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Kareem Shaheen Profile
Kareem Shaheen

@kshaheen

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Dad & journalist. MidEast and Newsletters Writer/Editor @newlinesmag . Former @guardian MidEast correspondent. @warstudies alum.

Montréal, Québec
Joined April 2009
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
I just got my Canadian permanent residency card, and on the accompanying letter it said "thank you for choosing Canada" and "we hope you do" w/ regards to applying for citizenship and it made me quite emotional and feeling terribly lucky to be here.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
Photo by Lebanese photojournalist Bilal Jawich of a nurse at Beirut Roum hospital maternity ward, cradling 3 newborns and calling for help
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
I don't wish to share graphic images from chemical massacre in Syria. But this father holding his 2 dead kids shredded my heart. That is all
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
Suddenly Muslims and immigrants aren’t dangerous
@TravelGov
Travel - State Dept
4 years
We encourage medical professionals seeking work in the U.S. on a work or exchange visitor visa (H or J), particularly those working on #COVID19 issues, to contact the nearest U.S. Embassy/ Consulate for a visa appointment. Please see more information here:
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
It’s absolutely bonkers as an Arab to watch how many Americans appear to self-loathe America. You guys should try moving to and living under some of the tyrannical regimes you’re idolizing.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
Syria drained everything out of me. Faith in humanity, in the moral arc of the universe, the energy to carry on every day and do interesting and exciting things, to react emotionally, care about new things. I don't know how Syrians carry on every day. All I can say is I'm sorry.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
Turkish duolingo is so depressing
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
2 years
GOAT headline for the GOAT. By @Ola_Salem
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
When you talk of Qassem Soleimani, remember Aleppo, Qusayr, Madaya, and Zabadani, the cities and towns his acolytes starved to death.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
2 years
If you're shocked by Russia bombing a hospital you shouldn't be. Take a look at this map of attacks on healthcare facilities in Syria. Since Russia intervened in the war in 2016, they and the regime bombed at least 244 facilities
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
Today is my last day covering the Middle East for the Guardian. I'm not sure I believe the maxim that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. But I sure as hell believe in a sacred duty of telling the world what the powerful ones distorting that arc are doing.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
3 years
Honestly if you don't use shatafa/bidet you have 0 legs to stand on calling the rest of us uncivilized.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
Lebanese army raises Spanish flag on hilltop seized from Isis in tribute to victims of Barcelona attack
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
سيرجيو راموس يتخطى أبو لهب في قائمة أعداء الإسلام والمسلمين
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
11 months
It’s not unthinkable at all. The international community has been tolerating it in Syria for over a decade. Putin and Assad normalised bombing hospitals in war so thoroughly that it’s now almost a customary part of conflict. Over 700 attacks on hospitals from 2012-2022.
@melaniejoly
Mélanie Joly
11 months
Bombing a hospital is an unthinkable act, and there is no doubt that doing so is absolutely illegal.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
7 hospitals/clinics bombed, so far 61 people dead today, over a hundred yesterday, in just 2 days of "hysterical violence" in Syria: 'It's not a war. It's a massacre': scores killed in Syrian enclave
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
Isis destroyed one of the greatest mosques in Islam on the night the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammad.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
11 months
Hug your kids tonight and let them do whatever the fuck they want. You are lucky they were not born into this chasm of endless suffering where their lives were deemed utterly worthless
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
I wrote a personal essay reflecting on the last decade in the Muslim World, the influence of austere Gulf conservatism, how it robbed many Arab and Muslim lives of joy, & looking ahead with hope at a new era in which the utopias of the past are dismantled
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
I keep imagining Jamal Khashoggi’s final moments. The reporting today has left me with ice in my veins. I still have no words.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
A doc in E Ghouta: "A child was brought to me, blue, his mouth was filled with sand. A 1 year old child, rescued from the rubble, breathing with lungs of sand. This wasn't in any of our medical textbooks. Is this a war? It’s not a war. It’s called a massacre."
