My op-ed in today’s
@nytimes
: Days after criminalising 6 Palestinian NGOs, Israel approved the construction of 3,000+ new settlement units in the occupied West Bank. The effective criminalization and the expansion of settlements are two sides of the same coin.
“The criminalization of Palestinian institutions and the expansion of the settlements are two sides of the same coin. The goal is clear: to silence the independent monitoring of Israel’s human-rights violations,” writes
@Zena_Agha
.
For friends in the DC Metro area and online, I'll be giving a talk on mapping and decolonisation in
#Palestine
tomorrow at 2pm ET at George Washington University
My latest piece in the
@nytimes
on the Palestinian Authority and the Trump Peace Plan; "the past century has illustrated that Palestinians will abandon neither their rights to return, equality and freedom nor their demand for dignity":
For over 20s years, U.S tech companies have been legally bound to censor satellite imagery over Palestine-Israel.
In June, the legislation was reversed - I wrote about it in
@ForeignPolicy
here:
Huuuuge shout out to
@michael_fradley
and
@msmimikirk
.
Can't believe this is the hill I'm going to die on but journalists please 👏 DO 👏NOT 👏 WRITE 👏ABOUT 👏US👏 IF 👏YOU 👏ARE👏 NOT 👏WILLING 👏TO 👏QUOTE 👏US👏. DO 👏NOT 👏USE 👏THE 👏PASSIVE 👏VOICE.
Last May, I found myself thinking about the longer-term solidarities arising from the Unity Intifada. Today, I'm overjoyed to share PALESTINE: WAYS OF BEING, a season of stories I curated in collaboration w/ the wonderful
@tweetskindeep
. Read it all here:
I want to tell you a story about my mother. When she was 22 she crossed a main road in Baghdad on her way to sit her final exams. She was in her final year of a physics degree. She was run over by another student and almost died on the road. THREAD 1/8
Very happy to share that my poetry manuscript 'Objects from April and May' was a finalist for the Omnidawn First/Second book contest. Thanks to
@jerichobrown
for judging, the folks at Omnidawn, the
@MillayCol
and as ever
@aaww
.
I spent *months* researching climate change in
#Palestine
and my baby is born: the piece examines the effects of climate change on the occupied territories and the inability of the
#PA
to deal w/ it as well
#Israeli
theft of resources.
This is a photo of her holding a photo of her undergraduate degree, taken in a photo studio in Baghdad Thank you for taking a chance on her
@LondonMetUni
and
@SF_England
. Her parents weren't alive to see it, but her daughter was. I couldn't be prouder. 8/8
Very happy (and kinda surreal) to announce that my poetry book 'Objects from April and May' will be published by
@hajarpress
on 14 April - you can pre-order via subscription now
In ‘Objects from April and May’,
@Zena_Agha
traces stolen gold across years and borders, from Brooklyn to Occupied Palestine to Iraq. Inventive and politically astute, her poems show how much material loss can teach us about love, attachment and sorrow.
Yes yes yes my debut poetry collection, Objects from April and May, is out in the world! Thanks to all who made it happen, esp
@hajarpress
! You can pick up your copy here:
The first Hajar book of 2022 has just dropped 💥
Mabrook
@Zena_Agha
on publication day!
Heartbreaking and inventive, the poems in Objects from April and May show us how much material loss can teach us about love, attachment and sorrow.
Available now
The full season is available in both Arabic and English and explores three under-explored areas of Palestinian liberation and life: Blackness, queerness and incarceration. You read more about the impetus for the season here:
The number one place goes to our first episode hosting Al-Shabaka's
@Zena_Agha
in which she exposed how decades of colonial mappings, first by British imperialism & then by the Israeli colonial project, have undermined Palestinian self-determination
We are podcasting! Introducing 'Rethinking Palestine,' hosted by
@yarahawari
!
In our first episode,
@Zena_Agha
discusses British & Zionist colonial mappings and how they have undermined Palestinian self-determination.
Listen, subscribe & share 👉
Yesterday she graduated with a masters in Computing and Informations Systems, 38 years after finishing her undergraduate degree. She was quite possibly the oldest person to cross the stage that day.
@BarbicanCentre
#londonmetgrad18
7/8
Big congrats to Margins Fellow alum
@Zena_Agha
for being named a finalist for the 2020
@AliceJamesBooks
award for her manuscript, Objects from April and May! ✨
My latest article in
@ForeignAffairs
examines why Israel wants the US to recognise sovereignty over the Golan Heights and the battle over resources, particularly water:
Eid Mubarak from New York everyone! Hope everyone celebrating found community, love and light. Thinking today of our brothers & sisters from
#Gaza
to
#GrenfellTower
.
@ICNYU
Barcelona's decision to cut its twinning agreement with Tel Aviv spotlights why such ties with Israeli localities, especially settlements, are never 'apolitical.'
By
@Zena_Agha
.
