A 🧵about discipline and Israel's starvation policy from a Palestinian academic.

Some time in early 2024, there was a Palestinian academic who was disciplined by her university for speaking against the genocidal Israeli regime. During one meeting, a Very Important Person, asked her to reflect on how her words might make staff and students feel. (1) The Palestinian academic replied: "I have friends in Gaza who are eating horse meat" to which the Very Important Person replied, without a beat, "Well there are lots of people with different issues going on in their life." (2)

1. We do not debate Zionists. Not only because they are such ridiculous sooky baby genocide apologists, but because they simply are not worthy of rebuttal or counter-argument. For our case is in the shredded limbs of our babies in Gaza, the charred bodies in a refugee tent, the starving fathers, emaciated pregnant mothers, child skulls lodged with sniper bullets.
Instead, reflect on what their desperate acts of discipline, censure and punishment of those who speak out reveal. 2. Israel is a house built of cards. Every single card is an atrocity, a war crime, a crime against humanity. There is nothing redeeming about this superimposed structure on our land. Once upon a time Israel's house of cards was glued together by the ruling elite, mainstream media, liberals and soft power in academia, cultural and arts institutions. There were pulls and levers to shield the house of cards from falling especially when there was little collective attention to decades and decades of crimes.

A genocide is taking place in Gaza in the name of Zionism, the state of Israel and in the name of Jewish people.
According to Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, a recent survey conducted by Monash University reveals that “the overwhelming majority of Australian Jews are Zionists, and in particular support Israel and the IDF since October 7.” (1) We are beyond definitional debates. You can claim whatever self-idealising definition you want. That the majority of Jewish people allow themselves to be used as human ideological shields for Zionism is not a problem for Palestinians to solve. Your existential crises, narcissistic feelings and deliberate conflation of Jewish identity with Zionism have become our children's graveyards. (2)

In response to the Oslo Accords, @DrHananAshrawi said, “They made the people under occupation responsible for the security of their occupier.” Throughout Israel’s savage 11 month (and continuing) genocidal campaign in Gaza, zionists have made the people opposing genocide responsible for the feelings of those who support genocide. (1) 🧵 2. Today several University of Sydney Jewish staff have filed a SafeWork NSW claim alleging "psychosocial harm", seeking criminal sanctions against Vice Chancellor Mark Scott. Australia's Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee is currently undertaking an inquiry into the Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism in Australian Universities. Read the submissions by zionists to see the most ridiculous, disingenuous narrative of narcissism and self-victimhood.

On Senator Fatima Payman quitting the Labor party. A short 🧵

1. The Labor government has invoked “social cohesion”, “social harmony”, “avoiding division”, “respect”, “diversity”, being part of a “team” to discipline, punish and silence @SenatorPayman. It’s the same language that has been weaponized against students protesting at universities, vast cross-sections of the community joining weekly mass rallies around the country, public servants, artists, teachers, doctors & health care workers, lawyers, journalists, food & hospitality workers who have been vocal against Israel’s genocide on Palestinians. 2. If there was any doubt, there’s none now. For the Labor party, silence over the killing of Palestinians is an existential necessity for the multicultural settler liberal project of social cohesion, harmony and ‘diversity’.

On Zionist attempts to pressure the government to revoke my Future Fellowship and for Macquarie Univeristy to dismiss me. This is not just about me. A 🧵

1. Zionists are not just about trying to remove me from academia and destroy my academic career. The funding I received was not just for me.

As a Future Fellow I am engaged in my own research as well as leadership and mentoring.

The funding the Zionists are calling is cancelled also covers 2 PhD scholarships. 2. One of my PhD students, a young Muslim Lebanese woman from western Sydney, has started a PhD on Arab cultural production and poetry as artistic activism among Arab diaspora artists in western Sydney.

The other PhD candidate, a young Muslim Egyptian woman, has just submitted her proposal to conduct a comprehensive analysis of abolitionist critiques and mobilisation tactics across Cairo, New York and Sydney/Melbourne.

Incoming 🧵

1. On Friday we came together at the @SFP_USyd Gaza Solidarity encampment at Sydney University to offer our children a space of comfort, healing and community.

