La Nakba du Liban-Sud
Lebanese francophone outlet L’Orient Le-Jour: the Nakba of South Lebanon.
We Lebanese are calling it for what it is: a continuation of the 1948 Nakba.
The photo shows a Lebanese village with an Israeli flag on it, planted by the genocidal army.
TNZBA. Palestinians, Israelis, Lebanese, Iranians, and everyone else who didn't ask to be caught in this vortex, and never made it out. May their souls be bound in the bond of the living.
that all circumstances of all deaths are always equal, I do believe the loss of each life in a conflict is a subject of regret - not just for the violent ending, but for the life that'll go unlived, and the unlived life that came before. For all the choices and for the lack thereof.
Personally, yes, I'm in the vanishingly small minority who sees Palestinian and Israeli lives to be of exact equal value. Who believe a family's grief is as raw, as intense, as complex for a perpetrator as for a victim. And while I'm no pacifist and can't pretend...
similar can one day be made. Maybe a book. Maybe a memorial: a long ribbon of names, stretching the sprawl of a highway. From Gaza to Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. From Itamar through Hebron to Masafer Yatta.
It's dispassionately written, and yet makes for a profoundly moving read. When you're in a house or a space with a copy, you tend to pick it up and leaf through it, randomly. Very much like a Bible.
Of course, in our case, such a book would take up a small library. Nevertheless, I hope something
The bomber next to the victims of his bomb. The soldier next to a baby killed by a stray bullet. Troops, paramilitaries, civilians, police, printed as they fell. To each a name, the circumstances of their death, a short bio, and a short remembrance.
Some years ago, I had the opportunity to write about a similar project in Northern Ireland: The Book of Lost Lives. What began as a reference binder for news reporters became a unique memorial, with lives that were lost listed in chronological order.
It's little surprise that the memorial has been under sustained pressure, esp from the state. Palestinian participants have been deliberately banned from traveling to the ceremony in person. Ceremonies have been disrupted and attacked.
They persist. www.jpost.com/israel-news/...
to accept in theory—except that it's a bond already forged at a price most of us can barely imagine. Who, from the willing or unwilling distance of geography, privilege, or sheer fortune, has the right to tell grieving parents not to reach out for each other's hand?
The Joint Memorial Ceremony defies that. It defies the us and them, it defies my grief is better than your grief, it defies the usage of different words for the grief of Palestinian parents and for the grief of Israeli ones. It presents a bond that would be nigh impossible
You have the insistence our deaths and theirs cannot be compared. Because we are defending ourselves, and they want to drive us into the sea. Because we only target combatants (let's not dwell on who defines whom as such), and they kill our children. Because We Were Here First.
the state turns on them. The years since October have been one long demonstration with families of hostages - once, an even more revered group - insulted and humiliated by politicians, smeared by media lackeys, and physically brutalised by cops and counterprotestors. And then..
bereaved families are notionally revered (we even have a specific word for bereavement in a national context), but only so long as they toe a certain line. As soon as they cross that line - say, by criticising the government that sent their kids to die or to kill -
It's hard to overstate how revolutionary this is in a conflict where grief is stringently policed. Palestinian families often don't even get the bodies of loved ones for burial - sometimes until cruel, callous conditions for the funeral are met, sometimes never. Israeli...
Today is Israel's official Memorial Day for its fallen - both for civilian victims and for lost soldiers. I'd like to direct your attention to the sacred, sacred, sacred work of the Joint Memorial Ceremony, where Palestinian and Israeli bereaved mourn together.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTKI...
"Ok guys thank you so much for your support, you've been so great we decided to RAISE OUR GOAL and if only 200,00 more of you sign-up, we will skip the startup border skirmish phase and go for FULL INCURSION 😵😵😵😵"
Got stuck on pt.6 "We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost." War by subscription? 🤔
Hey, so ICE is still kidnapping and disappearing people in the United States.
Just because they got quieter about it doesn't make it okay.
Abolish ICE. Chinga la Migra.
True
I wrote about all that - and about a deeper policy pathology revealed by Israel's Lebanon policy - in my first piece for +972 Magazine in a while. Good to be back!
www.972mag.com/israel-leban...
3. But most crucially, Lebanon is Netanyahu’s best chance of blowing up the Iran-US before peace talks take route. He probably wouldn’t dare attacking Iran directly, but Lebanon is the weak spot, and he’ll be determined to keep it as such.
2. He's got political pressure: the crucial expansionist faction in his govt actually really does want to ethnically cleanse and annex southern Lebanon, using a mash-up of the buffer zone doctrine and the Litani doctrine as an excuse.
1. He has domestic pressures to continue the war in general (to avoid his own trial and try and delay an election) and in the north in particular (under pressure from Northern residents repeatedly fucked over by his own govt in terms of shelter, reconstruction etc.)
4. This, obviously, creates motivation for Hezbollah to turn spoiler rather than partner and to try & blow the process up - but it prob won't even have to bother: a much more motivated & committed spoiler already in the picture is…. Israel.
Netanyahu has several reasons not to let ceasefire last:
3. In other words, what’s emerging so far is a typical Israeli-model ceasefire (“you cease, I fire”). If it lasts, we'll likely see Israel and the US try to turn the Lebanese government into an ally or a proxy to disarm and disband Hezbollah on its behalf.
2. In fact, this seems to be a ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanon govt. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing - provided that this is a first step; provided they’ll try and bring Hezbollah on board of the ceasefire as partners, rather than as targets.
Currently, idea appears to be the latter.
A few quick thoughts on tentative (and strange) ceasefire in Lebanon.
1. This is a ceasefire forced by outside actors (US and Iran). The actual combatants (Israel and Hezbollah) have not and are not actually agreeing anything, not even via mediators. This, on its own, isn’t very promising.
IDF: How dare you compare us to crusaders
Also IDF:
Zine with Palestinian chants in Arabic and their Hebrew and English translations
For Palestinian Prisoners' day, TINAU published a zine of Arabic protest chants with Hebrew and English translation and transliteration. If you're a student of Arabic or just curious, check it out!