In the end, they did not let him in. Maybe it was because I forgot, as we approached the door, to avoid speaking Arabic. Maybe it was because his ID betrayed his Arabness, despite his effort to offset it with a display of gayness. Maybe it was, contrary to both our suspicions, for some other reason entirely. Whatever the case, that moment cast into sharp relief the discursive framework that governs sexuality and race in Israel-Palestine: the entrance to the bar was a sort of checkpoint, like so many others queer Palestinians regularly face, in bars, saunas, parks, Web sites, and other “egalitarian” gay spaces; it was manned by a queer agent of Israeli nationalism, whose job it was to determine who belongs in this gay/Israeli space and who does not.
I read the checkpoint, then, not just as a literal site on the border where agents of the state “inspect . . . what goes in and out” of the nation but as a ubiquitous subjective process wherein citizens and noncitizens alike check themselves — and others — against “the field of signs and practices” in which the nation-state is represented. By drawing attention to, rather than eschewing, the exclusionary practices of the state and the racist discourses of the nation, the metaphor of the checkpoint more effectively captures the experiences of queer Palestinians than the more familiar metaphor of the closet. Moreover, because it so crudely inscribes the violence of the state on the bodies of its national-racial others, any critique of the checkpoint necessarily entails a critique of the state and its violence. The closet, on the other hand, is a subtler, “characteristically ‘postmodern’ [technique] of power,” and the struggle against it — and for the right to “come out” as respectable queer citizens — insulates the state from critique by representing it as a “neutral [arbiter] of injury,” to be appealed to for redress and protection, “rather than . . . [itself] invested with the power to injure.”
How do you say “come out of the closet” in Arabic: queer activism and the politics of visibility in Israel-Palestine – Jason Ritchie
GLQ 16.4, 2010.
Filed under: Historical, Literary, Political | Tags: egypt, poetry, sheikh imam
Sheikh Imam graffiti
احنا مين وهما مين
احنا قرنفل على ياسمين
احنا الحرب حطبها ونارها
واحنا الجيش اللي يحررها
واحنا الشهدا ف كل مدراها
منتصرين او منكسرين
Barack Hussein Obama adopted Yasser Arafat’s staged plan for Israel’s destruction, and he is trying to force it on our prime minister.
You see what he did there?
Filed under: Political | Tags: homosexuals!, stupid stuff americans said this week
Filed under: Historical, Political | Tags: apartheid, bibi, israel/palestine, zionists gonna zionate
I wish I could just laugh at Obama and Netanyahu but this is so fucking infuriating. Israel is willing to make generous concessions? Like what, for example? Will it “concede” the right of Palestinians not to live under military occupation? Will it “concede” the Palestinian right to a state? A return to 1967 borders is not a concession; it’s the bare minimum for a two-state solution. Unfortunately, this is the way Israel has always conducted “negotiations.” It has been deliberate policy since 1967 (or arguably 1948) to create facts on the ground at significant detriment both to Palestinians, whose lands are then usurped, and to Palestinian negotiators who have to adjust themselves to new “realities” when they shouldn’t have to.
That’s why it should be hilarious when Netanyahu says that Israel is willing to make generous concessions. Kind of like in 1993 when in exchange for full Palestinian recognition (something Obama still maintains Israel needs apparently), Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. How fucking generous. Of course, the UN had recognized the PLO as just that almost 20 years earlier in fucking 1974, but who fucking cares about the UN amirite? Certainly not Israel (despite the fact that it was the UN that created the State of Israel in the first place).
Ironically, it was in the moment the PLO was recognized by Israel as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people that it ceased to be just that. Meanwhile Israel used the opportunity to build more settlements on land that did not - and does not - by any measure belong to it, insisting all the while that all it wanted was peace, and peace would totally be had if it weren’t for Arafat and those Nazi terrorists who started the Second Intifada. Poor Israel doesn’t have “a partner for peace,” you understand. Never mind the fact that Abu Mazen and the Palestinian authority are salivatingly grovelingly desperate for any bone that Israel throws their way (the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation represents the first time in years that the PA has acted on its own initiative and in accordance with the will of the Palestinian people, and Obama has the gall to condemn it).
The recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel – how can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist.
Excuse me but what?
