Portrait of an Iraqi lady, Baghdad, 1961, by Latif Al Ani. From Vetera novis augere, a photography collection of life in Iraq from the 1950s to the 1970s, at the Isabelle van den Eynde Gallery in Dubai.

cannot express how very fucked up it is that if I want a cool hat with like an iraqi design on it or some shit I look on etsy and I fucking find combat veterans hats.i fucking hate that shit.

my great great grandmother had traditional tattoos like full back and three dots on her chin. real old school method too (I think it's called dag دق) but I'm not sure and anytime I try and research iraqi tattoo or traditional iraqi tattoo I get more fucking veteran shit. fucking horrible I hate the US military and the fucking american cultlike obsession with celebrating the destruction of a country so thoroughly that I can't even fucking Google shit about Iraq without getting a US military Jumpscare.

anyway if anyone knows a website that sells arab country merch that'll hopefully do hats lmk. tryna get a hat for my birthday. and if they donate proceeds or a portion of sales that would be bonus

I really need to learn more about Iraq’s posturing on The Situation but for some reason i feel i’ve heard less about the goings on there than any other arabic league nation. very interesting to see the PMF affiliated factions or the IIR moving towards the Syrian border

Ivory Plaque of Assyrian King from Nimrod, Iraq dated between 900-700 BCE on display at the CaixaForum in Madrid, Spain

Furnitue, recieved as tribute from the Western territories of the Assyrian Empire, was brought out for public ceremonies demontrating the might of the king.

Only the ivory decoration however survives and these motifs show the Assyrian preoccupations with opulence and power. These motifs were wild animals, mythological beasts and real people, often dressed for war like this King here.

Photographs taken by myself 2019

Middle Eastern womens

16.1.2009

Iraqi women in Jordan fashion their future

In a Jordanian church, Sarah Nael sews a shirt for a project that has provided scores of women who fled violence in neighboring Iraq with skills to earn a living, as the AFP reports.

Many of the women escaped the extreme violence carried out by the Daesh group’s self-declared “caliphate” that cut across swaths of Iraq and Syria, before they eventually ended up in Jordan — where they found themselves without work.

“Life here is very, very difficult — if we don’t work, we can’t live,” said Nael, a 25-year-old Christian from the northern Iraqi town of Qaraqosh, who joined the “Rafedin” sewing project two years ago.

It is based at St. Joseph Catholic church in the Jordanian capital Amman. Italian priest Mario Cornioli began the project in 2016, along with Italian designers and tailors.

The products, including dresses, jackets, belts and ties, are sold in Amman and Italy to raise funds. For refugees, barred from seeking regular work, the project provides them with a way to supplement handouts from the UN.

“It’s a safe place,” said Nael, who has been taught to create clothes from cloth and leather, while her brother helps in the church’s kitchen. “We are Iraqis. We are forbidden to work anywhere.”

Since the project started, more than 120 women have benefited. “We try to help them with dignity,” said Cornioli, who runs the Habibi Valtiberina Association, an Italian charity in Jordan. “A lot are the only ones working in their families.”

On the tables in rooms in the church building, colorful rolls of cloth lie ready for cutting. Cornioli hopes the “Rafedin” fashion label — meaning “two rivers,” the historical term for Iraq between the Euphrates and Tigris — will become widely recognizable.

While the Daesh extremists were forced out of their Iraqi territory by a US-led alliance in late 2017, many of the refugees in Jordan are still too fearful to go back to their war-ravaged home. Many are still waiting for their painfully slow asylum applications to other countries to be processed.

“This project allowed them to do something and to survive in this period,” Cornioli said. “They are just waiting to leave.” 

Nael and her family returned home after Daesh was defeated in 2017, but they left again after being subjected to anonymous threats, and eventually sought safety in Amman. Their applications for asylum in Australia have been rejected.

“My father is old, and my mother has cancer,” she said, but added that going back to Iraq was out of the question. “We have nothing left there to return to.”

Diana Nabil, 29, worked as an accountant in Iraq before fleeing to Jordan in 2017 with her parents and aunt, in the hope of joining her sister in Australia. During her wait, she studied how to sew fabric and leather.

