – or what one might call a ‘cultural European awareness’ – had been on the wane for years ever since the awakening of national identity. You could say that patriotism has killed Europe.
    Joseph Roth, On the End of the World (first published in 1933).

    Late last month 28.9% of Austrians voted for the Freedom Party (FPÖ) led by Herbert Kickl, an avowedly anti-migrant, anti-Islamic party, founded in the 1950s by former Nazis. The governing conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) gained 27.5% lost 20 seats, while its coalition partner, the Greens received 8.2%, losing 10 seats. In third place, the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) received 21.1%, marking its worst result ever. In fourth place, the liberal NEOS increased its share to 9.1%.

    We can only hope that the conservatives do not enter into a coalition with Kickl’s party as Hindenburg did with Hitler’s Nazi party. Perhaps a Dutch solution will at least dilute the forces of darkness. Kickl was formerly the speech writer of the now-deceased long-time leader of the Freedom Party, Jörg Haider, but Kickl is far less ambiguous in his pronouncements than his former boss.

    What’s clear is that the far right is on the rise across Europe, Ireland and the world. My own childhood in Ireland, as a half-Austrian, not unlike Hugo Hamilton’s experience as recounted in his autobiography The Speckled People, involved casual racism and bullying on account of my background.

    At one level Austria is among the most cultured of nations.  So, I defend it. Ma Vlast as Smetana said about Czech Bohemia, albeit a defensive posture often leads to a failure in understanding. Why Kickl? What is the Austrian Mind that has created this?

    Mozart family, c. 1780 (della Croce); the portrait on the wall is of Mozart’s mother.

    Mozart of Salzburg

    My family, who I am close to, hail from Salzburg, home of the Fespiele. Mozart was, of course, born in Salzburg where a little museum glorifies his brief tenure on Earth. Mozart’s music combines lyricism, frivolity and profundity in equal parts. What it points to in the human condition is not just chocolate-box fripperies, or the texture of lightness that is Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, but the darkness therein. Darkness threads through the Austrian mind, juxtaposed with light.

    Thus, Don Giovanni is about the destructive powers of rakish satanism, also evident in Stefan Zweig’s arguably best book beautifully filmed by Max Ophuls’ Letters from an Unknown Women.

    In Mozart also the incomparable Magic Flute splendidly rendered into film by Ingmar Bergman, is in effect about the dubious justification of freemasonry to which Mozart belonged; and also, a cri de coeur, in praise of enlightened and benevolent monarchism against the vectors of state and, in particular, church authoritarianism. This assertion of a wise moderation against extremism resonates today.

    The great enfant terrible of Austrian letters and its greatest post-war writer Thomas Bernhard was gloriously insulting about Austria. His masterpiece Woodcutters (1984) is about a man in a chair at a party sipping Champagne. Letting fly at Austrian bourgeois hypocrisy, he says:

    Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretence, never genuine, never real.

    In his will, Bernhard ordered that none of his works should be performed in Austria. This has been deliberately avoided. All cultures have their tropes.

    The Merry Widow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv1GNZCyL64

    Austrian Kitsch

    Culturally, Austrians, along with the Irish and British, have far too close a relationship with kitsch. The Merry Widow light operetta, like a jaded ritual, is still performed in the Lehrer Theatre in Bad Ischl and elsewhere. The Blue Danube is not unlike a classic Britpop song.

    The great Herman Broch was fascinated by kitsch, linking it correctly to a decline in values:

    The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se, forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system.”

    In some respects, the triumph of kitsch paves the way for Nazism, as Broch and indeed Robert Musil have both argued. Radical evil and bad art is evident in our age too. This is a kind of camp fascism which Susan Sontag also identified.

    Beethoven was of course German, but lived and died in Vienna. His darkness is a counterpart to Mozart’s light. His deafness influences the isolated pessimism of the later atonal dark sonatas, and are close to the finality of expression in musical terms that Beckett created in language.

    His final string quartet is integral to Dr Faustus by Thomas Mann, where the satanic composer, modelled on Heidegger, sells his soul to the devil.

    I have found that it must not be. The good and the noble, what they call the human, even though it is good and noble, what men have fought for, have stormed citadels for, and in their moment of fulfilment, have jubilant proclaimed it is not to be. It is not to be, it will be taken back. I will take it back.

    Mann, the great German conservative, had the moral integrity to decamp to the U.S. and to Switzerland, but a crucial point to appreciate is that conservatism is not all bad if it conserves the good and the ethical too. So, the Christian Democrats in Austria have a stark choice, whether to embrace satanism or not.

