#arabic language in american media

[fiercynn]

poetry outlets that support a free palestine

after finding out that the poetry foundation/POETRY magazine pulled a piece that discussed anti-zionism because they "don't want to pick a side" during the current genocide, i decided to put together a list of online outlets who are explicitly in solidarity with palestine where you can read (english-language) poetry, including, except where otherwise stated, by palestinian poets!

my criteria for this is not simply that they have published palestinian poets or pro-palestine statements in the past; i only chose outlets that, since october 7, 2023, have done one of the following:

published a solidarity statement against israeli occupation & genocide

signed onto the open letter for writers against the war on gaza and/or the open letter boycotting the poetry foundation

published content that is explicitly pro-palestine or anti-zionist, including poetry that explicitly deals with israeli occupation & genocide

shared posts that are pro-palestine on their social media accounts

fyi this is undoubtedly a very small sample. also some of these sites primarily feature nonfiction or short stories, but they do all publish poetry.

outlets that focus entirely on palestinian or SWANA (southwest asia and north africa) literature

we are not numbers, a palestinian youth-led project to write about palestinian lives

arab lit, a magazine for arabic literature in translation that is run by a crowd-funded collective

sumuo, an arab magazine, platform, and community (they appear to have a forthcoming palestine special print issue edited by leena aboutaleb and zaina alsous)

mizna, a platform for contemporary SWANA (southwest asian & north africa) lit, film, and art

the markaz review, a literary arts publication and cultural institution that curates content and programs on the greater middle east and communities in diaspora

online magazines who have published special issues of all palestinian writers (and all of them publish palestinian poets in their regular issues too)

fiyah literary magazine in december 2021, edited by nadia shammas and summer farah (if you have $6 usd to spare, proceeds from the e-book go to medical aid for palestinians)

strange horizons in march 2021, edited by rasha abdulhadi

the baffler in june 2021, curated by poet/translators fady joudah & lena khalaf tuffaha

the markaz review has two palestine-specific issues, on gaza and on palestinians in israel, currently free to download

literary hub featured palestinian poets in 2018 for the anniversary of the 1948 nakba

adi magazine, who have shifted their current (october 2023) issue to be all palestinian writers

outlets that generally seem to be pro-palestine/publish pro-palestine pieces and palestinian poetry

protean magazine (here's their solidarity statement)

poetry online (offering no-fee submissions to palestinian writers)

sundog lit (offering no-fee submissions to palestinian writers through december 1, 2023)

guernica magazine (here's a twitter thread of palestinian poetry they've published) guernica ended up publishing a zionist piece so fuck them too

split this rock (here's their solidarity statement)

the margins by the asian-american writers' workshop

the offing magazine

rusted radishes

voicemail poems

jewish currents

the drift magazine

asymptote

the poetry project

ctrl + v journal

the funambulist magazine

n+1 magazine (signed onto the open letter and they have many pro-palestine articles, but i'm not sure if they have published palestinian poets specifically)

hammer & hope (signed onto the letter but they are a new magazine only on their second issue and don't appear to have published any palestinian poets yet)

if you know others, please add them on!

[johnbrand]

The Stages of Arabization

With @next-pharaoh

“Jeez, it’s so bright here,” Henry oriented his phone up in front of the sun, hoping to block out a few of the direct rays.

“Well, you are closer to the equator,” his boyfriend, Alex, joked. “Dubai is a bit farther south than Boston.”

Henry rolled his eyes, “What would I do without that intelligence of yours?” 

“Too bad you don’t have your own.” They both laughed at that remark. The pair had started dating in graduate school, with Alex venturing down the path of mathematics and Henry following the racial trends of Sub-Saharan Africa. Everyone joked it should have been the other way around, given Henry’s geeky, pale exterior fit the math nerd stereotype better than Alex’s lanky, darker frame. But Henry loved his studies, so much so that he had been invited to a conference in the United Arab Emirates to talk on them.

Suddenly, Henry received an email notification from one of his sponsors. “Dang, looks like I have to get back to work. Just received an essay to review before the next presentation.”

“How long do you have?”

“Barely 30 minutes.”

“Well forward it to me,” Alex replied. “We can tag team it. I know this isn’t my strong suit but at least I can help cover more ground.”

Henry thought that was a great idea. Without a second thought, he redirected the email and wished his boyfriend goodbye. Alex would send his thoughts over text when he had finished.

“‘The Stages of Arabization’,” Henry recited aloud. He was planning to head inside to read–gingers burnt way too easily in the direct sunlight–but he noticed the writing was pretty short. Barely even a page. Henry was surprised to realize the essay was in Arabic, but he quickly utilized a translator app to resolve the issue.

Stage 1: Islamization  Islam becomes the majority religion or state religion.

Strange formatting, but Henry understood the statement as rather truthful. The historically successful Arabizations of Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt had followed a similar suit. Even some of the countries he had studied had shown signs of this progression.

Stage 2: Linguistic Arabization Islam brings fixation on Arabic language, thus the Arabic language becomes central to the society's identity. Arabic becomes the state language.

Henry found this statement agreeable as well. There was something so methodical about the Arabic language, how it melodically ebbed and flowed in such a way that it twirled through the hearing canals directly into the brain. Anyone who listened to it almost became entranced, as if captured by its beauty and awakened by its fluidity. Henry closed the translator app before continuing on. 

Stage 3: Cultural Arabization Arab cultural practices become common due to Islamization. Own cultural heritage is deemed closer to ages of ignorance and thus gradually forgotten and replaced with Islam.

Henry had followed this trend through his research. Many of the countries he had analyzed over the years had demonized their traditional practices once introduced to Islamic culture. It was like watching a child being given a new toy; the original quickly discarded for one deemed far more superior. These assimilations had even started to appear in Henry’s life. Thobes were the new fashion craze among his fellow researchers, midday prayer rooms had taken over labs, and even the cafeteria had become completely halal.

Stage 4: Ethnic Arabization Planned migration of many Arab tribes and deliberate suppression of the numbers of natives, consequently major demographic shift. Media encourages Arabs to multiply and mix.

This too had arrived in the workplace. Rapidly, it had become obvious that the university was prioritizing hiring Arab and Arab-American employees. Political discourse on abortion had suddenly disappeared, instead dropping birth control from medical insurances and advertising “Reversion Through Fertilization”. Luckily, Hussein had not been influenced much by this change. In fact, he almost felt as if he was somehow a part of it.