Almost half of Gaza’s population are children. In the last 7 months, almost 15,000 children have been slaughtered, and at least 19,000 rendered orphans. We do not know how many are missing, buried alive or dead under the rubble. Or how many more will be killed by bombs, starvation or dehydration.

Palestinian and Arab children here see children who look like them dead; carried in pieces in plastic bags, dangling off walls without legs. And they ask: why is this allowed to happen? When will it stop? Am I safe?

And so we came together in a family-friendly gathering to express our solidarity with and admiration for students protesting at Sydney Univeristy, @Umelb4Palestine and across the US. 2. We spoke about respecting Aboriginal sovereignty. We spoke about finding the courage to stand up for a better world. We gave children a space to participate in craft, ball games, face-painting and embroidery. We offered them the megaphone to lead chants of their choosing, hoping to give them a sense of agency in a moment of distress. The ones who jumped at the opportunity had been to the weekly rallies for over 7 months, observing and participating in chants and calls for justice, freedom and an end to the slaughter. Our children refuse to accept that their siblings must be condemned to be killed by Israel.

What have we, in Australia, learnt in the past few days? (And by learnt what I really mean is what have we not learnt despite over two decades of activists, scholars, lawyers and community writing and speaking about this?) A 🧵 1. Terrorist is the automatic signifier for ‘Muslim’. The violence, tactics, motives, victims are irrelevant.

2. Terrorism will be automatically invoked if the perpetrator is Muslim. Mitigating reasons are irrelevant. Normative investigative processes are unnecessary.

3. The label ‘terrorist attack’ is applied to an individual but has a material impact on a collective. Muslim women in hijab, who are acutely aware of the hypervisibility of their bodies at this moment, are disproportionately impacted.

7 October. A short🧵

1. How much work would a Zionist need to have done in their life to ignore the humanity and plight of Palestinians in order to be shocked by 7 October? Think about it carefully.

The genuine shock and surprise by Zionists at Hamas’ attacks.

The shock wasn’t confected. Truly it was viscerally felt. They were stunned and indignant. How dare Hamas attack. I’m not talking about the nature of the attacks. The shock wasn’t over the extent of violence. It was the fact that Hamas attacked. It was genuinely experienced as unprovoked. And we know it was about the fact of the attack itself because the reaction was 'they attacked us because they hate us because we are Jewish.' 2. So imagine the work these Zionists- in the arts, academia, those involved in progressive spaces, in law, in professions that require compassion, empathy, critical thinking- imagine the work they have to consciously do to ignore the fact of settler colonial apartheid rule, the fact of occupation, the fact of illegal, brutal siege, the fact Gaza was declared uninhabitable, to conclude ‘they hate us’.

This is why every person who identifies as a Zionist is outing their racism. Because the core logic of racism is dehumanisation.

1. As a Palestinian Muslim artist, academic, former lawyer I unequivocally say that we and our allies, our organisations and communities have been under surveillance for decades and have sustained the impact of local zionist agents in both indirect and direct ways. 🧵 2. I would have thought the biggest scoop about the leaked chat was to focus on what this group of Jewish Zionist creatives was actually set up to do- get Palestinians and their supporters sacked.

Last week the Australian Psychological Society @AustPsych released a media statement. It's a prime example of a peak body using rhetorical shields, dehumanising erasure & empty platitudes to not just equate occupier & occupied, but sanctify the occupier. 🧵 1. This is APS' first & only public statement concerning Israel & Palestine ever. Israel's multiple carpet bombing campaigns on Gaza, reports on the rates of PTSD among Gaza's children, decades of Israeli war crimes & crimes against humanity were not enough to warrant comment.

1. The lengths to which media will stitch up our interviews, lie & misrepresent is disgraceful but also a masterclass in how media is framing Palestinians as the aggressors & problem. Here's the background to this disgraceful misuse and editing of my interview by @10NewsFirst. 🧵

https://twitter.com/10NewsFirst/status/1711626020804022315

2. The invite: "we are hoping to get your point of view around the current situation in Palestine." "It will be around Australian/Sydney reactions, the premier lighting up Opera House plan and in general why has this happened." "The electricity, food and water blockade."

