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İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

@iyad_elbaghdadi

Dec 16

Here's a personal thread about the very strong, complex emotions that I struggled with all of last week, since we watched Assad fall and Syria rise:

(I've been working with my team on building systems that would enable me to post new content consistently & sustainably, and on multiple platforms. But I couldn't focus. I had to stop & check-in with myself. So let me acknowledge these emotions)

1. There's a nostalgic disorientation (or disoriented nostalgia?) - it's 13 years of our lives. The Syrian uprising & civil war has been a 13-year trauma. It started with immense hope and love, then tragedy, then an anger bordering on hate.

Read 15 tweets

İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

@iyad_elbaghdadi

Dec 9

Israel's immediate reaction to the fall of the Assad regime is mass bombardment of Syrian army bases and expansion into Syrian territory. This tells you two things:

First: Israel saw no security threat from Assad's regime - they had a tacit understanding and Assad always stayed within the lines. So long Assad was in power, Israel had no need to take out his weapons depots or aircraft fleets, or to create a further buffer zone.

Second, Israel and its allies (primarily the US) has/have no political or diplomatic leverage whatsoever over the emergent forces in Syria, and considers them a hostile threat.

Read 6 tweets

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.

Read 4 tweets

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)

Read 18 tweets

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.

Read 47 tweets

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)

Read 9 tweets

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More from @iyad_elbaghdadi

İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

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İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي

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