Stage 5: Fully Arab State Arabs and the Arabized become elite and majority. Non-Arabized are shunned and pressured to revert until no opposition remains.

Hussein smiled with pride, closing the essay he was sure to give high remarks to. His best friend Ali had a similar response, a text from him glowing with praise about the truth in the writer’s words. The essay was eloquent, thought-provoking, and would become mandatory literature at his lab, and soon throughout the reverting world. It reflected the future, similarly to his own phone screen: masculine, virile Arab men. Hussein felt a divine sense of conformity with Islam, one all were soon destined to see.

[irhabiya]

So I live in the US and due to that I had to prioritize English over Arabic and thus I don’t really know how to read or write it. I’m trying to incorporate more Arabic in my spoken vocabulary and my family has been helping with that. I’m currently using duo lingo to help with learning written Arabic. They have a feature where your just learning the alphabet and that has helped.

But what I’m trying to get at here is do you have any resources to help me learn reading and writing Arabic? I seen courses available but they are out price range and so I wanted to see if you could point me to anything that could help me.

hi sweetheart <3

unfortunately, since i was born and raised in the middle east and speak arabic as my first language i don't have any resources for someone trying to learn as a beginner but!! i can point you towards some users/posts who provide resources that could be helpful to you

my mutual @ayin-me-yesh has many resources for learning arabic under the #arabic and #alif baa tags on their blog. here are some posts compiling resources and you can look through the rest [1], [2], [3]

in general though, i would recommend you learn msa to an intermediate level so you can have a good understanding of standard arabic syntax and grammar and then move on to learning dialect to be able to actually communicate with people. the best way to learn dialect imo is by consuming media in that dialect and practicing with someone and it's good that your family is willing to help you with that. i saw in your bio that you're palestinian-american so maybe look into palestinian films and music specifically and levantine media more broadly.

[girlactionfigure]

ANTISEMITIC BIAS 

Many antisemites don’t consciously dislike Jews. They might even think highly of Jews. For example, they might believe “positive” stereotypes of Jews, such as that Jews are good at business or good with money. They might have Jewish friends. They might like “some” Jews. But they still cause tremendous damage to the Jewish community. 

“Biases” can be defined as “an inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group.”

Unconscious biases are known as implicit biases. We all have implicit biases (whether negative or positive) in the way that we interpret the world around us. Conscious biases (such as, for example, the Nazis outwardly believing that Jews were “the inferior race”) are known as explicit biases.

Because antisemitism is everywhere in our world — in our cultures, our languages, our folklore, our literature, our entertainment, our media, and more — it’s impossible for us not to internalize at least some antisemitic biases. These biases, however, exist on a spectrum: from unconsciously assuming that most Jews are wealthy (implicit bias) to believing the white supremacist conspiracy theory that Jews are enacting a “white genocide” (explicit bias) to everything in between.

Because antisemitism is so old and so deeply embedded into our society and institutions (e.g. religion, language, literature, education, and more), that means that there is a lot of antisemitic bias in our world, most of which you might not even be able to see. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 

ANTISEMITISM IS A CONSPIRACY ABOUT THE JEWS

Antisemitism can be tricky to spot because it works very differently than every other form of bigotry. While other bigotries see their victims as “inferior,” antisemitism sees Jews as both “inferior” but also “superior” or all-powerful, capable of causing every calamity from wars to natural disasters to diseases to controlling the weather. 

Societies project whatever they dislike most onto the Jews. In the Middle Ages, Jews were Christ-killers. In Nazi Germany and McCarthyist America, Jews were communists. In the Soviet Union, Jews were capitalists. In Nazi Germany and during the rise of the scientific racism period, Jews were the inferior race. To white supremacists, Jews are not white. To left-wing anti-Zionists, Jews are white. For centuries in Europe, Jews were untrustworthy foreigners from Palestine. But today among anti-Zionists, Jews are Europeans colonizing Palestine. We are whatever makes us the perfect scapegoat at any given time. 

It’s no coincidence, then, that antisemitism tends to surge most when societies are in upheaval. After all, the leaders need someone to blame. Examples of this include the Germans’ blaming Jews for Germany’s suffering post-World War I, as well as the rise of the “Deadly Exchange” conspiracy which blames Israel for police brutality in the United States, following George Floyd’s murder. 

Antisemitism moves through conspiracy theories. Most notably, since to the antisemite, Jews are all-powerful, the most prevalent and deeply ingrained antisemitic conspiracies have to do with Jews and wealth and power. In the Middle Ages, for example, Europeans believed that Jews aimed to subvert Christendom. Since the 1920s, antisemitic leaders in the Arab world have rallied their followers behind the conspiracy that Jews intend to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque and usurp Islamic lands. White supremacists — and far left anti-Zionists — today believe the “Zionist Occupied Government” conspiracy, which accuses Jews of controlling and manipulating the American government for their benefit. 

Given the pervasiveness of conspiracies regarding Jews and power, antisemitism is nearly impossible to address without triggering more antisemitism. If an antisemite faces consequences for their actions, antisemites will use this as “proof” that it’s the all-powerful Jews that have imposed these consequences. This makes antisemitism a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

BIGOTRY WON'T ALWAYS BE OBVIOUS TO YOU

Most of us want to do the right thing. The problem is that bigotry — whether antisemitism or something else — doesn’t come with a flashing neon sign that says “this is bigoted! Call it out!” Instead, bigotry persists because entire societies convince themselves that their bigoted worldview is somehow justified. This is especially true of antisemitism. Antisemites throughout history have long persecuted Jews under the guise of seeking justice. 

For instance, since the Middle Ages, Jews have been periodically persecuted on the accusation that they killed a Christian or Muslim child for ritual purposes. In other words, antisemites were seeking “justice” for these children that the Jews allegedly killed. This antisemitic trope is called “blood libel” and has led to the deaths of millions of Jews. It’s safe to say that these murderous antisemites fully believed that they were doing the “right thing.” Some examples of historic blood libels that have resulted in violence against Jews include the William of Norwich blood libel (1144), the Damascus Affair (1840), and the Kielce Pogrom (1946). 