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
8 years
The fall of Aleppo is beginning. This is the moment when "never again" became a lie.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
The look of this father carrying his two children after the chemical attack in Syria encompasses all of the injustice of this world
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
8 years
The heartbreak of the messages from east Aleppo that made it is unspeakable. There is almost bitter gratitude that death is finally coming.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
Only 8 years after Obama refused to do anything to end slaughter in Syria: - Half million dead - Half country displaced, millions of refugees - Repeated chemical atrocities - Hundreds or hospitals bombed - Russian influence maximized - Iran proxies resurgent - ISIS metastasized
@brett_mcgurk
Brett McGurk
5 years
Only four days into Turkish attack and one week after POTUS-Erdogan call: * UN: 130k displaced (likely to 3x) * ISIS terrorists escaping (caught after years of painstaking effort) * Syrians executed on roadways by Turkish-backed opposition forces * Main US supply lines cut..
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
Sorry for the long thread but I need to let it off my chest. Back when we were in Istanbul and thinking of moving to Canada, one question occupied many of the nights I spent contemplating our future: what is the worth of a human life?
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
I wrote a piece for mental health awareness week about struggling with anxiety, burnout and depression as a journalist covering Syria/Lebanon. Please forgive my self-indulgence in writing about myself, but I thought it might help someone out there
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
3 years
It’s really hard to describe the emotion of impotent rage when you see these images, not only as an Arab or Muslim, but as a human. It’s like a time capsule reliving the images of my teen years watching the second intifada on TV and the stifling oppression of it all
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
8 years
A doc in east Aleppo: "A farewell message: Remember that there was a city called Aleppo that the world erased from the map and history."
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
I visited in Khan Sheikhoun the warehouse that Russia said manufactured chemical weapons. Nothing but empty grain silos, dust and rubble.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
I can’t keep it together watching Beirut from afar. I’m so sorry to all my friends and loved ones. Every friend has posted photos of broken homes. Our old apartment in Mar Mikhail was totally destroyed. My alma mater at the Daily Star is shattered. Everything is broken.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
8 years
From this moment on, siege warfare, bombing of hospitals and mass civilian deaths have become a normalized form of warfare.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
One day, when the history of this war in Syria is written, a record will be inscribed in gold of all the doctors who worked in east Aleppo and eastern Ghouta, on 3 hours of sleep day in day out, and when we are judged and humanity is found wanting, they will redeem the species.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
We are happy to stop bringing laptops on planes to your countries once you stop bringing Hellfire missiles on planes to our countries.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
I can’t believe Saudi Arabia is going to arrest all those poor tourists Al Arabiya told me were just visiting Istanbul for the afternoon in their private jets owned by the government.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
Confirmed that Turkey has destroyed an Assad regime chemical weapons facility 13km south of Aleppo.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
A year ago yesterday was our first day in Canada as new immigrants, here to settle.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
No picture can illustrate more strongly the failure of the international community in Ghouta and Syria more broadly
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
When you write Soleimani’s obituary, don’t forget the siege of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. This destitution was among his achievements.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
3 years
Ponder the cruelty of this. Then understand that it isn’t about self defense. It’s about subjugation and erasure.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
10 years
Meet 60yo father of 7 who tackled 2nd suicide bomber in Tripoli last night. Died w/ bomber, saved dozens. Hero. http://t.co/ujLsqKHJHa
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
I know this isn't a popular take amid all the alarmism but I've covered civil war and these whiny cosplayers who think masks are tyrannical with laughable tattoos and viking beards wouldn't last 5 minutes in an actual civil war.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
11 months
In awe of this man. I would not have such courage.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
We have an Arabic idiom that encapsulates what just happened in Syria: the mountain went into labor and gave birth to a mouse.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
While I was waiting to find out if America will reelect a racist xenophobe I got news that my application for permanent residency in Canada was approved! Canada, I promise to love you, pay taxes, vote for environmentalists, learn to like hockey, and propagandize for poutine.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
So here's to Canada. Thank you for being you, for having us, and for taking care of us, in an age of walls and closed doors. I hope we'll be able to repay your generosity one day.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
It's quite breathtaking to see the complete silence of Arab and Muslim governments on the plight of the Uighurs compared to their opportunistic use in the past of the plights of Bosnians, Iraqis, Palestinians, Kosovars, Chechnyans, etc.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
8 years
Istiklal avenue, Istanbul, today. When the world stood by to watch the slaughter, ordinary Turks stood by Aleppo.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
I have watched and rewatched @arwaCNN , @gultuysuz and Brice Laine's report from Idlib. The word heartbreaking does not do it justice. That CNN team is an international treasure. Journalism at its finest and most humane
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
3 years
Justin Trudeau says Canada will commit to resettling 20,000 Afghans in the country in light of the latest Taliban takeover.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
I wrote some words in the NYT about Idlib, Syria, and justice in the Middle East: 3 Million People With Nowhere to Go
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
10 months
Syria and nobody did anything there either
@elgindy_
Khaled Elgindy
10 months
Has there ever been a war whose sheer brutality and inhumanity have been so thoroughly and meticulously documented in real time?
