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.

1. Can I throw a spanner in the works re the justifiable outrage over Scott Morrison attacking ‘radical activism’, protests and boycotts?
Addressing many white progressives here...
Thread. 2. You do realise that Indigenous people, Muslims, POC aren’t surprised by this? We have always experienced racialised & institutionalised patterns of repression regulating which forms of our politics are permissible.

Was told my article would run but needed some edits. I withdrew the article from a major outlet overseas bc I preferred to publish in Australia. I was then told actually they would hold off on this for now. “It's pretty incendiary and it's very soon. Can we revisit tomorrow?” 1/ I stated why I disagreed. I also want to point out the symbolic violence in being told a piece in which I respond as a Muslim woman to such a horrific event is ‘incendiary’.
2/

#4Corners Thread
1. Explaining Saudi Arabia’s DEPLORABLE laws against women in religious/cultural terms pathologises Muslims. Yes patriarchy, deformed and wacky interpretations of Islam, but make an effort to understand who created the problem in the first place, and why. 2. 'The West’ cries croc tears about the treatment of Saudi women. Honestly, they could care less. The Wahabi fringe sect survived because of an alliance with the Al Sa’ud family and the British, later the US (FDR’s infamous meeting w/ Saudi King in '45).