I haven’t seen this linked on here so: this is an awesome resource for how you can help the people in Palestine. It has donation links, helps you figure out how to contact your representatives, and a regularly updated list of planned protests. It is USAmerican centric but the list of protests is international.
If you are American this site has a tool that sends an email for you. All you need to enter is your name, email address, and street address so they can auto-find your senators. It will take 30 seconds.
[ID: Two screenshots from the linked website.
The first is titled “Ceasefire in Gaza!” with a list of tabs. The tabs, from top to bottom, say:
Email Congress
Email Your Senators
Sign The Petition
Find A Protest Near You
Phone Banks
Toolkit
Donate: PCRF
Doctors Without Borders.
The second screenshot is text that says, “Call Script: My name is (Your Name). I am a constituent of (Representative’s Name). I am calling to ask that the Representative add their name to the Ceasefire Now resolution led by Representatives Cori Bush and Rashida Tlaib, regarding the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
It is absolutely urgent that the Representative demand a ceasefire, and that they call on Israel to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza. The only way forward is addressing the root causes of violence: Israeli military occupation and apartheid, and ending US complicity in this oppression.”
Gazan portraits byPalestinian Photographer Motaz Azaiza (pictured in the center of the final photograph) :
Motaz’s photography captures the daily life of Palestinians in Gaza; from old to young, from happy to sad, from living to dead - he is currently documenting the Israeli onslaught and mass destruction of Gaza live on his social media. His Instagram: Motaz_Azaiza
The Palestinian Ministry of Health released a full report with names, ages and IDs of those who were killed – maybe at least in part as a fuck you to Western media and the US president who suddenly cast doubt on the number of fatalities. Over 7000 people died. Whole families wiped out forever. It’s beyond comprehension. May their memory be eternal.
The decision to release the names was made in explicit response to the skepticism of US admin:
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The Ministry of Health announcement is here, and ends with a link to the 212 page pdf [both in Arabic]
i know the nyt regularly edits and rewrites headlines post-publication but it’s kind of wild that the basically one (1) good op-ed i’ve seen them publish in ages that was getting really widely shared was renamed from “Why Must Palestinians Audition For Your Empathy?” to much more vague and defanged “The Palestine Double Standard.” like. come on.
The task of the Palestinian is to be palatable or to be condemned. The task of the Palestinian, we’ve seen in the past two weeks, is to audition for empathy and compassion. To prove that we deserve it. To earn it.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve watched Palestinian activists, lawyers, professors get baited and interrupted on air, if not silenced altogether. They are being made to sing for the supper of airtime and fair coverage. They are begging reporters to do the most basic tasks of their job. At the same time, Palestinians fleeing from bombs have been misidentified. Even when under attack, they must be costumed as another people to elicit humanity. Even in death, they cannot rest — Palestinians are being buried in mass graves or in old graves dug up to make room, and still there is not enough space.
If that weren’t enough, Palestinian slaughter is too often presented ahistorically, untethered to reality: It is not attributed to real steel and missiles, to occupation, to policy. To earn compassion for their dead, Palestinians must first prove their innocence. The real problem with condemnation is the quiet, sly tenor of the questions that accompany it: Palestinians are presumed violent — and deserving of violence — until proved otherwise. Their deaths are presumed defensible until proved otherwise. What is the word of a Palestinian against a machinery that investigates itself, that absolves itself of accused crimes? What is it against a government whose representatives have referred to Palestinians as “human animals” and “wild beasts”? When a well-suited man can say brazenly and unflinchingly that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people?
It is, of course, a remarkably effective strategy. A slaughter isn’t a slaughter if those being slaughtered are at fault, if they’ve been quietly and effectively dehumanized — in the media, through policy — for years. If nobody is a civilian, nobody can be a victim.
…
Take it from a writer: There is nothing like the tedium of trying to come up with analogies. There is something humiliating in trying to earn solidarity. I keep seeing infographics desperately trying to appeal to American audiences. Imagine most of the population of Manhattan being told to evacuate in 24 hours. Imagine the president of [ ] going on NBC and saying all [ ] people are [ ].Look! Here’s a strip on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. That’s Gaza. It is about the same size as Philadelphia. Or multiply the entire population of Las Vegas by three.
This is demoralizing work, to have to speak constantly in the vernacular of tragedies and atrocities, to say: Look, look. Remember?That other suffering that was eventually deemed unacceptable? Let me hold it up to this one. Let me show you proportion. Let me earn your outrage. Absent that, let me earn your memory. Please.
…
Here’s another thing I know as a writer and psychologist: It matters where you start a narrative. In addiction work, you call this playing the tape. Diasporically or not, being Palestinian is the quintessential disrupter: It messes with a curated, modified tape. We exist, and our existence presents an existential affront. As long as we exist, we challenge several falsehoods, not the least of which is that, for some, we never existed at all. That decades ago, a country was born in the delicious, glittering expanse of nothingness — a birthright, something due. Our very existence challenges a formidable, militarized narrative.
But the days of the Palestine exception are numbered. Palestine is increasingly becoming the litmus test for true liberatory practice.
In the meantime, Palestinians continue to be cast paradoxically — both terror and invisible, both people who never existed and people who cannot return.
Imagine being such a pest, such an obstacle. Or: Imagine being so powerful.
also some other notable changes in recent headlines…
The Palestinian Ministry of Health released a full report with names, ages and IDs of those who were killed – maybe at least in part as a fuck you to Western media and the US president who suddenly cast doubt on the number of fatalities. Over 7000 people died. Whole families wiped out forever. It’s beyond comprehension. May their memory be eternal.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health released a full report with names, ages and IDs of those who were killed – maybe at least in part as a fuck you to Western media and the US president who suddenly cast doubt on the number of fatalities. Over 7000 people died. Whole families wiped out forever. It’s beyond comprehension. May their memory be eternal.
thinking about her (old stockholm telephone tower in use 1887-1913)
“…some Stockholmers said that the [lines] were so dense they would obscure the sun,” said the then 90-year-old Karl-Väinö Tahvanainen, who worked with the tower, in an interview with SvD in 2012 (x)
they deliberately targeted the family of al jazeera’s gaza bureau chief. he reported on the airstrike that killed his family without realizing they had been killed, and then found out they were dead live on air.
wael el dahdouh, like shireen abu akleh, is a voice and face familiar to many who have watched reports coming out of gaza. it has already been harrowing watching him report for eighteen days straight in the most dire circumstances, but now its like seeing a beloved uncle or father overcome by grief live on air. we keep saying “there are no words” because really how else do you describe a horror of this magnitude?
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