    Sleepwalkers

    The rise of Nazism is also anticipated brilliantly in Broch’s The Sleepwalkers, one of the great novels of Austrian heritage. In the character of Hugenau, a man solely motivated by profit – homo economicus to use the term favoured by the nefarious law and economics movement in Chicago – we have a real sense in 1918 of a brutalised generation containing the seeds of fascism. The book culminates in the murder of a journalist and the rape of his wife.

    This is akin to neoliberal Europe today where meaningful journalism has been effectively killed and defiled, as state-sponsored criminals launch hatred at ‘the other.’ Off with their heads, or to Rwanda, or now Albania.

    The legendary Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke in The White Ribbon, based in pre-war Germany at the turn of the twentieth, demonstrated how damage had been done to a whole generation by a cruel form of authoritarianism. Today, social media has augmented the problem of semi-literacy. Strange fruit, as Billie Holiday would say, is ready for demonisation. In Ireland the neoliberal governing parties have generated the social conditions for riots and a new decadence.

    As for Italy, the land of Fellini and Da Vinci, where the far-right mayor of Monfalcone near Joycean Trieste has banned cricket as she does not like Bangladeshi people in her town; they only play cricket she says and contribute nothing. The fact that such football clubs as AC Milan was originally a cricket club seems lost on her. Mayor Anna Maria Casing, elected on an anti-immigration platform is now an MEP. Her far-right colleague, prime minister Meloni prosecuted Roberto Saviano the legendary journalist for calling her a bastard over her immigration policies.

    So, Austria is not alone in its infamy.

    The darkly pessimistic Herman Broch shows how the far right and populism go hand-in-hand with hatred:

    It is always he, unfortunate wretch, who assumes the role of executioner in the process of value-disintegration, and on the day when the trumpets of judgment sound it is the man released from all values who becomes the executioner of a world that has pronounced its own sentence.

    The Rathaus (City Hall), the seat of the local government.

    Golden Age

    The golden age of Vienna ended peremptorily with the dismembering of the Austrian empire, after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo sparked the inferno of World War I, when leaders sleepwalked into war. This is the state of somnambulism that Broch also identified evident in Musil.

    The word Kaakinen is Broch’s playful word for Vienna which, in effectively means shit. Thus, he writes in The Man Without Qualities:

    Stupidity is active in every direction and can dress up in all the clothes of truth. Truth, on the other hand, has for every occasion only one dress and one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

    In Zweig’s retroactive memoir The World of Yesterday there are references to Freud and Herzl (one of the founders of Zionism), among the titanic intellectual figures of pre-war Vienna. These are curiously name-dropped like the celebs of our time, but in a curious state of derealisation of how history is closing in. Freud, who was Austrian, died as an emigre from fascism in the U.K..

    Whether the concept of hysteria is sexual or not, no doubt this is a hysterical age where all sorts of fantasises are being sublimated into nefarious activities and agendas – and indeed where persecution delusions are omnipresent. This leads to the scapegoating of immigrants.

    Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1930.

    The Sound of Silence

    Ludwig Wittgenstein is central to our age of distortion and manipulative language. The fundamental achievement of his Tractatus is a recognition of the limitations of language. It can only show and represent, he argues, and, within limitations, clarify. Thus, language is context-specific, self-limiting and denuded of ethical and moral context.

    Reading Wittgenstein, like reading Hemingway, Camus, and Beckett, clarifies how language should be used clearly, and is most useful for everyday life, but not ethics. The final line of the Tractatus has acquired a mythical status: ‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.’

    Silence is important, but when we can speak let us speak out ethically. A recent Austrian Nobel laureate is Peter Handke is a great writer, though not in Thomas Bernhard’s league. Handke’s flirtation with the Serbian cause, however well-intentioned and misconstrued, leave a degree of doubt, given the Austrian mindset, but there is a rich warm humanism in his work.

    Handke argues you must create silence or, rather, the effect of silence, through words. A Sorrow Beyond Dreams his recent recollections of his mother’s suicide is jaw-dropping, and among the best books published in the last ten years. So let us create the silence of words, before it is too late.

    Feature Image ‘Avenue in the park of Schloss Kammer’ produced by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt in 1912 whilst he was living near the village of Unterach on the southern shore of lake Attersee in Austria.

  • Podcast: ‘Inside the Belly of the Beast: Reporting on U.S. Foreign Policy from Washington D.C.’ with guest Anya Parampil

    Listen to the second half on Apple Podcasts

    or

    Patreon

    As a journalist, Anya Parampil is unafraid of rattling the cage. She now writes for the Grayzone, founded by her husband Max Blumenthal in 2015, an online publication which aims to ‘break through any narrative of the day that is pushing the United States’ public in support of war.’ Previously she worked as a producer and broadcaster, then an anchor correspondent, for Russia Today (U.S.), from which she was fired, after refusing to accept restrictions on her reporting of U.S. foreign policy.

