We return to media platforms, after a lengthy leave, and our eyes are, and have been, on the monstrosity of the usurping Israeli occupation’s crimes in Gaza, and in the rest of the Palestinian and Lebanese territories. In the ninth month of governments and international institutions’ collusion with the occupation forces to besiege the people of Gaza, distort the reality of their bloodshed, torture, starvation, desicration of the bodies of those martyred, and the purposeful denial of health to the injured, the sick, the disfigured, and the organized attacks on healthcare systems and providers - the people of Gaza are left to face this extermination machine that is supported by the regimes of global imperialism and regional normalization. The failure of international humanitarian institutions, inside and outside Gaza, to perform their role in providing food, protection, and medical services, and to stop the zionist monster, confirms what we have always known: that they are cowards and hypocrites unable to stop settler colonial white-supermacist-led genocides against brown, black, muslim and arab people (but more than happy to step up when it’s against white populations of the global north), that the brave ones will be murdered, defamed, and defunded, that international law and human rights are concepts built to either contain us or strip us of what we’re owed, and that the interest and support of north-based funding and development institutions are conditional to abiding by standards of “civility” that ignore and deny the horror of the military occupation that has not for a single day stopped killing the Palestinian people and eviscerating their means of life and living. Their interest is to strip us of the means of resisting and countering the occupation's tools and schemes that employ and co-opt discourses and values to justify its crimes, while simultaneously attempting to weaken our resolve and faith in liberation as a political and inevitable project. 

While the South of Lebanon faces Israeli airstrikes and fire destroying the means of life, the people of the south are left to rescue each other in the absence of evacuation plans and the infrastructure of dignified relocation. Tens of thousands have been displaced from their villages and homes, deprived of the season to sow their lands, and the number of martyrs has risen to 466 in total, and the injured to 1,438 persons (MOPH, 9th July 2024). Meanwhile, the Lebanese state averts its attention from the attack on its people, their needs, and the sovereignty of our land, and instead obsessively wages a war against another forsaken people. The Lebanese state issues mass deportation of hundreds of Syrian refugees, spews fascist incitements to violence, sanctions their evictions, kidnappings and torture, therefore setting the stage for the murder of a Syrian trans woman in May of this year - a crime of multiple offenses that goes unaccounted for.

The repeated unwillingness of governments and institutions to disrupt their relationship with the occupation and the regimes loyal to it, and the continued normalization by humanitarian programs of the occupation whilst demonizing the struggle and resistance of the Palestinian people, will not push us to accept the culture of individualism and individual survival as the highest political ambition we can aspire to. The world will not be permitted to white wash its role in the extermination of the Palestinian people under the name of human rights ideals that are not built on their safety, security, and health, all which are contingent upon the securitization of their homes, land, and freedom. 

As justice and value based institutions and groups, there is no room for complacency and inaction in resisting the attempts to hijack our compounded efforts in fighting the patriarchal violence under which we live, or to use our movements against us as a justification for invasion and occupation. It is necessary that we re-evaluate our positions as individuals and institutions that rely and benefit from funding institutions, to push back against having the frameworks of our transnational solidarity dictated to us, and to protect our movements from being devoid of their substance. We cannot accept working within disciplinary boundaries that compromise the bodies of Palestinians and avoid naming their killers. That is why, in the coming months and years, we plan on focusing our efforts to support movement building in our region, and strengthen bonds with organizations that share these principles and seek to organize around them. 

Resources and References:

Continue to follow circulating means of support, whether through donation or coordinating the collection and distribution of aid, and by pressuring your governments and institutions, and engaging with local groups organizing direct action efforts and confronting Zionist discourse. 

To read more, please see the sources below.

1. From the statement of Queers in Palestine: “In line with its long-standing exploitation of liberal identity politics, Israel has been weaponizing queer bodies to counter any support for Palestine and any critique of its settler-colonial project. Israelis (politicians, organizations, and “civilians”) have been mobilizing colonial dichotomies such as “civilized” and “barbaric,” “human” and “animal,” and other dehumanizing binaries as a discourse that legitimizes the attacks on Palestinians. Within this settler-colonial rhetoric, Israel seeks to garner and mobilize support from Western governments and liberal societies by portraying itself as a nation that respects freedom, diversity, and human rights, that is fighting a “monstrous” and oppressive society, illuminated clearly through the declaration of the Prime Minister of Israel “There is a struggle between the children of light and children of darkness, between humanity and law of the jungle.”