During the Bubonic Plague, Jews were persecuted under the false accusation that they were “poisoning the wells” and sickening the gentile population of Europe. Once again, the persecution of Jews was seen as just.

During the Nuremberg Trials, high-ranking Nazi officers testified that they believed that Jews were a danger to the safety of the German people and the German nation. In other words, they justified their mass extermination of Jew under the guise of “protecting” the people of Germany. 

The list goes on and on. Is it possible that today you too have been made to believe that violence against Jews — Zionists, Israelis — is a just cause? 

THE NAZI FALLACY

A few years ago, the notorious antisemite Shaun King argued with a Holocaust survivor on Twitter. When accused of antisemitism, he retorted, “I can’t be an antisemite. I fight Nazis every day!” But anyone even remotely familiar with antisemitism or Jewish history will know that Nazis were far from the Jews’ only historic oppressors. You don’t have to be a Nazi to be an antisemite. In fact, most antisemites are not Nazis.Not even close. 

Nazism is just one manifestation of antisemitism. It’s a deadly one, certainly, but it’s also far from the only deadly manifestation of antisemitism. Jews have been killed by the thousands — sometimes by the millions — by a multitude of other oppressors. Some, like the Nazis, the KKK, and other white supremacists, are far-right. Others, like the Soviet Union, are far-left. Others are somewhere in the middle, and others oppressed us so long ago that their ideologies long predate the left-right political spectrum as we know it today.

The horrific images of Nazism and the death camps are seared in the world’s collective memory. It’s easy to think that if it doesn’t look like Nazism, if it doesn’t look like Auschwitz, then it’s not actually antisemitism, or perhaps it could be antisemitism, but it’s not serious antisemitism. In reality, though, antisemitism doesn’t go from zero to Auschwitz. Instead, antisemitic tropes, conspiracies, and stereotypes fester and proliferate, operating under new euphemisms and adapting to whatever society they’re in. Many of the same antisemitic conspiracies that drove the Nazis nearly 100 years ago are the exact same conspiracies that are driving “protestors” to violently harass Jews in the streets of New York City today. 

For many years before the gas chambers, antisemitism in Germany, which once was home to the most assimilated, well-integrated Jewish community in the Diaspora, proliferated in university lecture halls, justified and explained away in academic language. It wasn’t deadly yet, but it soon would be. When you dismiss any sort of antisemitic rhetoric because it doesn’t mirror the deadliest days of the Nazi regime, what you are actually doing is that you are contributing to the sort of hostile, conspiratorial environment that eventually made the Holocaust possible in the first place. 

THE GASLIGHTING

Antisemitism and the gaslighting of Jews go hand in hand. If an antisemite faces consequences for their antisemitism, it simply reinforces their antisemitic beliefs. Because antisemitism always places Jews in the role of oppressor, it’s nearly impossible for Jews to seek accountability or justice without being accused of exaggerating, crying wolf, playing the victim, or otherwise having nefarious intentions. 

After the Holocaust, for example, the second in command at the Red Cross, Carl Jacob Burckhardt, decried the Nuremberg Trials, calling them “Jewish revenge.” Others, like the Palestinian newspaper Falastin, did so as well. 

Antisemitic bias oftentimes makes it impossible for some people to see Jews as victims. If an antisemite loses their job for espousing antisemitism, they will then blame the “powerful” Jews — or Zionists, or another euphemism — for taking their job. In that way, they turn the victim into the victimizer. This is a classic gaslighting tactic, which creates a catch-22 and is one of the reasons antisemitism can be so hard to combat. 

For example, in the lead up to the Holocaust, American isolationists of various political persuasions accused Jews sounding the alarm on the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany of trying to instigate a war with the Germans. 

Sometimes we are even accused of provoking or exaggerating antisemitism for our own benefit. There are a number of conspiracies, for example, that the Zionists worked with the Nazis to instigate the Holocaust to justify the creation of a Jewish state. 

An example of the accusation that Jews play the victim is when we are told that we talk about the Holocaust “too much” — contrary to the statistics that demonstrate people are woefully misinformed about the Holocaust — or that we should move on because we “got reparations” (not exactly true, but that’s a different topic). 

Then there are the accusations that we brought antisemitism or antisemitic violence onto ourselves — something that we’ve seen on a grand scale following the Hamas massacre on October 7. 

WHAT YOU CAN DO

(1) Listen to Jews. I don’t mean just listen to your Jewish friends, or to the Jews you personally agree with. I mean listen to the Jewish community as a whole. Jews don’t often agree on much, but at the end of the day, we are a community, and only the Jewish community can fully describe our own experience. 

Don’t listen just to the Jews who validate your views. Listen to the Jews that challenge you. Don’t shut yourself off from learning because it might contradict whatever ideology you follow. Learning is a lifelong process. I promise you you don’t know everything there is to know about antisemitism (I don’t either! I’m always learning). But it’s your responsibility to open yourself up to new information so that you can do better. 

(2) if Jews are telling you something is antisemitic, then your first instinct should never be to distrust us.Can Jews weaponize accusations of antisemitism? Sure. Anyone can weaponize anything. Is it likely that that’s what’s happening? No. Antisemitism worldwide has skyrocketed to the highest levels since the end of the Holocaust. It’s a very real threat taking lives. You should take accusations of antisemitism just as seriously as you take accusations of other bigotries…even if initially you don’t see it. 

(3) I can’t stress this enough: do your best to educate yourself about antisemitic conspiracies, stereotypes, and tropes throughout history. The euphemisms may change — sometimes we’re “globalists,” other times we’re “Zionists” — but the formula remains the same. To be able to spot antisemitism, you have to learn to spot it. I recommend reading my post “The World’s Oldest Hatred” for more. 

Instagram

[lordzannis]

Here are 30 ways you can support Palestinians:

Donate to reputable organizations providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians, such as the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF), Muslim Hands, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).[1][4][5]

Advocate for change by writing to elected representatives, signing petitions, and supporting political campaigns promoting peace and justice.[1][4]

Educate yourself on the history and root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[1][4]

Support Palestinian businesses and the local economy.[1][4][5]

Attend protests, marches, rallies, and vigils to demonstrate solidarity.[1][4]

Write letters to the editor countering harmful narratives and providing context.[4]

Read and share Palestinian voices and perspectives, such as the anthology "Light in Gaza."[4]

Hold corporations accountable for complicity in human rights violations by divesting or boycotting them.[4]

Join initiatives like AFSC's "Apartheid-Free" campaign to dismantle Israeli apartheid.[4]

Make du'a (supplication) for relief and blessings in your efforts.[1]

Share information on social media to raise awareness.