    In this podcast Anya likens writing about U.S. foreign policy from Washington D.C. to working inside ‘the belly of the beast’. Her work charts the policy machinations emanating from what she describes as a ‘deep state’ whose power, she argues, exceeds democratically elected politicians.

    Anya is the author of Corporate Coup – Venezuela and the End of US Empire (Or Books, New York, 2023), which dissects the motivations of the U.S. government, under the presidency of Donald Trump – directed in particular by figures such as John Bolton and Eliot Abrams – to sponsor a shadow government of Venezuela under Juan Guaído to challenge President Nicolás Maduro.

    As we approach another Presidential election, Anya sees little hope of a change in approach from the U.S. towards a country containing greater oil reserves than any other country on planet Earth. She maintains hope, however, that an alliance that includes isolationist supporters of Trump and progressive elements within the Democratic Party could in time tame the beast of this seemingly permanent government, and retains a faith that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution on free speech will allow her to continue her work.

    Episode Credits:

    Host: Frank Armstrong

    Music:

    Loafing Heroes – ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com

    Produced by Massimiliano Galli – https://www.massimilianogalli.com

  • The Israeli Project

    So, Israel. Is it a good thing? Was it a justifiable demand for a ‘homeland’ by a horribly persecuted people? Is it a land grab, dressed up in religious and ethnic cod history? Is it a cynical manipulation of a dream by U.K. colonial, later U.S. imperial, self-interests?

    Or could it have been what Jewish socialist writer Isaac Deutchser called, a totsieg, a ‘victorious rush into the grave’ spearheaded by Zionists, determined to have Palestine no matter what the cost, be the terrible truth?

    Of course, OF COURSE, by any standard even approaching decency the Jewish people should be able to live in security and safety. After what the world has done to them as a people, safety and security should be the bare minimum.

    As it should be for every human being. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine.

    Tragically, from its inception the ‘Israeli project’, the vaunted Jewish homeland that was to solve all Jewish problems, has been racist and colonial. Predicated on apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

    Many, including many Jews, would argue Israel in its present state threatens not just the security and safety of the Palestinian people, but of the whole world.

    If, as famous Israeli historian Ilan Pappe pointed out, ‘the Zionists understood from the beginning that the only way to establish a Zionist state was to cause the Palestinians to leave’, they must have understood the dangers.

    ‘Zionsm is a racist movement seeking capital to colonise land and exploit religion’ said Pappe.

    he delegates at the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Switzerland (1897).

    Expulsion

    Palestinans ‘leaving’ was always part of the story. As Zionism’s founding fathers Herzl, put it: ‘we shall endeavour to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed—the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly’.

    The thing is most people – rich, poor or middling – don’t take kindly to being shoved off their land or out of their homes, however ‘discreetly’.

    The Zionists tried to make out Palestine was a shithole, ‘a malarial swamp’ in Lloyd George’s words. That no one wanted. Early on in the project two rabbis were dispatched to Jerusalem to report on the lay of the land: ‘The bride is beautiful’ said the surprisingly truthful rabbis, ‘but she is married to another man’.

    That man was Palestine. O well.

    Plans to establish a home in a ‘land without a people, for a people without a land’, barged ahead.

    Who cared that this vaunted ‘land without a people’ actually held one and a half million Palestinians on it?

    That far from being a ‘malarial swamp’ it was fertile, with cities, farms, orchards, waterways, harbours, schools, markets, a functioning administration, and much loved by its people.

    Jerusalem on VE Day, 8 May 1945.

    Enter the British.

    Still in full colonial mode the Brits decided having Palestine under their control could be extremely useful. The Suez Canal was close by. It was bordered by Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt.

    In good old colonial divide and conquer mode, they threw their weight behind the Zionist movement now gathering members, and financial backers, throughout Europe and America.

    When the British walked into Palestine, Zionists literally walked in alongside them.

    Britain’s Governor General said: ‘our aim is to create a loyal little Jewish Ulster in Palestine. To ‘guard against a sea of hostile Arabism’.

    Lovely.

    The British government ‘gave’ Palestine to the Zionists, and heartily encouraged Jewish ‘ingathering’, while openly supporting, armed, and turning a blind eye to the vicious terrorist activities of Zionism’s infamous militias.

    ‘We have a strong presence on the ground here’ boasted one militia group, ‘the British cannot say no to us’.

    Zionist communes were encouraged and financed, to buy up thousands of acres of Palestinian land and expel the farmers. Zionist militias did what they wanted to the Palestinians, while inward migration of Jewish peoples from Russia, Eastern Europe, Europe and America increased tenfold.

