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İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

@iyad_elbaghdadi

Dec 17, 2023

The rupture in international solidarity communities (that tried to integrate Western + Global South activists) is deep. The rupture in the small Israeli-Palestinian solidarity communities is catastrophic. It'll take a decade to fix what happened in the last two months, if at all.

I'm starting to become convinced that many movements will not survive this and will have to be mourned and laid to rest, and new movements built out of what remains. Built on better principles, with more moral courage and clearer-eyed vision.

It's starting to feel like we're going to end up with entirely parallel communities. Parallel, non-overlapping movements, institutions, narratives, ecosystems, public spheres. A disaster in itself - but really, it sets the stage for enormous, cataclysmic disasters in the future.

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İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

@iyad_elbaghdadi

Dec 6, 2023

Here's a thread about the concept of indigeneity in historical Palestine and its implications in light of Zionist settler-colonialism and the persecution of the Palestinians. You may want to bookmark this for whenever someone screams "but Jews are indigenous to the land!" 🧵

Note: This thread is not an attack on Jewish life in the Middle East. It's an analytical critique of the narratives used. My argument is that indigeneity is not an appropriate framing to use in the Israel-Palestine context, but especially when used (aggressively) by Zionists

"Indigenous populations" is a term used to refers to the survivors of settler-colonialism, particularly in contexts where settlers overpowered and nearly eradicated the natives. The text below is from a factsheet by the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII)

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İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

@iyad_elbaghdadi

Nov 30, 2023

A long thread about colonialism, decolonization, what models can & can't work, and why the Israel-Palestine context is unique. I wish people would slow-read this because many are walking around with outdated models, and may be causing damage 🧵

Caveat: I wrote this as a stream of consciousness with minimum editing so please forgive me if this ends up being meandering or repetitive or choppy. I just find that I write more powerfully and authentically when I'm not trying to edit anything or make it sound good

Let me start from here: There's a subtle but very important difference between "to colonize" and "to colonialize". I know that in some contexts, the words are used interchangeably. But in key ways they are *not*. I cringe when people confuse them.

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İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

@iyad_elbaghdadi

Nov 27, 2023

A lot has been said recently about what Islam allows or prohibits in war so I thought I'd clarify this: In Islam the distinction is not "civilian vs military"; it's "combatant vs non-combatant". Here's a quick explanation

In the classical Islamic era, the distinction of civilian vs non-civilian didn't exist. Neither the Prophet nor his tribal adversaries had standing armies made up of full-time soldiers. Armies at the time were made of men of fighting age who otherwise were traders, farmers, etc.

Rather, the distinction the Prophet established was combatant vs non-combatant. One of the clearest examples is narrated in a hadith that describes the scene after a battle (the battle itself isn't named)

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İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

@iyad_elbaghdadi

Nov 20, 2023

So many people seem to lack basic reading comprehension. You say Palestinian children should live, they think you say you want Israeli children to die. You say Palestinians are oppressed, they think you say you want to kill Jews. So tragic that this has become a real zero-sum.

These people aren't exactly imbeciles, mind you. Some are highly educated. I'm talking PhDs, scholars, journalists, business leaders. They don't really lack basic reading comprehension. No, they can read. They just will only understand what they want to understand.

Any humanization of Palestinians to them necessitates the dehumanization - no, the *destruction* - of Jewish people. They can't seem to hold the idea in their heads that Palestinians are no less (and no more) human than Jewish people. Why is this so hard for them to grasp?

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İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

@iyad_elbaghdadi

Nov 19, 2023

Something scary happens when people no longer feel they can convince or engage the other side; when they feel the other side is a moral lost cause and there isn't any space of possible agreement between your minimum position and their maximum, or your maximum and their minimum

Something scary happens when you stop trying to speak to people's minds or hearts or consciences because you feel it's useless. You then retreat into your identity, you become insular, you keep only to your own "kind" and your own community, and you listen only to your own story

You then feel - no, you're *convinced* - that it's us vs them, it's with us or against us. You're convinced that it's zero sum, that if they get something they get it by taking it away from you, that if you can get anything it'll have to be by taking it away from them.

Read 9 tweets

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More from @iyad_elbaghdadi

İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

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İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

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