palestine

One Year

~Zulfikar~

By -Sarah B-

Mornings become mournings,
witnessing new worst worsts.
Group chats flood with news
forwards and check-ins,
still alive,
for now.
I watch my neighbour pace,
el wad3 sa3b.
Fridge filled with Tupperware from
a coping mother cooking.
Every sentence ends with a prayer,
Hamdillah.
Another Halloween, I am haunted
by bones and blood, because in
Falastine,
there’s no pretend.

We watch our skies light up,
with weapons custom designed for
us.
People become landmines in
Lebanon.
Detonate. Decimate.
Desecrate. Des/create. create from
desecreation:
ovens out of oil cans,
wind powered electricity from
plastic fans,
sewing machines run by bicycle
wheels,
life from destruction,
hope from telling,
truth. read more

Bodies Fall but Ideas Endure

~Zulfikar~

The great Ghassan Kanafani said this. The 36 year old author, and politician, was assassinated along with his 17 year old niece in a car bomb planted by the Israeli Mossad. Yet his ideas, values and virtues, that empowered his will to resist, reverberate decades later. To this day he stands as an insurmountable symbol of strength, sumud (steadfastness), and uncompromising integrity.

On Friday, September 27, 2024, Israel assassinated another powerful figure of the Lebanese Arab resistance and secretary general of Hezb’Allah, Sayed Hasan Nasrallah. Israel’s weapon of choice for murdering Nasrallah was infinitely more barbaric and monstrous than that of any other Arab resistance leader that I can recall; carpet bombing six residential buildings in the Dahiyeh, a small suburb in Beirut Lebanon. read more

Hope and Creation…

~Zulfikar~

A long time ago I wrote my Master’s Philosophy thesis on “Aesthetics, Human Freedom, and Technological Rationality”. Thinking back on it now I probably should have come up with a more simple title like “Art, Freedom, and Capitalism”.

I examined the work of two philosophers Friedrich Schiller’s “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”, and Herbert Marcuse’s “One Dimensional Man”. In short, I was interested in looking at the creative capacities of human beings and how Capitalism basically squashes those capacities. read more

Fight, Flight, or Freeze. What About Grief?

~Zulfikar~

It has been seven months since Israel and the United States have been massacring Palestinians in Gaza. At the same time Israel has been maintaining its occupation in the West Bank and expanding its settlements there. As a matter of fact on March 22, 2024 Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s current finance minister announced that they have seized about 3.8 square miles of Palestinian territory in the West Bank. This land seizure by Israel is the largest one since the 1993 Oslo accords, according to a settlement watchdog group called Peace Now. read more

Thoughts on the U.S. and Israel’s Settler Colonialist Project in the Levant

~Zulfikar~

I’m Lebanese-Syrian. I was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1980. My mother is Syrian and my father is Lebanese. My family and I have lived through and survived Israel’s war on Lebanon, and the Lebanese civil war, not to mention the wars on and in Syria. I would like to say that I’m no stranger to the politics in my two countries and that whole region, but with how much history there is I always felt like I didn’t know enough.

I grew up in Burj-al-Barajneh, a refugee camp that was set up for Palestinians who were driven out of Palestine by Israel. Palestinians are like family to me, there isn’t much distinction, we lived and grew up together. And though I have never been to Palestine, my love for it is born from the love for my Palestinian friends and family. I unequivocally stand in solidarity with them. read more

“I would (insert hyperbole) for you”

~Zulfikar~

How often do we hear people saying some over the top thing they would do to prove their love or commitment or whatever, towards someone else? I’ve heard people say things like “I would die for you”, “I would jump in front of a car for you”, “I would take a bullet…”, “I would fight anyone…”, “I would do whatever it takes…”. All this said in an effort to show the extremes that someone would go to show how much they care. But do they…? read more