I'm working on a policy brief on
#mapping
in
#Palestine
for
@AlShabaka
and thinking about the colonial imperative of maps: from the British and French ones in the late C19th and C20th to Google + Bing maps today. [THREAD]
Hey Palestinian twitter, remember this photo of our man in Lydda last year during the Unity Intifada? does anyone knows who the image is by / where it came from? I wanna cite it but can't find it anywhere...
#Palestine
It's almost too good to be true but the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment which has been censoring US satellite imaging over Palestine since '97 was finally scrapped! It took years of work across academia + policy but we did it! Well done
@michael_fradley
, Dr. Zerbini &
@msmimikirk
! 🙌
My new blog with
@EAMENA123
on my research and campaigning (and now victory) with Andrea Zerbini to reform the U.S. satellite imaging restrictions over
#Israel
and
#Palestine
, known commonly as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment
#KBA
I am forever impressed by the deft brilliance of
@TareqBaconi
: "The alternative to Palestinian sumoud is oblivion. Their persistence is neither a choice nor a pursuit of fleeting emancipation. Their struggle is existential." in
@ForeignPolicy
While twitter might be one of the circles of hell, it is beautiful in these moments. Objects from April and May out next Thursday! Pre-order via subscription
@hajarpress
or from your local bookshop + tell everyone you know. 🌱🌖
✨ Out next week! ✨
Our first book of 2022 is Objects from April and May –
@Zena_Agha
's meditations on treasure, mourning, and why our belongings can matter so deeply.
Join the Hajar subscription to bag an early copy 👀
By
@TareqBaconi
:"the collective eruption across Palestine shows that the Palestinians remain a people, despite the false hope of partition, the all-too-real separation of their territories, & the deep fragmentation of their political & social life"
For friends interested in satellite imagery, some excellent images here + available for download, thanks to
@EAMENA123
funding. Shows Palestine post '73 war and a decade after the '67 Naksa war.
🚨NEW! Together with
@OfficialBrismes
, we have launched a new report exposing the harmful impacts of the IHRA definition of antisemitism -which conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel- on academic freedom & free speech in UK campuses.
#NOIHRA
1/14
Quite apart from the gifted writers + creatives who contributed to the season, and the extraordinary editors and translators (hey,
@Lau_Bast
!) it was a life-changing experience to work with such a dedicated and loving team of friends and collaborators in the
@tweetskindeep
team.
I wrote a tribute to the beloved Notting Hill bookshop Saqi, founded by three young Lebanese friends armed only with a profound love of books and a bittersweet nostalgia for the Arab world — particularly Lebanon — which they had been forced to leave behind
For years, myself +
@Dorothy_A_P
have worked on a short film called 'The Place that is Ours' about Palestine, return and maps. Today you can watch it on
@NOWNESS
as part of the International Day of Solidarity with Palestine. Thanks to everyone who made it possible! 🇵🇸🍉🫒
Watch a daughter of Palestine search for traces of an obliterated past in the short film 'The Place that is Ours' by Palestinian-Iraqi writer
@Zena_Agha
with director Dorothy Allen-Pickard on
#InternationalDayofSolidarityWithPalestine
Thread of every UK MP who abstained or voted against a ceasefire in Gaza.
Is your MP on this list? Don’t forget their name or face at the next election 🧵
very beautiful evening yesterday, welcoming
@Zena_Agha
’s new collection into the world 🌷 zena is such an inventive + incisive writer, with such boundless generosity. buy her book:
Rifat Chadirji (b.1926), the pioneering Iraqi architect, passed away in London of Coronavirus infection. A thinker, author, critic, & rationalist architect with a refined aesthetic sensitivity, he combined traditional elements & constructivism in ultra-modernist compositions. RIP
She broke all four bones in her legs, her arm and cracked her skull. She was in hospital for 6 weeks. When she came around she realised she missed her exams & her graduation ceremony. She sat her finals in hospital and got her degree without attending a ceremony. 2/8
In my journey with
@AlShabaka
as
#Gaza
based analyst, I worked on this policy brief about energy crisis and poverty in Gaza, its impact on people, and how problematic the narrative of depoliticising energy on Palestinian households.
Watching the Owellian discourse around the
#AlAhliarabhospital
hospital bombing, I think again of Toni Morrison and racism as distraction. It makes you expend your grief on countering media and political lies, and not on accountability or justice.
My latest for
@AlShabaka
on the quality of aerial photography over Palestine-Israel and the obscure US amendment that prevents access to high-resolution imagery.
voting for a ceasefire during a genocide is not divisive. sacrificing million of Palestinian lives for your career is. You take our vote for granted and we will campaign hard to get you unseated.
I have received many emails from constituents. I have made my position clear in that I support a humanitarian ceasefire.
I did not vote for the divisive SNP amendment and I will continue to represent the views of my constituents.