“Some of our relatives help us financially, and sometimes the United Nations helps us a bit,” Nabil said. “With my work here, we are managing.”

Cornioli said the project offers “the opportunity to learn something,” pointing to “success stories” of some of the women who have since left Jordan, and are now working in Australia, Canada, and the United States.

Wael Suleiman, head of the Catholic aid agency Caritas in Jordan, estimated the country hosts as many as 13,000 Christian Iraqi refugees. “They hope to obtain asylum and leave to a third country, but in light of what is going on in the world now, the doors seem to be closed to them,” Suleiman said.

the idea of a white jesus arose primarily in the 19th century, with the emergence of theories that claimed him for an "aryan race" and claimed he was, among other things, of nordic or germanic extraction. of course, medieval european depictions of jesus also show him to be rather lean and fair, but this is arguably less originating in what we understand as contemporary racism and more from a lack of context, a reliance on the known and familiar. how easy it is to erase a heritage. to know what jesus would have looked like we need to think of his mother. mary was from first century palestine. historical evidence suggests that jews of this period were biologically closest to iraqi jews. so she would have been dark-skinned- she was working class and would have known the sun. her olive complexion would be deeper and darker than contemporary art renders her. her black hair would have been oiled and parted, with the part perhaps painted with henna. she would probably have had a nose ring and earrings. she would have spoken aramaic in a broad galilean accent that her son would have also taken on- looked down on by more sophisticated city-dwellers, but nimble enough that jesus, a carpenter in a port town in a colonized territory, would have probably picked up a little latin and greek from the docks too. jesus would have had short hair and a beard in the fashion of philosophers. he would have had mary's black hair and dark skin. they would both have been short- no more than five feet, five inches. jesus walked everywhere, worked his body hard: he was probably lean-bodied. nicephorus callistus in the fourteenth century said mary's eyes were bright, with pupils like shiny olives, and strong eyebrows. i don't know where callistus gets this information, but i like it. i like the idea of jesus and his mother having arched, black brows, dark skin, dark eyes. when we call him jesus christ we call him yeshua the anointed, yeshua whose head has been touched with olive oil pressed from the olive groves of the palestinian countryside.

Brands so far that DON'T support Israel

(Will add/remove as I know)

Food

Raising Canes

Smoothie King

Trader Joes

Faygo (National Beverage Corporation)

Twinings (Associated British Foods)

La Croix (National Beverage Corporation)

Ovaltine(Associated British Foods) didn't know it was British ngl

Jack In The Box

In-N-Out

Ben & Jerry's

Panda Express

Target (Allegedly, if you buy Starbucks there's, not cups & and merch, but just drinks the money stays with Target and doesn't support SBux? But I'm still making my own drinks.)

Barcel (Takis and such) Have Kosher/Halal options but that also depends on the location of production. Some products and facilities do use Lard (pork)

Hygiene & Beauty & Aesthetic

MamaSia (Organic Beauty products out of Ghana)

MZ Skin (more lab science based skin products, people suggest their retinol formula)

ANZ Clothing (inspired by traditional knit wear of England)

Huda Beauty (Iraqi/American Founder, Huda Kattan has been very outspoken on her wish for Palestines freedom)

Tuesday in Love (Halal nail polish brand originally, they now sell other beauty products and Hijabs)

Comfee (minimalist and comfy garments)

PaliRoots (A Palestinian brand whose goal is to bring awareness to Palestinian culture and heritage)

Lyra Swimwear (modest and fashionable swimwear)

Lush (Y'all probably know Lush, well known for ethical practices and charity work)

Reemami (Palestinian fashion brand inspired by UAE-Fashion)

NURNEI (Palestinian traditional Jewelry)

Meera Adnan (textile brand that helps to bring pride to Palestinian traditional fashion)

Zaid Farouki (Celebrates Palestinian culture and fashion)

(I made this because I also needed this list, I want to know what I can eat)

This website is great for when shopping, search a brand, and it'll tell you if they support or don't support Israel

Removed :

Krispy Kreme (Even though they allowed UCLA to raise money for Palestine. Their owners run the Alfred Landecker Foundation, a zionist foundation spreading misinformation.