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
I owe everything to Beirut. Met the love of my life there. My journalism career. Friendships that will last until I die. Joie de vivre. I wish its pain would ease and it would come unbroken.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
About Tulsi Gabbard, people need to realize that when we condemn her stance on Syria it’s not because we are fans of American wars in the Middle East. It’s because we aren’t fans of American politicians whitewashing their war criminal du jour.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
I wrote a tribute to James Le Mesurier and White Helmets: "I only wish that, in those final moments, he knew in his heart of hearts that he had done immense good, that he experienced love and gratitude. That he saved humanity so many times."
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
Dear pundit, Iranian-backed militias in Syria have played a key role in the mass killing of half a million Syrian civilians, starvation sieges, sectarian cleansing, and mass displacement that created the refugee crisis. Pls find another avenue to opine. End of transmission
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
Algeria, you are beautiful
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
8 years
I have to say I'm in complete awe at the incredible mobilization of Americans in defense of human rights and dignity for Arabs and Muslims
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
8 years
I'm told by diplomatic sources that John Kerry is on the verge of unfriending Lavrov on Facebook due to continued bombing of Aleppo
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
PSA: Modric is now broadly known in the Levant as Fairuz due to the resemblance between him and the legendary Lebanese singer
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
7.1 million Syrians fled because Bashar Al Assad bombed them with sarin, chlorine, barrels filled with shrapnel and TNT, starved them to death, destroyed their hospitals and schools, tortured detainees, and murdered opponents, and nobody stopped him. Not "because America".
@tparsi
Trita Parsi
4 years
Refugee flows caused by US wars since 9/11:
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
So insulting to keep seeing "this is what happens in 3rd world countries". These freaks and psychopaths are all your brand of garbage America.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
I don’t really understand these post-facto takes that Soleimani was bad but this is too risky. What more can he do to instigate a possible American military response than a decade of covert and overt warfare, direct attacks against US allies, and abetting a genocide in Syria?
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
It’s breathtaking to realize quite how terrified the Europeans are of the refugee bogeyman. The EU and its leaders are truly a cowardly, worthless lot.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
900,000 people had fled the Assad regime's advance in Idlib since Dec 1, according to the UN. 900,000. Nearly a million people fleeing for their lives. That is the sheer terror of Assad's Syria.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
I write for a living, and I am left speechless by the beauty, courage, humanity and generosity that New Zealand has displayed this week and today especially.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
8 years
Every message now that I'm receiving from east Aleppo is preceded with "this may be my last message". The heart breaks.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
The disingenuousness is amazing. Soleimani destabilized region for years and facilitated death, starvation, exile of thousands by pursuing Iranian expansionism that was same as US imperialism (and paid for it). The intellectual lengths ppl will go just because Trump did it...
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
This was the warehouse in Khan Sheikhoun that supposedly produced chemical weapons
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
8 years
Y'all want to flee America after electing a fascist but you don't want Syrians to flee when their unelected despot bombs their homes?
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
This report is staggering and chilling. 1.2 million Syrians have been detained or arrested by the criminal Assad regime. It was so creative in its torment that 72 different torture methods were documented in its dungeons via @snhr
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
@lrozen The scale of injustice in that one image alone is enough to shake the mountains and the skies. I cannot begin to conceive of it.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
2 years
I have been filled with utter nausea and despair this week after the murder of two college girls, in Egypt and Jordan, for the temerity of saying no to two men. I wrote some words to get the demons out for @newlinesmag
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
Doctor in Ghouta: "The human rights bodies have all failed. Is it possible for us to appeal to the animal rights organisations?"