Volunteer or intern with pro-Palestinian organizations.

Organize educational events, film screenings, or discussions in your community.

Support Palestinian artists, musicians, and cultural events.

Learn the Arabic language and Palestinian dialect.

Travel to Palestine as an activist or on a solidarity trip.

Boycott products made in Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

Donate to crowdfunding campaigns supporting Palestinian families and causes.

Sponsor a Palestinian student's education.

Plant olive trees or support Palestinian farmers and agriculture.

Advocate for Palestinian refugees' right of return.

Call for ending the blockade and occupation of Gaza.

Demand corporations divest from the Israeli military-industrial complex.[2]

Support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Amplify Palestinian voices and stories through art, writing, or filmmaking.

Pressure universities to divest from companies complicit in the occupation.

Participate in an annual Palestinian solidarity event like Al-Awda or Israeli Apartheid Week.

Support Palestinian prisoners' rights and call for their release.

Donate blood or join a humanitarian aid convoy to Gaza.

Offer skills like web design, translation, or medical expertise to Palestinian organizations.

The key is taking meaningful action through donations, advocacy, boycotts, education, and amplifying Palestinian voices to promote human rights and a just resolution.

Citations: [1] https://muslimhands.org.uk/latest/2021/06/how-to-support-palestine-and-gaza-with-charity [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/17nbhqf/what_can_realistically_be_done_from_abroad_to/ [3] https://afsc.org/programs/us-palestine-activism-program [4] https://afsc.org/news/6-ways-you-can-support-palestinians-gaza [5] https://www.pcrf.net/information-you-should-know/how-to-help-palestine.html

i asked it :how to build keffiyeh factory ?

[mariacallous]

Over the past decade, China has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its international media network. The Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, and the China Daily web portal produce material in multiple languages and use multiple social-media accounts to amplify it. This huge investment produces plenty of positive coverage of China and benign depictions of the authoritarian world more broadly. Nevertheless, Beijing is also aware that news marked “made in China” doesn’t have anything like the influence that local people, using local media, would have if they were uttering the same messages.

That, in the regime’s thinking, is the ultimate form of propaganda: Get the natives to say it for you. Train them, persuade them, pay them—it doesn’t matter; whatever their motives, they’ll be more convincing. Chinese leaders call this tactic “borrowing boats to reach the sea.”

When a handful of employees at RT, the Russian state television network formerly known as Russia Today, allegedly offered to provide lucrative payments to the talking heads of Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based far-right influencer team, borrowing boats to reach the sea was exactly what they had in mind. According to a federal indictment released last week, RT employees spent nearly $10 million over the course of a year—money “laundered through a network of foreign shell entities,” including companies in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic, and Hungary—with the aim of supporting Tenet Media’s work and shaping the messages in its videos.

The indictment makes clear that the influencers—propagandists, in fact—must have had a pretty good idea where the money was coming from. They were told that their benefactor was “Eduard Grigoriann,” a vaguely Euro-Armenian “investor.” They tried to Google him and found nothing; they asked for information and were shown a résumé that included a photograph of a man gazing through the window of a private jet. Sometimes, the messages from Grigoriann’s team were time-stamped in a way that indicated they were written in Moscow. Sometimes the alleged employees of Grigoriann’s alleged company misspelled Grigoriann’s name. Unsurprisingly, in their private conversations, the Tenet Media team occasionally referred to its mysterious backers as “the Russians.”

But the real question is not whether the talking heads of Tenet Media—the founders, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, who were the main interlocutors with the Russians, but also Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson—had guessed the true identity of their “investor.” Nor does it matter whether they knew who was really paying them to make videos that backed up absurd pro-Moscow narratives (that a terrorist attack at a Moscow shopping mall, loudly claimed by the Islamic State, was really carried out by Ukrainians, for example). More important is whether the audience knew, and I think we can safely say that it did not. And now that Tenet Media fans do know who funds their favorite influencers, it’s entirely possible that they won’t care.

This is because the messages formed part of a larger stream of authoritarian ideas that are now ubiquitous on the far right, and that make coherent sense as a package. They denounce U.S. institutions as broken, irreparable: If Donald Trump doesn’t win, it’s because the election is rigged. They imply American society is degenerate: White people are discriminated against in America. They suggest immigrants are part of a coordinated invasion, designed to destroy what remains of the culture: Illegal immigrants are eating household pets, a trope featured during this week’s presidential debate. For the Russians, the amplification of this narrative matters more than specific arguments about Ukraine. As the indictment delicately explains, many of the Russian-sponsored videos produced by Tenet Media were more relevant to American politics than to the Ukraine war: “While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions.”

But these themes are also consistent with the Trump campaign’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions. People who have come to distrust the basic institutions of American democracy, who feel aggrieved and rejected, who believe that immigrants are invaders who have been deliberately sent to replace them—these are not people who will necessarily be bothered that their favorite YouTubers, according to prosecutors, were being sponsored by a violent, lawless foreign dictator who repeatedly threatens the U.S. and its allies with nuclear armageddon. On the contrary, many of them now despise their own country so much that they might be pleased to hear there are foreigners who, like the ex-president, want to burn it all down. If you truly hate modern America—its diversity, its immense energy, its raucous debate—then you won’t mind hearing it denounced by other people who hate it and wish it ill. On X earlier this year, Chen referred to the U.S. as a “tyranny,” for example, a phrase that could easily have been produced by one of the Russian propagandists who regularly decry the U.S. on the evening news.

These pundits and their audience are not manipulated by Russian, Chinese, and other autocrats who sometimes fill their social-media feeds. The relationship goes the other way around; Russian, Chinese, and other influence operations are designed to spread the views of Americans who actively and enthusiastically support the autocratic narrative. You may have laughed at Trump’s rant on Tuesday night: “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.” But that language is meant to reach an audience already primed to believe that Kamala Harris, as Trump himself said, is “destroying this country. And if she becomes president, this country doesn’t have a chance of success. Not only success. We’ll end up being Venezuela on steroids.”