Edit Dec 11

Important political rant about the COD fandom:

So. As a SWANA person, it fucking tears me apart seeing people promote and advocate voting for genocide joe. And ever since i was little, i've heard plenty about the war crimes committed in SWANA countries by the usa. So now, seeing you guys say "vote for biden!" because apparently he'll give you your rights is....sickening to say the least. What about the right of muslims in the usa? What about Palestinians? Iraqis? Syrians? And plenty of others, don't forget about the blood on the hands of your presidents.

You care about no one but yourselves, in true american fashion. Your worthless society is built on selfishness and blood. You hold no glory or honour.

Did it not affect you? Seeing lists of Palestinian families killed and wiped out? Children aged only a couple of months, killed? People stuck under the rubble? People tortured? It broke me. Because I'm a SWANA person. It broke me. Because it's genocide, because it's inhuman and cruel and sick and not enough words can expressed horrible how it actually is. It broke me. Because they look like us, because they have the same names as many of us have, because they speak the same tongue many of us do. But it didn't affect you? It didn't break you?

To be americanised is to lose your humanity. And to be westernized is to lose your humanity.

All you care about is yourselves. Your rights, your lives, your comfort, your people, it's always "me me me", never anyone else.

I hope your country falls. From the deepest part of my heart, i hope your country falls and collapses and i hope that i see its death. You smell like blood.

Just vote for a third party and don't vote for a genocidal piece of shit. And no, in case you're fucking stupid, I'm not saying it's any better to vote for Trump. Or maybe it's really difficult for you to let go of your selfishness, your racism, your anti-arab sentiment, your islamophobia. Maybe it's really reaaally difficult on you.

Do me a favour. Block me if you're pro-American military, were or are or will be in the military, or you wanna vote for and promote the voting for genocide joe. I don't want pieces of human shit around me.

i saw ur post on how there isnt rlly a big arab figure, and wow like. i think that if i had been younger and saw just one or two arab people on tv in a positive way, it would have helped me a LOT. like yeah. There ISNT a big singer or character or actor or model that’s arab. And now im sitting here wondering how many kids are going to be sitting and watching tv and just blocking out their arab heritage and culture because then they wouldnt be like their favorite singer or wtver.

Exactly. Exactly exactly exactly. I’ve full chest said this before, but I wasn’t always as attached to my Arab heritage as I am now. I actually grew up pretty distant from it all around, and it’s only in recent years that I started making a concerted effort to delve into it. And I can’t even blame it on my mom tbh, like I grew up in a lax household that allowed for ample self-expression. It was always the outside world that would make a little Arab girl like me question the worth of her ethnic roots—especially when Arabs are painted as terrorists at worst and as monocultural heathens at best where I’m from (hint: the USA). There is so much to unpack w being raised American but being ethnically Iraqi!! Because that means I literally hail from two countries!! A country that’s thirsty and a country that’s on fire!! But that’s a whole other loaded topic I could write a separate dissertation on.

I’d always have toxic thought loops like “I don’t look Arab enough” “I’m not religious but all the Arab girls I know are Muslim” on and on and on. And like I said in that ask, there was never an Arab American A lister for me to kind of have a frame of reference w. This is specifically an Arab issue too I feel like, bc a lot of brown people do have that star-studded figure to look up to growing up. We do not.

It’s kind of why I decided to be that for myself. I don’t need a cool Arab girl celebrity who’s into fashion or music. I’ll be that. I don’t need an Arab academia girl character. I’ll be that too. There’s no such thing as not looking Arab enough bc Arabs are so diverse. It’s okay that I’m not religious bc Arab culture is not solely defined by religion, and even if it were Arabs are not a hive mind and everyone engages w their culture in vastly different ways (which is okay!! It doesn’t make me any less Arab). I’ll literally just discard other people’s preconceived notions and trailblaze my own path!! I’ll be my own Arab girl representation. I refuse to fit myself into any preexisting mold. I like what I like and the rest just falls into place.