1/ The casual language in which allegations of antisemitism are levelled, and the uncritical repetition of these allegations by the media, has normalised blatantly defaming Palestinians and stretched the definition of antisemitism to outrageous and dishonest lengths. 2/ It’s urgent that we pay attention to what is happening & what antisemitism has expanded to mean. Since when do regimes have the right to not be criticised in whatever language people choose to use? Especially pple living under a regime’s deadly, violent, oppressive control?

🧵1. With 51% of Gaza under age 15, a war on Gaza is a war on children. With 45 percent of the West Bank under 15, Israel’s apartheid regime & occupation is waged against babies, toddlers & teenagers. So normalising the dehumanisation of Palestinian youth is essential to Israel. 2. With over 30% of the total Palestinian population aged 15-29, young adults live in oppressive conditions, brutalised by Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime, their existence & resistance criminalized as 'terrorism' .

Benjamin Law's resignation. A 🧵
Ben's resignation is welcome. It shows the power of BDS. But this boycott call has been driven by key principles. We would ask people responding to this resignation to reflect critically on these principles. You want nuance? It's here, with us.⬇️ First, this is about the Palestinian struggle against apartheid. We must understand how oppression there, is connected to global colonial, racist structures. We're an intersectional, intergenerational, revolutionary movement. The time for liberal language is over.

1. A lot to say about @sydney_festival's Board’s Chair, David Kirk’s, @RNBreakfast interview today. For now, 2 things stood out. Hamish McDonald asks Kirk 'when you saw the Israeli logo did you think to yourself this could cause us some problems for a lot of the artists?” 2. Kirk accepts they didn't & should have.
But thought about what? The impact on artists? Reputational damage? Financial impact?
All of these are critical considerations. But...

🧵Palestinian activism.
1. Every campaign we have to fight on 2 fronts. The campaign AND the right to campaign. ‘Progressives’ are often silent on the campaign, vocal on our tactics. Basic principle of solidarity: respect that we have the right to choose how and when to resist. 2. ‘Nobody would’ve even noticed @SydneyFestival’s partnership with Israel so why draw attention to it?Won’t somebody think of the artists? Boycotts stifle ‘debate.’ All mask not a genuine interest in the practice of resistance, but irritation at being asked to choose a side.

Palestinians are fed up with the dirty tactics of the Zionist lobby in Australia, designed to cower media from touching Israel b/c it means time, people, resources get sucked into the Zionist vortex of silence & intimidation- meetings, articles, op eds, formal complaints. A 🧵 2. So @acmadotgov has launched an investigation into the @QandA episode I appeared on after complaints by the Zionist lobby. The episode in which, as Israel bombed Gaza, a Zionist audience member asked me, a Palestinian, to account for her son's frightened puppy

1(7) The ‘war on terror’ has always been about extending western empire & white supremacy. Spare us the 'this is an aberration/not us/bad apple' script. This was inevitable, the logical result of Muslims having been constructed as the global enemy in the 'war on terror'. 2(7). Soldiers fighting the WOT have witnessed/participated in the decimation of Iraq/Afghanistan, proxy wars in Yemen, Syria and Libya, drone warfare against Afghans, Pakistanis...

THREAD:
1/ I'm editing a Special Issue 'Historizing Islamophobia' for the Journal of the Contemporary Study of Islam. Here's the call for papers.contemporarystudyofislam.org/index.php/jcsi… 2/ This special issue is interested in papers that take a critical stance towards the dominant framing of 11 September 2001 as the ‘starting point’ of Islamophobia. Seeking articles that examine Islamophobia as a longer and more complex phenomenon.

1. So after @DohaDebates I’ve got a barrage of DMs and online responses hating on me for the M word (Muslim) and the F word (feminism). So here it is. A thread. 2. I speak as a Muslim Palestinian Egyptian Australian woman. In naming myself thus, I’m going against the erasure of identity, social location & power relations in the name of ‘we’re all human’ (as stated in the debate). Ah, the myth of de-politicized identities.