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
It’s quite insane that a large scale program of rendition of Saudi government critics is being presented as the reasonable alternative that they were pursuing and it only became bad and unacceptable when they killed someone.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
Dear Western world, please use the coronavirus outbreak to join the civilized world by abandoning toilet paper in favor of the bidet/shattafa technology we've had in the Arab world since time immemorial. It is time. You'll never run out of toilet paper again.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 months
I became a Canadian citizen today. I am grateful to this wonderful country for welcoming me, and I'm excited about the prospect of living my citizenship, the idea of which still leaves me marveling at it.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
My first essay for @newlinesmag is out. I started by trying to think through why anti-Americanism in the Arab world is a more powerful ideological force than anger at China's Uighur genocide and Russia's Syria atrocities
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
This is my last week with @guardian . After 3.5 years working for this incredible, honorable institution in Beirut and Istanbul as Mideast correspondent, I'll be moving to Montreal for some time. Very grateful to my mentor and best journo in the region, @martinchulov .
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
I wish this piece by the Lebanese journalist Hazem al-Amin, titled "New Zealand's wolf, and our wolf", was translated into English. It argues that violent white supremacy is a parallel form of ISIS, motivated very often by the same instincts
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
Tonight is the Night of Power, the holiest day in the Muslim calendar. ISIS destroyed one of the greatest mosques in Islam on this night.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
That's why the Beirut thing fills me with nausea every time I think about it. They leveled a fucking city, and it wasn't even because they plotted to do it, it was literally because they didn't give a shit. About millions of lives.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
I thought I had numbed myself to the region’s tragedies until Beirut shattered it into a million little pieces today. I’m so sorry. من قلبي سلام لبيروت
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
These are the conditions Syrian refugees in Lebanon (Arsal) have to deal with. Desperate cold that seems to surprise UN aid agencies every winter. And they still don’t want to go back to live under Assad. Imagine their fear of being forced to return.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
Jamal Khashoggi’s son announces that the family will forgive and pardon the killers of their father. What this family has been put through is something that should shame every decent human being.
@salahkhashoggi
Salah Khashoggi
4 years
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
Just absolutely overwhelmed by all the generosity and kindness in this thread. I’ll do my best to reply to every one of you.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
If you are in awe of @clarissaward 's immense courage knocking on the door of a Russian assassin, you should read her memoir "On All Fronts" chronicling her human and empathetic and incredible courage as a war correspondent
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
Yo ⁦ @nytimes ⁩ next time please assign an Arab to attempt this feat while chronicling their visa struggles
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
Turkey is using its 4 mil refugees as a scarecrow to terrify the Europeans, dehumanizing them in the process. Europe paid Turkey billions of dollars to keep all those brown people close to the war zones they came from. As far as I’m concerned, EU are primary moral cowards here.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
This is the point of impact of the rocket where the chemical attack happened
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
3 years
Every expert and analyst advocating engagement out of realpolitik with the regime of Bashar al-Assad should have to deliver their remarks or write their articles while staring at a rotating series of images of thousands of tortured human beings from the Caesar files.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
6 years
Nothing breaks my heart about leaving the region than the inability to tell more of Syria's stories. I'm sorry everyone has failed you. I pray you find peace one day.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
3 years
Atrocities carried out by warring parties in Ethiopia’s civil war haven’t gotten the attention they deserve. @ZekuZelalem interviewed families and witnesses of the Mahbere Dego massacre, carried out by government forces and omitted from a recent UN probe
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
8 years
Your loss Trump, wherever Syrians go they make a culinary paradise
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
Why do people find it so objectionable that young men are also seeking refuge outside of their war-torn countries? Believe it or not most young men also don't want to die in a barrel bomb by Assad's helicopters.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
7 years
Isis destroyed one of the most venerated mosques in Islam on the holiest night of the Muslim calendar. We will never forget.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
4 years
But there is great evil in this profound absence of justice. The world cannot stand like this. It will collapse in on itself one day because these sins are too grave, and there are too many of them.
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@kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen
5 years
Reports out of Syria today is that the government has bombed school buildings, some used by displaced families in Idlib. Doctors in one town (Ma'arat Masrin) say 11 dead and 27 injured, mostly women and children. There is no end to the savagery of this regime.
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