Listening to
@BBCRadio4
’s week in Westminster show and their ‘experts’ takes on
#gaza
. I don’t think the BBC or their producers have ever spoken to anyone other white middle class policy Hawks in their whole damn lives.
The book launch for 'Objects from April and May' is happening on May 20th at 7pm at Reference Point. Will be chatting with
@sarahfovea
and there'll be music, books and good vibes: get (free) tickets here:
إن قدرة الفلسطينيين على قيادةِ حملةٍ ناجحة لمناهضة سياسةٍ من سياسات السلطة الفلسطينية قد يكون بدايةَ حركةٍ حقوقية تدعو إلى إحداث تغييرات جذرية في نظام فاسد وقاص. في
@AlShabaka
المعارضة-الفلسطينية-للضمان-الاجتماع/
Despite really struggling all year, she passed. She was finally going to graduate. At both my graduations she cried, thinking about her daughter graduating before her. In the weeks before her graduation, she took extra care crossing roads, scared she'd miss another ceremony. 6/8
In both cases, marginalised people, who staggeringly suffer at the hands of police/military violence (black folks, Palestinians etc), are directly impacted. Whether by losing political representation or knowing that the systems which oppress and kill them cannot be questioned.
Ben-Gurion understood this + explained Zionist colonisation of Pal villages after the Nakba cartographically: "no names of places that existed should be included in the new map. When we will build a new settlement in the ruined place we will give it a name & publicize it in maps”
Due to horrific family circumstances, she had to stop both & raised me as a single mother in different council housing across West London. She always wanted to return to school. When I left to get my Masters at
@HarvardGSAS
, she started a masters at
@BirkbeckNews
. 4/8
Co-authored this piece w/
@nadiahijab
for
@thenation
about Trump's decision to recognise
#Jerusalem
as Israel's capital & what the consequences will be.
"If unchecked, climate change will place the Occupied Palestinian Territories under incredible strain over the coming decades which will push an already volatile situation to breaking point" argues
@Zena_Agha
in
@ACMideast
She was told she'll never walk again but eventually she did. She's been disabled ever since & suffers from crippling pain in her legs during the winter. When she emigrated to London during the Gulf War, she tried to get her masters at
@CityUniLondon
then her PhD
@UniofHerts
. 3/8
In the 1948 Nabka ~530 Palestinian villages were destroyed, displacing ~750,000 Palestinian refugees who have grown to over 5 million worldwide, still waiting for the right to return. This is what Dr. Salman Abu Sitta means when he says Palestinians are "abolished from the map".
💥 We are so thrilled to announce our 2018-2019 Margins Fellows: Zena Agha (
@Zena_Agha
), Pik-Shuen Fung (
@pikshuen
), Jen Lue, and Ayesha Raees (
@skunkbabepoet
)! 💥
This is one way to counter deliberate Palestinian fragmentation and displacement: imagining return and liberation through a decolonised map not (only) of what once was, but what could be. Liberation for all people. [END]
Had the chance to sit down with Akil Kumarasamy to talk writing, colonialism and homelands. Check out the interview published in the Margins:
@aaww
@chillakiles
Maps are "self-portraits" of the colonial cartographer's subjectivity and are linked to conquering and controlling land. As Israeli cartographer Meron Benvenisti said: 'cartographic knowledge is power: that is why this profession has such close links with the military and war'
Zionist cartographic practises of exclusion and exile have been around for decades and are central to settler-colonialism. So the question becomes: what can we do? There are creative and subversive counter-mapping efforts ongoing:
@Zochrot
,
@visualizingpal
, Palestine Open Maps &c
And
@7amleh
's report 'Mapping Segregation', on how
@googlemaps
"serves the interests of the Israeli government" + contradicts its responsibilities under international human rights frameworks.(E.g. ignoring Bedouin villages & calculating routes specifically for Israeli ID holders)
She couldn't afford the fees so had to leave. When Student Finance extended to Masters degrees she enrolled at
@LondonMetUni
as her last attempt. She studied Computing and Information Systems. It was tough: she's very dyslexia and knew little about coding. 5/8
Today, even with all the huge advancements in geospatial imaging, Palestine is still being erased and obscured from through through censorship such as the obsolete Kyl-Bingaman amendment (see
@michael_fradley
and Zerbini's excellent research: )
In sum, by taking the long + violent practise of abusing human rights through militarised policing (whether in Israel, the US or the UK) & crow-baring it into a toxic discourse of anti-semitism w/i a fractured party,
@Keir_Starmer
has proved he has no interest in justice or truth
I think the real question is about decolonisation & 'mapping liberation', what David Harvey calls 'geographic imagination': linking social imagination with spatial-material consciousness. In other words: what does return look like? What do we build where? Who will build them? &c.
Powerful piece in
@tweetskindeep
"I try and fail to create this world of mundane, Joycean activities...because in this world, for black and brown people to emerge unscathed or at the very least fearless in these moments, would require elements of fantasy."