Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference- those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older- know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.
-Audre Lorde: “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”
Activist prevents Israeli officer from arresting Palestinian child
During Sunday’s Jerusalem Day events, a Palestinian boy, perhaps 10 years old, was chased down an East Jerusalem street by a very angry officer of the Border Police. The boy tripped and fell, then picked himself up just as the Border Police officer reached him and tried to grab him. But a 22 year-old female Israeli activist prevented the boy’s arrest by throwing herself between the two, allowing the Palestinian boy to flee.
Jerusalem Day is meant to be a celebration of the city’s ‘reunification’ following Israel’s victory in the 1967 war. In practice, it is a day for Israeli nationalists, draped in flags, dancing in circles, singing and chanting (including the popular Israeli nationalist chant, ‘death to Arabs’) as they march through the streets of East Jerusalem and the Old City. Many of the Jewish demonstrators are bused in from right-wing yeshivas in Israel and the West Bank
This year, an Orthodox Jewish man grabbed the Palestinian flag from the hands of a 10 year-old boy and refused to return it. The boy, enraged, tried to prise it out of the Jewish man’s hands. A Border Police officer, seeing the struggle between a 10 year-old Palestinian boy and a fully grown Jewish man, chased the Palestinian boy rather than ordering the Jewish man to return the flag. Someone made a montage of the incident and posted it on Facebook, with commentary. Note the expression of rage in the Border Police officer’s eyes, as seen in the second photo.
In the end the boy got away, due to the intervention of a 22 year-old Israeli activist from Jerusalem named Sahar Vardi, who threw herself in front of the Border Police officer just as he was about to grab the child. Photojournalist Haim Schwarczenberg caught the incident.
The incident was also filmed and the clip posted on Youtube.
Source: +972mag
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yo, can you just go read this post?
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Wow. Read that carefully. Everything is backwards, sigh.
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Shadia Mansour feat: M1 (Dead Prez) - Al Kufiyyeh 3Arabeyyeh
Ana mitl il koufiye
Im like the koufiye
Keef dabastoni, wayn mashli7toli badalni 2osoli 3arabiye
No matter how much you opress me, where ever you take me off, my origins stay arabic
Hek ilbisna ilkoufiye
This is how we wore the koufiye
La2ina wataniye
Because its part of our country
Ilkoufiye ilkoufiye
The koufiye the koufiye
Hek ilbisna ilkoufiye
Thats how we wear the koufiye
Hawiyitna ilasasiye
Our essential identinty
Ilkoufiye ilkoufiye
The koufiye the koufiye
Yallah 3alo ilkoufiye
Come on raise the koufiye
“Go easy on yourself for the outcome of all affairs is determined by God’s decree. If something is meant to go elsewhere, it will never come your way, but if it is yours by destiny, from you it can never flee.”
—Umar Ibn Al-Khattab RA.
Keep Moving, Keep Praying: If you pray for something and want to see come to pass, you’re going to have to go through some things to see it through.
”When I was a child, I was given the formal name Trang. I had an older sister whose formal name was Thuy. At home, we were only called our familiar/nicknames: Big Girl and Little Girl. Though it must have occured, I have no idea of having ever been called Trang in Vietnam.
In 1978, my father and I left Vietnam, by boat. Onboard the U.S. Navy shup that picked us up, my father incorrectly filled out the apperwork identifying me. He listed my name as Thuy and my date of birth as January 15, 1972. My mother arrives two years later and informed us that Ba had been wrong on both counts. She corrected my date of birth- it was not January 12, 1972 - but insisted I keep the name Thuy.
My older sister, the original Thuy, had drowned at a refugee camp in Malaysia. My mother saw my father’s mistake as porpititious; it allowed a part of my older sister to come to this country with us. And so I kept my sister’s name and wore it like a borrowed garment, one in which my mother crowded two daughters, one dead and one living.
When I decided to publish under my full name (in the Vietnamese fashion) and all in lowercase (because I prefer the way it runs), I knew that both Americans and Vietnamese may find fault with it; it is not how names go in either country. Nonetheless, it felt right to me; I had finally managed to break the name down, rebuild it and reclaim it as my own.”
le thi diem thuy
( author’s note from novel: The Gangster We Are All Looking For)