Plenty of other people are trying to reach that audience too. Indeed, the Grigoriann scheme was not the only one revealed in the past few days. In a separate case that has received less attention, the FBI last week filed an affidavit in a Pennsylvania courthouse supporting the seizure of 32 internet domains. The document describes another team of Russian operatives who have engaged in typosquatting—setting up fake news websites whose URLs resemble real ones. The affidavit mentions, for example, washingtonpost.pm, washingtonpost.ltd, fox-news.in, fox-news.top, and forward.pw, but we know there are others. This same propaganda group, known to European investigators as Doppelganger, has also set up similar sites in multiple European languages. Typosquatters do not necessarily seek to drive people to the fake sites. Instead, the fake URLs they provide make posts on Facebook, X, and other social media appear credible. When someone is quickly scrolling, they might not check whether a sensational headline purporting to be from The Washington Post is in fact linked to washingtonpost.pm, the fake site, as opposed to washingtonpost.com, the real one.

But this deception, too, would not work without people who are prepared to believe it. Just as the Grigoriann scam assumed the existence of pundits and viewers who don’t really care who is paying for the videos that make them angry, typosquatting—like all information laundering—assumes the existence of a credulous audience that is already willing to accept outrageous headlines and not ask too many questions. Again, although Russian teams seek to cultivate, influence, and amplify this audience—especially in Pennsylvania, apparently, because in Moscow, they know which swing states matter too—the Russians didn’t create it. Rather, it was created by Trump and the pundits who support him, and merely amplified by foreigners who want our democracy to fail.

These influencers and audiences are cynical, even nihilistic. They have deep distrust in American institutions, especially those connected to elections. We talk a lot about how authoritarianism might arrive in America someday, but in this sense, it’s already here: The United States has a very large population of people who look for, absorb, and believe anti-American messages wherever they are found, whether on the real Fox News or the fake fox-news.in. Trump was speaking directly to them on Tuesday. What happens next is up to other Americans, the ones who don’t believe that their country is cratering into chaos and don’t want a leader who will burn it all down. In the meantime, there are plenty of boats available to borrow for Russians who want to reach the sea.

[officiallordvetinari]

Below are 10 featured Wikipedia articles. Links and descriptions are below the cut.

The election in 1860 for the position of Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford was a competition between two candidates offering different approaches to Sanskrit scholarship. One was Monier Williams, an Oxford-educated Englishman who had spent 14 years teaching Sanskrit to those preparing to work in British India for the East India Company. The other, Max Müller, was a German-born lecturer at Oxford specialising in comparative philology, the science of language.

Adolfo Farsari (Italian pronunciation: [aˈdolfo farˈsaːri]; 11 February 1841 – 7 February 1898) was an Italian photographer based in Yokohama, Japan. His studio, the last notable foreign-owned studio in Japan, was one of the country's largest and most prolific commercial photographic firms. Largely due to Farsari's exacting technical standards and his entrepreneurial abilities, it had a significant influence on the development of photography in Japan.

Girl Pat was a small fishing trawler, based at the Lincolnshire port of Grimsby, that in 1936 was the subject of a media sensation when its captain took it on an unauthorised transatlantic voyage. The escapade ended in Georgetown, British Guiana, with the arrest of the captain, George "Dod" Orsborne, and his brother. The pair were later imprisoned for the theft of the vessel.

Abu Muhammad Hasan al-Kharrat (Arabic: حسن الخراط Ḥassan al-Kharrāṭ; 1861 – 25 December 1925) was one of the principal Syrian rebel commanders of the Great Syrian Revolt against the French Mandate. His main area of operations was in Damascus and its Ghouta countryside. He was killed in the struggle and is considered a hero by Syrians.

Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel (April 23, 1922 – July 24, 1995), who professionally used the mononym Cameron, was an American artist, poet, actress and occultist. A follower of Thelema, the new religious movement established by the English occultist Aleister Crowley, she was married to rocket pioneer and fellow Thelemite Jack Parsons.

Maya stelae (singular stela) are monuments that were fashioned by the Maya civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. They consist of tall, sculpted stone shafts and are often associated with low circular stones referred to as altars, although their actual function is uncertain. Many stelae were sculpted in low relief, although plain monuments are found throughout the Maya region. The sculpting of these monuments spread throughout the Maya area during the Classic Period (250–900 AD), and these pairings of sculpted stelae and circular altars are considered a hallmark of Classic Maya civilization.

The North Norfolk Coast Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) is an area of European importance for wildlife in Norfolk, England. It comprises 7,700 ha (19,027 acres) of the county's north coast from just west of Holme-next-the-Sea to Kelling, and is additionally protected through Natura 2000, Special Protection Area (SPA) listings; it is also part of the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The North Norfolk Coast is also designated as a wetland of international importance on the Ramsar list and most of it is a Biosphere Reserve.

Preening is a maintenance behaviour found in birds that involves the use of the beak to position feathers, interlock feather barbules that have become separated, clean plumage, and keep ectoparasites in check. Feathers contribute significantly to a bird's insulation, waterproofing and aerodynamic flight, and so are vital to its survival. Because of this, birds spend considerable time each day maintaining their feathers, primarily through preening.

The Wells and Wellington affair was a dispute about the publication of three papers in the Australian Journal of Herpetology in 1983 and 1985. The periodical was established in 1981 as a peer-reviewed scientific journal focusing on the study of amphibians and reptiles (herpetology). Its first two issues were published under the editorship of Richard W. Wells, a first-year biology student at Australia's University of New England. Wells then ceased communicating with the journal's editorial board for two years before suddenly publishing three papers without peer review in the journal in 1983 and 1985. Coauthored by himself and high school teacher Cliff Ross Wellington, the papers reorganized the taxonomy of all of Australia's and New Zealand's amphibians and reptiles and proposed over 700 changes to the binomial nomenclature of the region's herpetofauna.

Wulfhere or Wulfar (died 675) was King of Mercia from 658 until 675 AD. He was the first Christian king of all of Mercia, though it is not known when or how he converted from Anglo-Saxon paganism. His accession marked the end of Oswiu of Northumbria's overlordship of southern England, and Wulfhere extended his influence over much of that region.