I think that’s why I’ve been so vocal about my Iraqi heritage lately… I’m literally healing my relationship w my roots in real time. Even advocating for Palestine is feeding into that in major ways. It’s legit all coming together for the first time in my life. Now I’m so proud to be Arab—to be Iraqi—that the idea that anyone could shame me for it is as incredulous as it is hilarious. Iraq is literally called the Cradle of Civilization & you want to make me feel BAD for being Arab… for being Iraqi… it’s just impossible bc I can’t imagine myself being anything else. I’m so content to have my multicultural background and to be who I am. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

It’s also cool that I have people following me, that they could also be exposed to diverse facets of Arab culture bc of that, but tbh a lot of this is also purely for me. I want the Iraq tag to be flooded w beautiful Iraqi poetry and beautiful Iraqi art and beautiful Iraqi cinema as I familiarize myself w Iraqi culture more and more, bc there’s so much more to it than the Iraqi War stats that pop up when you look it up on here.

I’m a 21 year old girl AND I’m Arab. That’s literally double the self-discovery to work through. Fortunately I think I’m finally cultivating a strong sense of self, so I really don’t think anything anyone has to say could deter me from my path (whether it be in terms of reconnecting w the beauty of my Arab heritage or legit just growing into my own). It’s not always perfect by any means, but I’ve made so much headway. And absolutely nothing could take away from that.

There’s something that has troubled me for awhile…there are a lot of calls online to take Aliyah, and I get it, I really do. I can understand the draw especially with more observant, visibly Jewish people because the targeting has become horrific. The fear is growing, and we are all looking back at history and getting generational Deja vu in a really traumatic fashion. And while I feel zero pressure to move to Israel atm…

But for Jews in the diaspora, I always wonder if there are any that are proud of where they are from, that identify with it as much as they identify being Jewish. We all have been raised to have Israel and Jerusalem in our heart and our soul. But I am as American as I am Jewish. Between both sides of my family, my blood has been in America for close to 150 years (my father’s side is 120, my mother’s side is closer to 150). If you put a picture of any natural landscape in Israel or the skyline of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv with a skyline of my home city and the Adirondacks or the Appalachian mountains, my emotional pull will be towards the latter set of pictures.

I can’t see myself ever moving to Israel. I feel that if my ancestors wanted to go back to our collective roots, they would and they’d brave the tyranny of the Ottomans and the British Occupation along with the genocidal hostility of the Arab nations. But they came to America, so I am American born and bred, as are my parents and my grandparents and my maternal great grandparents.

And I wonder, are there any other Jews that feel this way about their country? Any fellow Americans, any British, Canadian, and Australian Jews? Are there Jews in Europe and South America that feel the same? Where they will always support Israel and its right to exist, but they can never imagine living there and can only see themselves living in the country they are currently from?

I will always support Israel’s right to exist. But I am American as much as I am Jewish, so I will support from across the Atlantic.

anon, I want you to know your feelings are valid, you shouldn't be pressured to make an Aliyah for any reason, just because Israel is a Jewish country doesn't mean all Jews must live there or want to live there.

in Israel, it's a pretty common question to ask people for their ancestry (for like ice breakers), and a lot of people will be able to tell you exactly where their grandparents are from, even if they have a very mixed ancestry. for us, where we came from is not something to be erased, it's a major a part of who we are. we're not just Israeli we're polish, iraqi, yemenite, moroccan, russian, italian, ethiopian, hollandi (dutch?), sabra, etc.

I can't talk for Jews in the diaspora, I believe there would be many people who share your feelings, but I can tell you most Israelis would probably understand your pride in your ancestry.

- 🐬

Wall Panel of the Assyrian Empire from Khorsabad, Iraq dated between 710-705 BCE on display at the CaixaForum in Madrid, Spain

This panel shows parade horses an important status symbol in the Assyrian Empire. Here a fine Assyrian cavalry horse is shown wearing a bridle, tassels and a head crest for a military parade. The bridle and ornaments were originally painted in vibrant shades of red and blue.

Photographs taken by myself 2019