2. We invite you to visit the website of Journal of Palestine Studies, where you will find reports describing the state of the health sector, especially reproductive health, months after the genocide:

“During the war in Gaza, pregnant women, children, newborns, and infants bear a complex, painful and unimaginable burden, not only as victims of bombing, killing, and destruction, or as a result of displacement, deprivation of food and medicine, and the collapse of water and electricity supplies, but also because women bear the double burden due to pregnancy and childbirth […] Dozens of women have lost their fetuses, the miscarriage rate among them has increased, and the rate of premature birth has increased by three - four times. Many times, cases of premature placental abruption were recorded, which without emergency medical interventions may lead to death, and as a result of the lack of blood and its components, doctors were forced to remove the uterus as a treatment method. Women also risk their lives in order to give birth, and undergo cesarean sections and emergency operations without sterilization, anesthesia, or painkillers, which increases the chances of illness and death among mothers […] medical teams are forced to remove mothers from the hospital within three hours after a cesarean section, what forces the rest of the women to give birth in refugee areas, and in places that are not safe or healthy, and this increases the risks to their health and the health of their children. This bleak picture is reflected in newborns. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), about 20,000 children have been born since the outbreak of war until the time of writing this report, including dozens of premature babies, which are children who are born before their time, that occurs before three weeks from the expected date of birth, with weights and sizes less than normal, as this early birth often makes the child vulnerable to medical problems that require special care.”

3. We share the Palestinian Feminist Collective’s description of reproductive genocide below:

“Considering Palestinian fertility and childbearing rates as a security and demographic threat is met with not only population control policies, but also by operations of reproductive genocide that includes “mass incarceration; psychological warfare; collective punishment; ethnic cleansing; gendered and sexual violence of women and girls by an occupying state or force; gendered and sexual violence of men and boys by an occupying state or force; and forced conditions of unlivability. It also includes imprisonment and bodily desecration (for the living and dead). In the context of Gaza, reproductive genocide includes the control and cutting off of vital life-giving sources such as water, fuel, electricity, and food; the denial of life-giving and life-saving medical resources; collective starvation; the murder of elderly men and elderly women; the eradication of entire genealogies; the mass murder of women, the mass murder of children; the mass murder of babies; the murder of pregnant women; the obliteration of medical institutions; the mass execution of vulnerable civilians, such as those seeking shelter; the assault on dignity and life; the separation of families; mass detention, incarceration and torture of men, women, and children; mass destruction of schools, mass destruction of places of worship; mass destruction of homes and residential spaces (or domicide); mass destruction of shelters for vulnerable communities; the mass destruction of cemetaries, the annihilation of environments and life-sustaining agriculture, including harvests; the destruction of vital food infrastructures; mass exposure to life-threatening toxic waste, unsanitary conditions, and/or hazardous environments; the illegal use of chemical weapons on civilians, especially those in captivity, impacting the health of future generations; environmental degradation resulting in infertility; prolonged conditions of collective captivity, including besiegement; collective starvation, prolonged endangerment of women, children and babies; and the devaluation of life through public dehumanization and calls for genocide.”

4. Follow Nour's writings on X:

“How were we killed?

We were killed by bombardment, we were killed as body parts, we were killed in amputations, we were killed by siege, we were killed by snipers, we were killed by execution, we were killed by hunger, we were killed by thirst, we were killed by torture, by cold we were killed, by force we were killed, by fear we were killed, by displacement we were killed, by survival we were killed, by emigration we were killed, by longing we were killed, by loss were killed,...” 

5. Check the maps and monitoring of the Public Works Studio, which documents the attacks on southern Lebanon.

6. Check the day by day chronical of the Israeli crimes on the Palestine institute's timeline.