i want your ugly, i want your disease. i want your love and i want your revenge. i want your psycho, your vertigo schtick. literally at 23 gaga had her priorities straight
When they see their dreams and hopes getting destroyed, they cry.
When they realise how scary and uncertain their future is, they cry.
And because they are human beings, full of feelings and emotions, they cry.”
This is an excerpt from a 35-year-old Palestinian’s account of life in Gaza under siege.
Ziad has been writing for the Guardian about the realities of the Israeli bombardment, as he, his sister and their pets, flee their home in Gaza City in the hope of survival.
You can read his diary entries in full via the link:
btw i am in complete agreement w this essay by mohamed al-kurd Jewish settlers stole my house. It’s not my fault they’re Jewish specifically when he talks about how anti-semitism is weaponized against palestinians and the minefield trap of navigating language around israel. but for allies, and particularly for allies in the west, you can and should use discretion to differentiate between “zionist claims of anti-semitism” and genuine antisemitism in your ranks. it’s growing more and more difficult when institutions and governments are claiming “from the river to the sea” is an anti-semitic chant. its an agony to navigate when BDS is called “supporting terrorism.” all of that is purely bullshit.
but it is doubly incumbent when there are white supremacists, assadists, and various other idiots infiltrating. it is patently obvious that evangelical christian extremists, the european and american far-right, the elon musks and the likes are antisemitic and pro-israel.
this is not the responsibility of palestinians and the palestinian cause. this does not and cannot affect the basic reality of settler colonialism and should be held very, very suspect if it is used to distract, downplay and excuse palestinian suffering and the ongoing genocide in gaza. i also do not entertain the notion that arabs, muslims or pro-palestinian activists are inherently more anti-semitic than any other demographic because this is also an explicitly political claim. but that is all one thing and inter-personal communication is another. there are many many jewish ppl marching in pro-palestine rallies worldwide and it is just basic courtesy to make sure they do not feel alienated by you, personally.
After the hospital bombing, I finally heard back from my grandmother and confirmed that several of my relatives were murdered by Israeli bombing. Seven of them, to be precise. Three are still going, including her. We’ve been talking constantly ever since.
Asked if it was possible to head south, and was told they did but were also bombed there. So they decided to go back home, in Zeitoun. Their home was bombed and they were pulled out of the rumble, then driven by ambulances to the al-Ahli Arab Hospital. There were people in every corner. Gazans sheltering, sleeping on the floor. Gazans dying on the floor, waiting for beds.
When looking for new shelter, they saw schools with signs hanging outside, “We can’t take any more families.” They met families, sympathetic but already sheltering too many people. They’re now staying in an apartment building they found empty. Sleeping in the corner of the living room. If the family comes back, they’ll apologize and leave.
Told me she was saving her phone battery for when the bombing stopped, and she had to ask for help to rebuilt the neighborhood. But she doesn’t think it’s gonna stop anymore. The ones still with her are mute most of the time, like they’re saving energy, but she feels lonely and wanted to talk. There’s no internet and to connect to WhatsApp, people are buying “a card from the supermarket, there’s a password and username.” Not sure what she meant. Still, the internet is inconsistent and won’t load neither videos or images nor pages, so she doesn’t know what’s happening on the outside world.
Told her there were a lot of people protesting to stop the genocide, she replied, “The bombings are getting worse by the day.” The bombing yesterday was the worst she ever witnessed. The entire neighborhood is infested with the smell of death, of decomposing bodies. Bodies are piling up in the streets and she’s not sure if it’s because they ran out of places to store them, but most of them are in bags. The smoke of the bombings hide the blue sky—she hasn’t seen the clouds for a while.
Asked if I could share their pictures, names and dreams with people and was told, of which I partly agree, “they’re not entertainment.” If anyone genuinely cared, they would be alive—I’d argue there are people who do care, but I’m not gonna lecture her pain. And they don’t deserve to be used to fulfill someone’s sick fantasy. Told me to remember what some Israelis do with pictures of dead Palestinians. And I do.
For those of you who are not familiar, many times before settlers got together to celebrate the murder of Palestinians. For one, in 2015, Israeli settlers set a house in Duma, West Bank on fire. An 18-month old baby, Ali Dawbsheh, was burnt alive. Both parents later died of wounds and only a 5-year-old, Ahmad, survived, although severely injured.
Two celebrations of their murder are widely known, one at a wedding and others outside the court in which two were indicted for the terrorist attack. In the wedding, guests stabbed a photo of the toddler, Ali, while others waved guns, knives and Molotov cocktails. Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was present.
That’s what happens in an apartheid. Palestinians are so abused by authorities that their “innocent civilians” come to accept the brutality as necessary or are desensitized by our suffering. After all, it’s been 75 years—get used to it!
So I won’t risk the image of my loved ones, in fear they are used in these kinds of depravity. I will say, though, the world lost a young footballer. Lost a female writer and an aspiring ballerina. Lost a kind father, who was also a great cook, and a loving mother that enjoyed sewing and other types of handicraft art. Lost a math teacher and a child that wanted to become one.
People think Israel is testing new weapons on them. There’s civilians arriving at the hospital with severe burns, which they thought was from white phosphorus, but apparently the pattern is different from the one caused by white phosphorus. It’s widely believed Israel tests weapons in Palestinians.
Jeff Halper, author of War Against the People, a book on Israel’s arms and surveillance technology industries, said: “Israel has kept the occupation because it’s a laboratory for weapons.”
Image descriptions: 5 paintings of a young Indigenous person in a snowy climate at sunset. Jumping over a small puddle of water, standing on a sled with someone else, smiling and holding two small goats, a small child petting a reindeer, and someone leaping over a river. /end descriptions
“The Raincoat” is Hand crafted with 30,000 Swarovski crystals, and took over 600 hours to construct. Designed to emulate rain droplets sparkling on a dark rainy night.
“Don’t just throw ripped jeans away, you can repair them using these 10 cute Visible Mending techniques!!” unfortunately my friend the first point of failure for every single pair of jeans i have owned in my life has been the Crotch and Ass. Knees: fine, cuffs: fine; but 3 years in, and all that stands between the world and my astronaut-patterned taint is 0.5µm of denim worn so thin that every squat threatens to tear it to shreds like wet toilet paper. If the Tiktok craft community could figure out a way to resurrect jeans afflicted in such a way that doesn’t involve adding a whole ass buttpatch like some sort of inverse assless chaps situation then that’d be great