[courtana]

More recently, the teams behind Call of Duty have attempted to give more shade and nuance to their depictions of the Middle East. The Modern Warfare reboot centers on an Arab woman named Farah Karim, one of several playable protagonists. “It’s rare to find a memorable brown protagonist,” Hussain said when discussing the history of video games. But Farah is certainly memorable—she survives a chemical attack in the opening act and leads her home country’s freedom fighters [...]. But there’s one problem: Farah is from an entirely made-up Middle Eastern country called Urzisktan. All the other main characters have their roots in real places (Price is from the United Kingdom, Alex is an American), yet she is from a fictitious Middle Eastern place ravaged by war, divided into people who engage in terrorist acts and those who don’t. The entire region is flattened into homogeneity as a result, and it’s all too common in these types of games. “We jokingly call it ‘Arabistan,’” game developer and consultant Rami Ismail said via video call. “A game designer once came up with that term…I think a lot of us use [it]. Some people say it’s a nice thing, but I don’t really see it that way. It just means that we’re literally interchangeable, our cultures are interchangeable.” Ismail continued, “From where I’m sitting it’s like, ‘yes, there’s a country in the Middle East, it needs to be bombed.’ That’s not an improvement to me, at least have the decency of picking a place and then doing it. But by homogenizing it, they can effectively go, ‘no, no, we don’t mean any of the real people. We mean the fictional Arabs that by default are terrorists.’” [...] “It’s perpetuating the idea that there is a singular, Middle Eastern country,” Shammas said during our chat. ”It actually ties in very strongly [to current events] because we’re seeing people say, ‘Oh, well, just take the Palestinians into Egypt, take the Palestinians into Jordan.’ These are different people with different Arabic languages…Call of Duty reflects the fact that we treat these cultures as totally swappable and why people don’t care about the displacement of Palestinian indigenous people specifically.” Shammas returned to that concept later, when I brought up the image circulating social media of an alleged Israeli soldier wearing a face covering similar to Ghost from Call of Duty. “Stateless people, unnamed country—Palestine might as well be anywhere else,” she explained. “It helps with the subtle colonialist narrative that the space is empty, barren, and owned by babbling savages that you can now enter and make something of.” [...] But for many, reckoning with the legacy of military games seems nigh impossible. “There is no value in any military game, and honestly, people should find better games to play,” journalist Saniya Ahmed said in an email. “No cultural representation can come from Call of Duty, nor should it.” Shammas brought up God of War 2018 as an example of a franchise taking its core concept and turning it on its head, questioning protagonist Kratos’ legacy and relationship to violence. Can Call of Duty do something like that? “No. I don’t think it can,” she said. Ismail agreed. “The problem isn’t necessarily that we shouldn’t have Call of Duty games or that Call of Duty should be different from what it is,” he said. “Changing that would require a level of courage and a level of insight at the corporate level that just isn’t possible within our system of making games…Call of Duty is a roller-coaster built on the American consciousness of war.”

– Alyssa Mercante, "We Have To Talk (Again) About How War Games Depict The Middle East," KOTAKU (December 7, 2023).

[thecanyon]

🍉 baby activism with Ben 🍉

if you are not Arab, if you are not Palestinian, you can and should have the patience to have difficult conversations with biased and uneducated people about Israel’s genocide on Palestinians. In your everyday life, you will meet people who support the genocide because they hate Arabs. You need to actually give them the time of day and patiently explain to them what is happening in Gaza because you are not the target of that racism.

Here are some tips for having these conversations:

1. Everyone has a reason to care about Palestine. Settler colonialism destroys everything. It destroys bodily autonomy, the environment, healthcare infrastructure, art, schools, culture, children. You can connect with someone from any angle to talk about why they should support Palestinian liberation.

2. Keeping that intention in the front of your mind will help keep your conversation from derailing. If they have bad intentions and you have none, they control the conversation. Don’t let that happen. Keep the focus of the conversation on your topic and what you know you are educated about.

3. Check your understanding of the meanings of words like settler colonialism, apartheid, occupation, military blockade, divestment. You should be able to explain those concepts using language that anyone can understand regardless of prior education on those topics.

4. Instead of rooting your conversation in political ideology, root it in the basic understanding that all people deserve human rights. That killing is a travesty, that bombing is a travesty. Connect on a personal level. The American media invests so much into dehumanizing Palestinians and turning Palestinian liberation into a political issue. Your message will have a greater reach if you are speaking on the human level.

5. Remember why you’re having this conversation! You are doing it to benefit Palestinians and encourage them to care about Palestinian liberation. Reiterate how Israel is committing a genocide. You want to end the genocide. You want to save and protect human life. It creates a shield around your argument when the focus of it is something nearly everyone should be able to agree with.

[whentherewerebicycles]

ugh I am really struggling with a thing with a former student/mentee of mine. in the week or two of the post-hamas attack aftermath I posted something on instagram that was basically like, i feel an obligation to be an informed global citizen and believe me I read/think about/despair over the news every day but I also think it’s ok to really viscerally hate “doing politics” on social media, where complex, centuries-old geopolitical and cultural conflicts get reduced to a sensationalized infographic some teenager designed on canva last night. at the time I was watching people spread rampant misinformation about the hospital explosion when we had zero conclusive information, and had also just heard jon favreau talking about research indicating that something like 80% of the images and videos people were sharing on social media weren’t actually FROM the current conflict or couldn’t be verified as real. and idk I also have some private thoughts about how american leftists in particular really glom onto this issue because we perceive israelis as ‘white people’ and palestinians as people of color and we get to feel like we are exorcising our own country’s racial demons by advocating for the expulsion of the israeli people from land that many of them actually have deep historical ties to and at least a semi-legitimate cultural and religious claim to inhabiting.