    As Zionist terrorists and British soldiers bullied, harassed and belittled the Palestnians, a census of the entire territory was carried out, by the British, aided by Zionists who often entered Palestinian villages disguised as indigenous Arabs taking advantage of traditional Palestinian hospitality, which welcomed, and fed, strangers.

    Every single Palestinian village was listed and mapped, the number of men who might resist, where the stores were kept down to the number of olives and apricots on the trees. Crucially how the village could be accessed and exited from.

    Arab revolt against the British.

    Resistance

    When a Palestinian resistance movement rose up, distraught at the stealing of their land, the lack of civil rights, the blatant privileging of the Zionists, and an ever-increasing inward flow of Jewish migrants, the British, and their Zionst pals, were armed with a blueprint of every single village’s strengths and vulnerabilities.

    The uprising was put down with extreme brutality.

    By its end, three years later, all Palestinian men of fighting age had been wiped out. Thousands of Palestinians driven out, their land confiscated, their homes blown up, while Zionist militias roamed the streets triumphant.

    When the ‘catastrophe’, the Naqba came with Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948, and the ejection of Palestinians, Palestinians were defenceless. Hundreds of thousands were forced into exile and refugee camps, carrying what they could on their backs. Their abandoned villages and orchards instantly taken over by the Zionists, or what was now the Israeli government. During the Naqba 530 villages were destroyed.

    Then, as one commentator said, the Israelis were handed a ready-made State. The only difference workers noticed when they came into their offices the next day was that their Palestinian colleagues had been expelled. From their own country.

    Having utilised their favourite colonisers trick of pitting an implanted group against the local people to further their own ends, the British buggered off, leaving an unfolding catastrophe behind them.

    Just as they did in India. In Ireland. In Sri Lanka. In huge swathes of Africa where inequality, historic injustices and bitter racial divisions poison all life and all political institutions to this day.

    Palestinian resistance, already fatally wounded by the British, was helpless as Zionist armed terrorist groups surrounded and torched entire villages, blew up Palestinian buildings, killed and displaced hundreds. Entire cities supposed to be under Palestinian control, were surrounded and bombed. All men of fighting age were removed to concentration camps.

    Lovely, hey?

    As Zionist groups – now the Israeli army – grew ever stronger, attacking and taking over village after village, David Ben Gurion wrote: ‘in each attack a decisive blow should be struck. It should result in the destruction of homes and the removal of the population’.

    Sound familiar? Gaza anyone? The West Bank? Silwan?

    Zionism’s deadly history of violence against the Palestinian people hit a peak this past ten days as the Israeli army, armed, thanks to billion dollar yearly gifts, grants and loans from the US, and in furious revenge mode after an attack by Hamas, bombs home after home in Gaza, the biggest open prison in the world, where half the population is under fifteen years of age.

    Who cares if some old granny, or a few terrified children are still in there? Blast away dear boy, blast away. This is Israel. We can do whatever we want to the Palestinians. The West has always said so.

    Fire ahead, say the Americans. We’re monitoring the situation, say the Brits. We love Israel, says Ursula von der Leyen of the EU.

    Warsaw Ghetto boy, perhaps the most iconic photograph representing children in the Holocaust.

    Sympathy for the Jewish People

    The truth is, everyone in the world with a heartbeat sympathises with the Jewish people for seemingly endless pogroms, culminating in the most terrifying pogrom of all, the Holocaust, where six million completely innocent people were burnt, shot, gassed, tortured to death.

    But the Holocaust happened in Germany. In Europe. Almost every country in Europe collaborated with the Nazis in ‘exterminating’ – that terrible word – the Jewish people.

    France, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Belgium, the Channel Islands, Norway, Albania, Romania, Yugoslavia, Latvia, just to name a few.

    Businesses that collaborated include Coca Cola, Ford Motor Company, and IBM.

    American companies in Germany included General Motors, Standard Oil, IT&T, Singer, International Harvester, Eastman Kodak, Gillette, Coca-Cola, Kraft, Westinghouse, and United Fruit.

    Hollywood studios ‘adjusted’ films to Nazi tastes.

    Financial operations were facilitated by banks such as the Bank for International Settlements, Chase and Morgan, and Union Banking Corporation

    And of course delightful German outfits like IG Farben that produced ‘Zyklon B’, the infamous insecticide used by the Nazis to gas millions of Jewish people, communists, socialists, Romanies, jazz players, gays, and ‘undesirables’.

    The Allies, horrified at what they’d found in the concentration camps, vowed to destroy IG Farben after the War.

    But the top twenty-three directors tried at Nuremberg for their involvement in developing the science behind the extermination of millions of human beings, were given risible sentences of two, three or six years.

    And, oops, before you could say ‘O what a lovely Holocaust’ IG Farben  was back in production.