Never mind the unacceptable pre-conditions that Netanyahu’s government has set for “negotiations” ostensibly for “peace” and a “final settlement.” And then in 2009, Netanyahu declared his support for the two-state solution. Of course, in the 42 years between 1967 and 2009, Israel had done absolutely everything in its power (well, maybe not – I mean, they could have just shot everyone) to undermine the two-state solution and carry out a plan of unequivocal apartheid.
Which is why I laughed when Ehud Barak said this:
As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic,” Barak said. “If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.
But now it’s just not very funny.
It’s so sad when fucking Jeffrey Goldberg is the voice of reason:
I’m amazed at the amount of insta-commentary out there suggesting that the President has proposed something radical and new by declaring that Israel’s 1967 borders should define — with land-swaps — the borders of a Palestinian state. I’m feeling a certain Groundhog Day effect here. This has been the basic idea for at least 12 years. This is what Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat were talking about at Camp David, and later, at Taba. This is what George W. Bush was talking about with Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. So what’s the huge deal here? Is there any non-delusional Israeli who doesn’t think that the 1967 border won’t serve as the rough outline of the new Palestinian state?
The fact of the matter is: Netanyahu sees no reason to reach a final settlement. As David Samel points out:
The status quo has served the Israelis well over the past 44 years. Sure, they’ve had to endure various rounds of “terrorism,” that is, a small fraction of the violence they have visited upon the Palestinians and Lebanese. But the land has been theirs to play with. They get to rule over millions of stateless, powerless people, making extrajudicial decisions over every facet of their lives and even whether they have lives at all, and still get to call themselves a “democracy”; only a few people, and none who count, snicker in disgust.
[...] Netanyahu doesn’t really care where the starting point is. He just wants to make sure there’s no realistic possibility of an end point.
Besides, every Israeli who is killed as a result of a suicide bombing or violence against settlers sends Likud poll numbers way up.
Filed under: Political | Tags: counterrevolution, islamists, stupid stuff americans said this week, the aftermath
This is the Egypt where the toppling of the pro-American, pro-peace Mubarak regime was celebrated by the rape of CBS correspondent Lara Logan amid the familiar chants of “Allahu Akbar!” The same Egypt where, just a few weeks ago, Islamist factions wiped out the proponents of democracy by a whopping 78–22 margin in a referendum on the formation of a new government.
See what he did there you guise? Mubarak was pro-American (synonymous with goodness) and pro-peace, while the Muslims who overthrew him were rapists duh. Also, the referendum was not about “the formation of a new government” but, hey, never let things like reality get in the way of your determined metanarrative. Or the Islamists win.
I’ve been unable to comment on the events in Imbaba because the whole thing is personally devastating to me.
Filed under: Political | Tags: stupid stuff americans said this week, ~feminism
There was an article about an 11 year old girl who was gang-raped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed up like a 21-year-old prostitute. And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn’t happen to our students.
So someone said this to me:
Wow aha, you’re combating one kind of self-righteousness with another. Your prejudice against “western women” doesn’t let you see past the fact that the actions of these girls were not right, as you’ve yet to tell me how posting those pictures is in any way beneficial. I forgot that only the oppressed can talk about the oppressed. God forbid a western woman talks about your kind. I’m not talking in behalf of them, I’m simply stating that their actions are juvenile and rather counteractive. I’m not framing the Middle East in any way, your prejudice against Western women has you fighting problems which weren’t there to begin with. But alright, I suppose you guys got this done, no sense in us privileged Westerners getting involved in the problems that you and your people can very well handle, yet haven’t. I wasn’t aware that by pointing out that their actions were insensitive to the issue was me undermining you in any way. Perhaps if you let go of that rage you have towards Westerners, you’d be able to see things a little more clearly. You may not have been deliberately trying to make fun of it, but that’s how it comes across. “Look at me I’m so oppressed lolololol.” I can’t imagine someone who is actually going through oppression would find that beneficial to their cause. I never said the point the original post was making was wrong. But again, just because these books are the only ones being published, does not belittle the worth of the story they tell. You seem to think that Western Women are out to get you, however, so I see that my very presence offends you, even though you know nothing about me, my agenda, or my life. Who’s judging books by their cover now?
Today I am fucking angry. When I call someone out on their privilege, I’m the irrational prejudiced one. So it fucking goes.