to be clear I think the current israeli government is pretty much your trump-inspired shitty/evil right-wing militaristic populist movement and I feel like their response has squandered every single ounce of empathy garnered by the hamas attacks!! but idk I guess what I want to carve out space for is like, the right to say I AM NOT AN EXPERT HERE. I DO NOT HAVE DEEP ENOUGH KNOWLEDGE TO FULLY UNDERSTAND THE ROOTS OF THIS CONFLICT. I WORRY ABOUT SPREADING DANGEROUS MISINFORMATION IN BOTH DIRECTIONS IF I SHARE UNVERIFIED SOURCES OR REDUCTIVE TAKES. ALSO I AM A PRIVATE CITIZEN AND I DO NOT HAVE A “PLATFORM” JUST BECAUSE I HAVE A SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT. I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO BE CONFUSED, TO NOT PASS SNAP JUDGMENTS ON RAPIDLY EVOLVING INTERNATIONAL INCIDENTS, AND TO ENGAGE IN POLITICS BY MEANS OTHER THAN SOCIAL MEDIA POSTING. but idk this former student, who I had a really good relationship with for many years, has just come after me in my DMs and keeps sending me posts implying that anyone who is not furiously posting right now is pro-Palestinian genocide, etc etc, and meanwhile she is posting hundreds of unverified stories a day from Arabic-language sources that aren’t just like, anti-Zionist but are actively pro-Hamas, actively denying that the attacks on Israel happened, and actively calling for the immediate and violent expulsion of all Jews from the area. dude idk she’s not my student anymore so I think I’m just going to disengage/not respond and continue staying off insta because it sucks out there!! but it sucks!

I also just refuse to experience a war via unfiltered social media posts again. I did that for a month or two at the start of the ukraine invasion and I can’t unsee some of the stuff I saw on telegram. I don’t actually think any of us have a moral obligation to watch or share a 24/7 feed of graphic images of maimed corpses and crying children. I can’t make the violence STOP by watching that content and I also don’t believe that ravenously consuming the most terrible moments of people’s lives is a form of meaningful political solidarity. WHATEVER as you can see I still feel super conflicted about how to feel about all of this but I also have to remind myself that IT’S NOT NORMAL to click through my stories or scroll down my feed alternating between liking people’s cat photos and watching people dying half a world away. we were NOT BUILT to process world-historical events this way and it is OKAY to opt out of watching a livestream of human suffering you are personally powerless to do anything about.

[alanshemper]

On December 25, Netanyahu publicly confirmed what the Washington Post’s John Hudson reported on December 21, and Likud media had been reporting for weeks: Israel’s so-called “post-war plans for Gaza” include mass forcible population transfers of Palestinians out of Gaza into either the Sinai desert in Egypt or other “Arab” or European countries.

As Crisis Group Senior Israel Analyst Mairav Zonszein summarized on Twitter, citing Hebrew-language media, “Netanyahu said today he is actively working to ethnic transfer of Palestinians out of Gaza in a Likud meeting today.”

This follows reporting from Washington Post reporter John Hudson on December 21 that Netanyahu is openly shopping around plans and trying to pressure countries to systematically take Palestinian “migrants.”

This reporting comes after such a plan was announced by the Israeli UN ambassador Danny Danon on December 10 (see point 4) and a month after pro-Netanyahu media leaked this plan on Nov 30. There’s much debate about whether or not such a plan is feasible, but there’s no longer any doubt about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's intent, which is mass forcible population transfers out of Gaza. And, since it’s Netanyahu running the war, and Netanyahu the US continues to arm, fund, and support, if he has genocidal motives, this would seem, objectively, to be of tremendous import.

So what has the US media done with this well-documented plan to pressure countries into taking “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza”? For the most part, they’ve refused to report it, mention it, or acknowledge it, even when reporting on specifically related topics.

27 December 2023

[dangmelearner]

Hi! I’m a Finn living in Ghana and married to a Dangme. I live in an area where there are a lot of Fante speakers but at home we speak Dangme and Finnish. I lied. My family speaks mostly English. But we are trying to speak more Dangme and Finnish. Anyway…

Dangme:

Dangme is my main target 🎯 language. I really really want to be able to speak with my in-laws.

Fante:

I rather reluctantly and passively learn Fante. Everybody speaks it at my workplace so I should learn it. But I don’t wanna. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know the answer. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Anyway a Fante teacher comes to our house every Sunday mainly to give my kids private lessons so they can catch up with their Fante peers. Fante is compulsory subject in their school. I’m so far behind my kids already.

Twi:

Everybody keeps telling me to learn Twi instead because it’s somewhat of a lingua Franca here. I did at some point but it distracted my Dangme learning and also confused me because it’s so similar to Fante. I may return to learning Twi at some point. But I want to master Dangme first. This might be a dumb thing to do but…

GSL/ASL

I am very interested in Ghanaian Sign Language and American Sign Language too. So sometimes I play around with those two. But like I don’t have any pressure to learn them. I just want to be able to communicate with a lady who sells me fruits and honestly she is so sweet I wish to be her friend so hopefully 🤞 I can learn a few phrases at least to get started.

French

Ok so I was really burnt out and frustrated in Dangme for some time and kinda gave up a bit. So as there was a language vacuum in my life obviously I had to learn SOMETHING. I watched SKAM France and fell in love. It was Covid lock down and I had lots of time so I was learning that a bit. It was so easy compared to Dangme. Anyway I only did like very basics and then sifted my focus back to Dangme. But I do still follow some French media and books when I get a chance. Also my kids have to take French in school so I sometimes learn with them.

Swedish

Yeah. I was supposed to learn Swedish in school. I mean, I think I can still read some simple texts but … I watched Young Royals and understood NOTHING. Ok maybe simple stuff like Jag älskar dig and stuff like that. If I had time I would revise Swedish. But alas, time is that one thing I lack these days.

English

Learnt it in school. I use it every day. Still not fluent though. I guess all I can do at this point is to read more challenging texts. I don’t really have a plan. I’m quite comfortable with my current level. I’m not a perfectionist.

Finnish

Having lived 10 years abroad I sometimes feel my own language is a bit rusty. Still someone contacted me that I should start offering Finnish courses here in Ghana. I mean… I don’t think I’m qualified but if there are people who need a tutor I guess I can help. But Finnish grammar is a real bitch.

I think that’s all for now. I try not to get involved with any more languages. Though my husband was suggesting we move to UAE for a while. Arabic? 😅

Anyway, that’s me. I would really like friends. Especially if you also struggle with learning rare languages. Or want help with Finnish.