    No real recompense was ever made to the Jewish people. A handful of Nazi top dogs were topped. Others fled to America, North and South or slid back into their old jobs as ‘captains of industry’. As for art ‘to this day, some tens of thousands of artworks stolen by the Nazi’s have still not been located.’ Never mind returned.

    Nobody really paid the price for the horrors perpetrated. Deadly nerve gases magically became pesticides. Companies like IG Farben became vast international corporations gifting humanity: .nerve gases, pesticides, insecticides, heroin, Zyklon B, Lindane, DDT, Agent Orange, Bovine Growth Hormone, Round Up, and GM.

    Hey ho. Business is business.

    ‘Somewhere else’

    Instead of truly understanding why and how such hatred had exploded, instead of truly recompensing victims, the idea of a Jewish homeland, of exporting the problem to ‘somewhere else’ was promoted ever more vigorously, gaining mythic status.

    Far easier to promote Valhalla on someone else’s land than deal with European Nazism.

    Exporting the problem to Palestine, which had not been implicated in the torture of a single Jew, never mind the murder of six million Jews in the most horrific ways possible, of stealing the Palestinians land, of getting rid of them by whatever means you could get away with, i,e, anything, was more heavily promoted than ever, with America, now ‘leader of the Free World’, the Zionists new best friend.

    America was more or less happy to play along with Zionism. When Israel won the Six Day War in 1967 – against three Arab nations – they  became genuinely enthusiastic. As one American Senator (Jesse Helms, 1995)put it, ‘Israel is the equivalent of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East. Without Israel promoting its and America’s common interests, we would be badly off indeed.’

    Did somebody say the land on which Israel, Britain and America had built this ‘aircraft carrier’, this  militaristic, ethnocentric, ethnic cleansing, colony, actually belonged to the Palestinian people?

    Em, no. O well.

    Big players play while little people, very often brown or black people, get squished.

    Funnily enough, another REALLY big player in torturing the Jewsh people, the Catholic Church, criminally responsible for placing a target on Jewish people’s backs for two thousand years – as ‘THE PEOPLE WHO KILLED JESUS!’ – seem to get a free pass.

    This vicious and untruthful slur was only rescinded by the Church in 1960!

    ‘A Sorry about that lads’ kind of apology issued forth: ‘yeah shure thousands of ye were murdered and boiled alive for killing yer man when we all knew it was actually the Romans what done it, but no hard feelings, right?’

    Ah yes Catholicism – such a lovely religion.

    Image Gerry O’Sullivan.

    Land of Milk and Honey?

    So folks is Israel a land of milk and honey, or a catastrophe? A homeland for Jewish people built on a Palestinian graveyard? An aircraft carrier for the U.S.? Or a Western ‘dagger’ plunged into the Middle East?

    Who knows where Israeli/Zionist nationalism – fueled by fear, terror, propaganda, militarism and the cynical manipulations of the Big Powers, and a bad conscience – will lead next.

    All out war in the Middle East?

    All out war in the world?

    In the meantime, one can only pray for Gaza. For Palestine. For the ordinary people of Israel not supporting the madness.

    For us all.

    Feature Image: The Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem. Frank Armstrong, 2003.

  • “Shameless” Women of Iran Unite

    Maryam was just a child when one day her parents left her at home alone and took her younger brother to the clinic. They refused to take Maryam, although she insisted.

    When they returned home, Maryam’s brother was in a white skirt in his father’s arms. For some reason they were very happy and congratulated her brother. “You have become a man,” they said. “Well done”. Maryam’s brother was crying, and they went on and on congratulating him on something.

    Maryam wanted to hug her brother and calm him down, but when she approached him, Maryam’s mother immediately pulled her away and said: “What are you doing? Can’t you see he’s in pain? Don’t disturb him until he recovers.”

    Maryam went to her room and plugged her ears so as not to hear his crying. A little later, the whole family – aunts and uncles – came to their house with a lot of gifts and food. Everyone was celebrating and dancing. Maryam’s father bought to her brother a toy car that he promised my brother a long time ago.

    Maryam cautiously asked her mother, “Is it my brother’s birthday today?”

    Her mother answered sharply “no” and left. Maryam was left with many questions in her head: why was everyone rejoicing and congratulating her brother; why was he in a skirt; why was it impossible to approach him? Everyone just said that he had become a man. From that day on, Maryam understood what circumcision meant.

    Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

    Shameless

    Becoming a woman for Maryam turned into a disaster. Maryam still cries when she remembers the first day of her period. That day was the worst in her life.

