I'm going to delete (remake maybe) this blog

Shireen Abu Akleh was a person because she was a person. But to the average American, she was a person because she was a woman, a Christian, an American, a journalist wearing a clearly marked press vest. She even had a dog. When we die, for us to make headlines or for our death to matter, we need to have died spectacular people or have endured a spectacularly violent death. And when I say “spectacularly violent,” I think about somebody like Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old boy who lived across the street from my public high school in Shufat, in occupied Jerusalem, who was kidnapped from in front of his house and burned to death by Israeli settlers. What does it mean to practice a politics of appeal? For decades, well-meaning journalists and cultural workers used a humanizing framework in their representation of oppressed people in hopes of countering the traditional portrayal of the Palestinian as a terrorist. Not only did this produce a false, flattening dichotomy between terrorists and victims, but the victimhood that emerges within this framework is a perfect victimhood, an ethnocentric requirement for sympathy and solidarity. We often overemphasize an oppressed person’s nonviolence, noble profession, disabilities; we ring them with accolades. And we do this not only in the Palestinian context, but also with regard to Black American victims of police brutality: “They were artists” or “They were mentally ill” or “They were unarmed.” It’s as if condemning the state for sanctioning the death of a Black person is permissible only if the slain person is a sterile model of American citizenry. One could say the same about sexual assault victims: We must remind the listener that the victim was sober and dressed appropriately.

[...]

Here’s another perfect-victim situation: There were these two young men, brothers from Beit Rima, a village close to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. One of them had a high-paying job at the Arab Islamic Bank, and the other was studying computer engineering at Birzeit University. They came from a comfortable family. When the Israeli army was raiding their village, which it illegally occupies, these brothers defended their community with stones and whatnot, and they got shot. They both got killed within minutes of each other. Jawad and Thafer Rimawi were their names. Since then, their sister Ru’a Rimawi, who had been studying to become a doctor, a pediatrician, has operated in a field where she has virtually no prior experience: campaigning. She has been sharing eulogies and anecdotes about her brothers with her social media followers. “After each social media post,” she “breaks down,” she told me. She wants to keep their memory alive, especially as they exist within a framework where the Palestinians who are killed on a daily basis receive little to no media attention. “But it’s hard,” she told me, “to convince the world that your brothers’ lives mattered.” It’s not enough that they were killed—she must show that they had careers and they weren’t eager to throw themselves at death. “They had ambition and they had dreams, like anybody in the world.” I have been following Ru’a for the past month as she has been trying to publish an opinion essay about her brothers. We pitched it to The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times. We didn’t try The New York Times. All of them refused or ignored the article. When we talked to a media expert about this, he told us that her article was not getting published because her brothers threw stones at the army. Their victimhood was not a perfect victimhood, so they don’t get a spot in the LA Times.

The Voice of God

by Mary Karr

Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you could be cured with a hot bath, says God from the bowels of the subway. but we want magic, to win the lottery we never bought a ticket for. (Tenderly, the monks chant, embrace the suffering.) The voice of God does not pander, offers no five-year plan, no long-term solution, nary an edict. It is small & fond & local. Don’t look for your initials in the geese honking overhead or to see thru the glass even darkly. It says the most obvious crap— put down that gun, you need a sandwich.

social skills training, solmaz sharif

Mahmoud Darwish, Journal of an Ordinary Grief (يـومـيـات الـحـزن الـعـادي), 1973

Back in the bad old days, colonialism was easy to justify; you just had to say, "Well, they're heathens! Time to introduce Christianity until just about everyone is dead and incidentally become fantastically rich." But then, when liberalism displaced Christianity as the dominant ideology of the West, you needed to get a bit more creative: "Wow, look at how these savages treat their women. Better civilize them for their own good in a way that, rather counterintuitively, involves murdering them (including women) by the millions and, incidentally, also becoming fantastically rich." And that's basically where we've stood ever since, except we now also say "look at how they treat The Gays! Better flatten some residential neighbourhoods over it!" And people just accept this as a perfectly reasonable line of argument, even when they themselves don't particularly like women or gay people.

ingeborg bachmann - malina

say that

say that

I want to sing

You can plug your ears

But let me sing

I want to dance

You can close your eyes

Just please let me dance

the story of the princess on the pea from the perspective of the pea

if you are a fan of the poem "what resembles the grave but isn't," you might be interested to know that the poet, anne boyer, resigned her position at the new york times magazine today, and her letter is worth reading in its entirety.

I like to go "mmmhh miam miam miam" out loud when I'm eating something delicious and do a little happy wiggle. the jaded modernist might chastise it as childish but it is easy for me to enjoy things. I recommend experiencing glee often

Weeping Willow

[Image description: three screenshots from Instagram user mirna_elhelbawi. The first is text reading "We've activated more than 20,000 e-SIMs. But we are fighting time...before this Thursday possible total blackout in Gaza."

The second screenshot reads, "We are running low on: Nomad, Airalo (Global and Menalink), Mogo. Please donate to [email protected]. Connecting Gaza."

The third screenshot is the post caption reading "Donations call. Only these three e-SIMs are needed urgently. We are running low on them and we are receiving thousands of requests before Thursday possible total blackout! Your generosity has made us activate +20,000 e-SIMS. Let's keep #ConnectingGaza." End ID]

Mirna el Helbawi, who is coordinating the Connecting Gaza campaign, has put out a call today (14 November 2023) for e-SIMs from the following carriers before the expected blackout on Thursday:

Nomad (Middle East regional plan)

Airalo global

Airalo Menalink

Mogo (Israel)

Email the QR code that you get in the app, confirmation page, or over email to: [email protected]

mutual aid request

i’m a wildlife conservation bio student living by herself. i have $5 i can take to get my cat a couple cans of wet food later today and that’s everything i have. i’m in the process of clawing my way out of enormous financial hardship, i took a semester off to work and have almost completely paid off what debts aren’t on a payment plan like my utilities. i’m doing a lot better but i still have literally nothing and it is very difficult functioning on a day to day basis with just enough food and gas to get through a couple days. i really don’t need much, just if people could share this so i can stop living in survival mode i would really appreciate it. i have cashapp and venmo - both are graciegrrl444