فَلَمْ تَقْتُلُوهُمْ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱللَّهَ قَتَلَهُمْ ۚ وَمَا رَمَيْتَ إِذْ رَمَيْتَ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱللَّهَ رَمَىٰ ۚ وَلِيُبْلِىَ ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ مِنْهُ بَلَآءً حَسَنًا ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌۭ And you do not kill them, but it was Allah who killed them. And you … Continue reading “On Responsibility: Critique and Colonization After October 7th”
Will Eizlini, an American artist of French Jewish descent, tells me that he has been crying every day. When not crying, he is making a series of paintings interpreting the massacres in Gaza—crimson landscapes of sea, sky, dunes, with piles … Continue reading “The Burden of Witnessing”
In December 2003, Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister, announced in a televised speech Israel’s plans to “disengage” from its control of Gaza through the complete withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and the removal of Israeli settlements from Gaza after … Continue reading “Trapped Between Spaces: Gaza’s Existential Struggle”
our decomposing bodies our flesh mixed with dirt our blood flour whatabout semantics pontificate our children at a podium reporters with a plea concerns statements letters Gaza City to Deir el Balah to Khan Younis to … Continue reading “untitled (discourse)”
These words are meant to land in your ears as piercing sounds to accompany the wrenching horrors crowding our screens. Do not be fooled by the silence of print. This writing clamors to be screamed. Gaza is not some eerie … Continue reading “This is a scream and I dare you to publish it!”
I haven’t watched the livestream of US Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation in front of the Israeli consulate in Washington, DC, on February 25, 2024, but many of us are familiar with reports and transcripts telling of a police officer, … Continue reading “To Extinguish: On Aaron Bushnell and the Casualties of Nonviolence”
Not a single day goes by now in North America or Europe without an academic being disciplined or fired outright for expressing views critical of Israel. In mid-March 2024, when the University of California Regents meet at UCLA, they will … Continue reading “Genocide and Campus Bans on Speech Critical of Israel: Then and Now”
If there is a direct historical antecedent to the attacks of October 7 and everything that has happened since, it is Israel’s sixteen-year blockade, which devastated Gaza and harmed a generation of Palestinians. I lived in Gaza City for six … Continue reading “Memories of Gaza”
Bisan Owda, under her Instagram handle @wizard_bisan1, posts stories and reels that document the realities of daily life—and death—in Gaza during the now 100+ days of military siege by Israel. While before October 7th Owda was a filmmaker and hakawatieh, … Continue reading “Bisan Owda Is Still Alive”
the colonial question has always been: what to do with all these cypresses? what I forgot to say, dear colleagues, our university is indefensible it is stated that they love us and there is no water and no electricity fuck … Continue reading “our love is terroristic”
In November 2023, I presented a paper entitled “Settler Colonialism as the Automation of Attritional Warfare,” based on South Africa’s history of racialized governance, at Duke University and at the University of British Columbia. This is the revised version of … Continue reading “Epistemic Debilitation and the Erasure of Genocide”
In August, I attended a screening of Aurora’s Sunrise at the New Plaza Cinema. The documentary depicts the annihilation of Armenian lifeworlds in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. In August, the film was received as … Continue reading “Where Scenes of Catastrophe Reappear: On Armenian and Palestinian Solidarities”
No one watching the proceedings in the International Court of Justice on January 11 and 12, 2024—when South Africa accused Israel of genocide in Gaza—could have missed the racialized geopolitical atmospherics of the moment. On the South African side stood … Continue reading “Palestine and the Contours of the Third World”
In a 2001 telephone interview with the New York Times from Vienna, Johann August Schülein, then president of the Freud Society of Vienna, said of Edward Said’s disinvitation, “A lot of members of our society told us—they can’t accept that … Continue reading “Theory as Stone”
Refaat, your death visited me. It stood across from me in the dim room. I told your death “I am ready. I am ready.” Your death stared back, unimpressed. I sat in the wooden chair I arranged in … Continue reading “Rendition”