    One day, when she was returning home from school, she felt severe pain in her stomach. Maryam writhed in pain. Having somehow made it home, she went to the toilet and saw blood on her underwear. She was shaking with fear, and for some reason she felt very ashamed. Overcoming fear and embarrassment, she called her mother. Suddenly, at the moment when Maryam, trembling with fear, was talking about the blood on her underwear, her mother hit her hard in the face, uttering only the word “behaya”.

    The Persian word “behaya” (بی حیا) is used for those who never listen to the rules of the female role. Usually people use the word “behaya” when describing someone’s behaviour as shameless.

    Maryam was shocked and started to cry: “I felt that all my pride and my personality was crushed, that the world had come crashing down on me. I thought, what did I do wrong?”

    Her mother took her hand, “Calm down, don’t cry, it’s a family tradition to follow when a girl first reports her period.” She added that the slap in the face would stop the girl from being shameless and rebellious in future, and would help her to remain worthy and innocent.

    Her mother began whispering to Maryam what it means to become a woman, and that becoming a woman should be kept secret between women. She explained different ways to hide this secret, and showed how and where to hide the menstrual pad before and after using it.

    Moreover, sometimes, according to the assurances of the mother, the pad must be washed so that none of the men sees menstrual blood. The mother said that when Maryam had her period, the brothers and father should know nothing about it.

    Maryam should not behave in such a way that someone understands that she is on her period. From that day on, she learned to hide her pain for a few days each month so that no one would notice that she was on her period.

    That day there were no gifts, no parties, no congratulations on Maryam becoming a woman. Even that purple toy horse, which Maryam had wanted for many years, and which her parents had promised, was never presented to her.

    Iranian protestors on the Keshavrz Boulvard, September, 2022.

    I don’t care even if I get fired or killed

    While Maryam was growing up she had access to the Internet, and at the same time the path to the fight. Masih Alinejad’s “White Wednesdays” campaign on Instagram first showed her this path in 2014. Many women, including Maryam, posted photos without a veil with hashtags.

    Since 2015, Maryam has ventured not to wear a veil: “It was much more difficult not to wear a veil in Tehran than in other regions of Iran. I was arrested every week by the morality police in Tehran. I was molested, I was constantly called the most terrible words every day by both the police and religious people. But I didn’t give up.”

    In March 2018, Maryam left Iran. She now lives in Georgia and works for World Vision and UNHCR as a community group facilitator. Now Maryam Sharifi has become a well-known human rights activist. She is one of those who tirelessly disseminate information about all the crimes of the Iranian regime abroad.

    Feminism and feminist activities are against the Islamic laws in Iran. Therefore, there is no organization or feminist community in Iran. Some large cities have boarding houses or women’s shelters, but these are under government control.

    Maryam considers the elimination of taboos against women and informing women about their rights as the first and main priority in her activism:

    “Unfortunately, the number of women who do not even know or do not want their basic human rights in Iran is greater than the number of feminists or women who are aware of their rights. Many women have accepted the traditional, unequal role of mother or daughter in their family, and they believe in all the laws of Islam, the laws of misogyny.”

    Before agreeing to give an interview, Maryam asked not to censor her words: “I am not afraid of anything and do everything for the freedom of women. People around me are always telling me, “Don’t say things like that. This is dangerous. Your life may be in danger or even fired from your job,” but I don’t care if I get fired or killed. I don’t care, I just want to have a better society for future generations.”

    Maryam Sharifi

    We are silenced when we start talking about Islam

    According to Maryam, Islam and the politics of Islamic countries in the world are resisting the struggle of women in the Middle East with all their might and using the media around the world for this, creating a positive image of Islam:

    “Islam is dangerous for the whole world, but people in the West think that Islam only affects the Middle East and has nothing to do with them. They are even afraid of the reaction of Islamic fanatics. They go to compromise. You can see for yourself in Europe, in the West and all over the world, Muslims promote Islam and violence. The media and international forces are silent and give them space. But when we criticize Islam, we are silenced or censored.”

    Maryam has a Muslim colleague who is a facilitator for a community vision group. At one of the meetings, Maryam recalls, her colleague publicly defended patriarchy, where discrimination was discussed, and said that men should have more rights and power because they are the heads of the family.

    “She even told me once that if she saw a same-gender couple expressing their love in front of her, she would want to kill them. I wonder why this woman should work for a human rights organization? They want to show that a Muslim woman in a veil can be successful, but they do not show what dangerous thoughts this woman has and what dangerous children she can raise.”

    Maryam herself is fundamentally against wearing a veil. She is convinced that it has become a symbol of control over women, imposed around the world for millennia to control the body and role of women.

    I’m in this fucking chador

    A few days before the murder of Mahsa Zhina Amini for improperly wearing a hijab by the morality police in Iran, Dilnaz, a student from Saqqez, wrote: “It’s so hot here, at least 30 degrees, and I’m in a fucking chador.”

    At the university, Dilnaz, like all students, is required to wear a chador. But as soon as the opportunity is given, Dilnaz immediately rips off her chador. She posts photos on Instagram in a traditional Kurdish dress. “In Kurdish culture, there is no obligatory wearing of the hijab or veil. What people know about Iran and its laws against women is the ideology of the Islamic government, not the culture of the peoples living here,” Dilnaz explained.

    Dilnaz was raised by a Kurdish grandmother, who passed on many Kurdish traditions to Dilnaz: “When I got my first period, my grandmother told me to anoint my cheeks with menstrual blood so that, as my grandmother said, my cheeks would always be red.”

    Now Dilnaz reads with gusto all the news about Rojava in northeastern Syria, where the Kurdish liberation movement has proclaimed a women’s revolution, and consoles herself with the hope that one day she will definitely come to Rojava.

    Rojava. Image: Alexis Daloumis

    I’m scared to be here

    Dilnaz is studying under a contract at the university as an elementary school teacher. During her studies, the state pays her a scholarship, and after graduation, Dilnaz will have to work for several years in Iran.

    If Dilnaz violated this contract and refused to work after training, she would have to pay  compensation of approximately eight thousand dollars, a huge sum for her and her family. Moreover, she will have to leave such an amount as a pledge if she wants to leave the country even for a short time. Those are the terms of the contract.

    In addition, Iranian universities have a quota system that limits the number of female students. Many of Dilnaz’s entourage say that she was lucky. But Dilnaz dreams of leaving: “I’m scared to be here. I don’t see any happy future for myself in this country.”

    Dilnaz has an older sister. Her parents forced her to marry a man who, a few days after the wedding, began to beat her. “My parents were very secular people throughout my childhood. But then my father lost his job, our financial situation worsened, and for some reason, after that, my parents suddenly became very religious. After that, they ruined my sister’s life, and I’m afraid the same thing could happen to me. And no one and nothing will save me,” she said.

    Recently, there have been at least three events that directly related to the status of women in Iran. Shortly before the murder of Mahsa Zhina Amini, in the city of Marivan a girl jumped out of a window in an attempt to escape from an attempted rape.

    Protests began in Marivan demanding that the rapist be punished. A little later a death sentence was passed against two LGBT activists – both women. There was also news about the ban on women in commercials in Iran, which was publicised in some foreign media.

    Women cannot leave Iran without the permission of their father or husband. This is one of many laws restricting the rights of women in Iran.

    The are banned from working in ninety-one professions: they cannot be judges, lawyers, geologists, archaeologists.

    Women are also not allowed to play sports, sing and dance in the presence of men. This is considered “avret” – that is, as Dilnaz explains, something shameful.

    Commemoration of Iranians killed in anti Regime protests. Mahsa Amini Protests in Stuttgart, Germany.

    I can stand up for myself

    When the protest movement swept across Iran, Dilnaz wrote: “Don’t worry about me, I’m a Kurdish girl, I can stand up for myself.” She went out to protest every day, and when she returned home, she shared her impressions of what was happening with me: “I was very scared. I have never seen such a lot of police brutality and so many injured people.”

    Dilnaz left her phone at home so that if the police caught her they would not have access to the contacts of her friends, protest news sources, and to her instagram account in which there are photos of her and her friends without veils.

    Women have become a symbol of the current protests in Iran, and not only the deceased Mahsa Zhina Amini. Women in Iran and around the world have taken to social media to post videos of themselves ripping off their veil, burning them and cutting off their hair in protest.

    One of the protesters, Hadis Najafi, who tied her hair into a bun before clashes with police, was shot dead. One of the most common protest slogans was “Woman, Life, Freedom”, which originally emerged from the Kurdish liberation movement in Rojava, northeast Syria.

    In Iran itself protests went on for over eleven days in some cities. As she prepared to protest once more, Dilnaz said: “I am sure that these protests will not be easily suppressed. I believe we can make a difference.”

    Then the Internet was turned off all over Iran, and when it was turned back on Dilnaz did not appear online anymore.

    At this stage, according to various sources, more than 76 people have died in the protests in Iran, thousands have been injured, and more than 1200 have been arrested. There are even children among the dead.

    Feature Image: Mahsa Amini Protests in Stuttgart, Germany.

    Follow Liza Shishko on Instagram.

  • Maasai Forced off Land by UAE Royals

    Forcing indigenous peoples off ancestral lands to create so-called Gardens of Eden, pasture for grazing, or massive dams, is nothing new. It forms the basis of many colonial and neo-colonial projects.

    Recall the clearance of hundreds of thousands of small Irish farmers friom the1840s. Or the formation of the national parks of America, led by John Muir, considered the Daddy of wilderness projects, who openly stated that his nature parks would NOT include people, particularly not the indigenous people whom he regarded as ‘unclean’ blots on his perfect ‘wilderness’.

    Thanks to Muir, thousands of First Nation American Indians were driven off lands they had lived on for hundreds of years, to make way for National Parks; places where they would never be welcome.

    In more recent days Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been ramping up his rhetoric, encouraging the rape and pillage of the Amazon, forcing thousands of indigenous Indian tribes from their lands.

    Amazonia. © Arison Jardin

    Lovely hey?

    That a similar atrocity is now being visited on the Maasai people who have lived on, and with, their lands in northern Tanzania for hundreds of years, long before Tanzanian independence, to create killing fields for the super-rich Royal family of the UAE is deeply shocking.

    Since the 1980’s a luxury safari company – the Otterlo Business Company (OBC) – has been trying to complete a deal with the Tanzanian government whereby hundreds of thousands of Maasai will be driven from their ancestral lands. 1,700 acres is to be stolen from them to create a private shooting park for the UAE Royal family and their super rich mates.

    Acting for the Royal family, the OBC, a hugely wealthy private safari set up, have had their eyes on privatising thousands of acres of Ngorongoro, and Loliondo, key parts of the Maasai homeland in Northern Tanzania for decades.

    Ironically, part of these lands were actually set aside for royalty under British colonial rule – in the ‘good old days’. These days, thanks to OBC, ‘hundreds of members of Arab royalty and high-flying businessmen spend weeks each year hunting antelope, lion, leopard and other wild animals’.

    The area is leased (under the Otterlo name) by a member of an Emirati royal family who is a senior officer in the UAE defence ministry ministry.

    The OBC is no newcomer to the ‘big game’ slaughter scene. They have been busy in Tanzania’s wildlife parks for decades. Under a deal brokered with the Tanzanian government in 1992, involving the transfer of millions of dollars to Tanzania’s Armed Forces, Maasai homes were burnt down, their cattle stolen or killed, leaving villagers ‘homeless and without food, clothing, land,  water or basic medical needs’. Now they want this deal cemented – and all Maasai removed. Their villages, schools, fields and medical stations destroyed.

    As the leader of the Maasai, Julius Petei Olekitaika, says, ‘Imagine your home being burned in front of you to clear your land for foreigners to hunt. Imagine not being able to graze our cows because the government wants to protect a foreign investor whose only interest is hunting the wildlife.’

    The Tanzanian government, which gets 17% of its GDP from tourism, has made vague gestures towards the Maasai in the past, assuring them they will be protected, but recently pressure has been upped with the government saying the Maasai population is ‘detrimental to wildlife’.

    This is of course nonsense. Hugely wealthy game hunters, with massively powerful rifles,  and virtually no government oversight, have been a good deal more ‘detrimental to wildlife’ than the Maasai.

    Neighbouring Kenya, which banned big game hunting in 1978, says 80% of wildlife which should be funnelling through the corridor between the game parks of Tanzania and Kenya has been affected. Samwel Nangria, a Maasai organiser, says these guys ‘shoot anything they come across’.

    The Maasai on the other hand, famous for their nomadic and pastoral lifestyle that actually depends on maintaining the balance between people, ecology and animals remaining stable, are the ones being demonised, hunted, shot at, and driven from their homes.

    Already impacted by years of racism and bullying to try and get them out, recently the Maasai have had their livelihood​​s further damaged by a blanket ban on planting crops, and by climate change. With a ban on planting, food shortages are now common. In 2022 the Red Cross reported 60,000 of their cattle died.

    In June 2022 the Tanzanian government sent armed soldiers to evict Maasai. Thousands fled. Hundreds were injured as troops opened fire.

    Not that the big game hunters give a damn. All they want is an abundance of animals they can slaughter and to hell with the Maasai. To hell also with climate change.

    For all of us sharing this beautiful planet, and facing our greatest existential crisis – will we actually survive climate breakdown? How can anyone, or any government, justify allowing extraordinarily wealthy men to jet in, with guns, to take the lands, the livelihood and even the lives of a centuries old people so that they the rich ones can kill some of the most beautiful, and some of the most endangered, animals on earth? And probably take photos of themselves doing it.

    ‘For us’ says Samwel Nangiria, ‘the land is a source of knowledge, a source of life, a source of identity’.

    For the hunters one imagines the land is meaningless. Just somewhere to go and kill stuff.

    A few men enriched by this deal may think they’re the smart ones, but wouldn’t Tanzania’s freedom fighting, Socialist, first president, Julius Nyerere, be turning in his grave if he knew?

    I think he would.

    Feature Image: Maasai School, Tanzania, 2009.