Edit: I forgot Latin. I took 3 courses back in upper secondary school. But I can only remember: Ecce Laura puella Fennica i vinea. 😆

[eretzyisrael]

by Ben Cohen

One of Canada’s leading French-language news outlets abruptly removed a crudely antisemitic caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from its website on Wednesday morning following a storm of protest from Canadian politicians and Jewish advocates.

The image, drawn by veteran cartoonist Serge Chapleau — who has won several awards for his work and was honored with the Order of Canada medal in 2015 — was published by the Montreal-based newspaper La Presse and appeared on the front page of its print edition. It showed Netanyahu as Nosferatu, the titular character of a classic 1922 German Expressionist silent movie about a blood-sucking vampire, Count Orlok, who preys upon a real estate agent and his wife under the cover of purchasing a house and who, later in the film, unleashes a plague of rats onboard a ship on which he is traveling. The film is based on the famous 1897 novel Dracula, set in Romania.

Chapleau’s cartoon imposed Netanyahu’s features on that of a vampire wearing a grim, lifeless expression, with his hands replaced by long claws. An accompanying text displayed the word “Nosfenyahou” — a contraction of “Nosferatu” and the Francophone spelling of Netanyahu’s last name — dripping with blood. Another text beneath declared “On the way to Rafah,” the city in Gaza where Israeli troops have been battling Hamas terrorists.

Historically, antisemitic caricatures of Jews frequently depicted them as blood-suckers, building on earlier Christian libels that falsely accused Jews of using the blood of Christians in their religious rituals. Since the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel, the same motif has appeared across the Arab world in relation to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, with news outlets in Morocco, Jordan, and Qatar all publishing cartoons of Netanyahu drinking the blood and consuming the flesh of Israel’s adversaries.

By the middle of Wednesday morning, La Presse had removed its contribution to the genre following widespread protests on social media. However, the paper has not apologized for the offending image nor offered an explanation as to why it was published to the 860,000 followers of its feed on X/Twitter.

“No big deal, just the second-largest newspaper in French Canada caricaturing Jews as vampires,” David Frum — a Canadian-American writer and former speechwriter for US President George W. Bush — remarked in a post. Frum added: “That’s how antisemitism often works. A rich inventory of anti-Jewish images and themes pre-exists: the Jew as bloodsucker, the Jew as child-killer, the Jew as alien enemy. When a user wants to vent rage or dislike … the resource accumulated over centuries is waiting for him.”

Canadian politicians who condemned the cartoon included Quebec Senator Leo Housakos, who said he had been “appalled” by it.

“While Mr. Netanyahu, as with any politician, is not above criticism, this kind of antisemitic trope is reminiscent of the 1930s. I’m saddened for Jews across Canada for the level of hate to which we, as Canadians, have co-signed,” Housakos’ X/Twitter post continued.

[omniseurs-blog]

Saw a post asking about how many languages you know at least a little bit of, and the criteria for "knowing a little bit of" was 30 words and can form at least 1 sentence

I want you to keep that in mind when I write this list, more than likely it's just 30 words and 1 sentence.

1. (American) English - fluent, self explanatory.

2. German - ich kann sprecht Deutsche nicht so Ganz gut. Meine Deutsche ist arse. Ich have studien Deutsche in schule fur ein jahr. Meine family(?) macht min hasst Deutsche. Min (uncle) ist ein (racist) (who) har Nazi euros. Ich nicht studier Deutsche in fund jahren.

3. Swedish - jå, min svensk är sö inte bra, mitt svensk, därför studien Deutsche för jahren, jag (mix) vorden tillsomman och spelar vorden "deutshenized", . Jag studier därför min favorite twitch streammen, vargskelethor.

4. Japanese - こんにちは、私わオムニです。I know more Japanese than that, BUT I can't properly use it. Japanese was the very first language I ever studied, when I was 10 and got my first computer. I gave up when I was 12 and never quite picked it up again outside of occasionally learning a few words. おちんちんがだいすき。

5. Arabic

إنا من امريكا و إنا يذاكر عربي. إنا يذاكر لانها تعجبني

The one and only language I am currently studying. I've only been studying it for just about 2 weeks and I can't even tell what or how I might've spelled things wrong. Think Arabic calligraphy looks beautiful, and want to learn more about the arabic cultures without the demonization from the media

6. Russian - иди нафй, сука влат. Привет, как дела? Извините за мой русский. Я ие хорошо.

Started studying it in hopes I'd be able to go to the famous classical art school, and to help with the zlib project, but.... I'm afraid studying it gives off the wrong political impression

And then we have languages that I studied, definitely knew more than 30 words and at one point coult say a sentence, but forgot them all.

Hindi, Hebrew, Greek, Italian, and Norwegian.

So 6 languages currently, would be 11 if I didn't forget the others.

[harvardfineartslib]

April is Arab American Month and National Poetry Month.

“I write what I see and I paint what I am.” – Etel Adnan

Etel Adnan (1925 – 2021) was a Lebanese-American poet, philosopher, writer, and visual artist. Adnan had been painting for several decades and made visual works in a variety of media including artist’s books, films, and tapestries.

Adnan was born in Beirut, Lebanon to a Greek Catholic mother and a Muslim-Turkish father, who was a high-ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus, Ottoman Syria. She grew up speaking Greek and Turkish in a mostly Arabic-speaking society. After enrolling at a French Lebanese Catholic School at the age of five, her primary language became French and her early works were written in French. She also studied English in her youth, and most of her later work was written in English. Adnan studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard University, later teaching philosophy at San Rafael’s Dominican College from 1958 to 1972.

Adnan’s love of language and interest in Arabic calligraphy is evident in her visual art, especially in leporellos, little books with folded concertina-style pages. But color was also language to Adnan, and one can sense that in her paintings.

Later in her life, Adnan openly identified as lesbian. She was survived by her partner, Simone Fattal, who is also a visual artist.

The Fine Arts Library owns Adnan’s artist’s book entitled “The Book of the Sea.” The work is made up like a sample book of Arabic calligraphy handwritten by Adnan, presenting the poems in Arabic and in English, with the original text and translations facing each other.

The book of the sea Etel Adnan ; bound by Thomas Zwang. Livre de la mer. English & Arabic Poestenkill, N.Y. : Kaldewey Press, 2010. 1 volume (unpaged) ; 21 x 31 cm. Edition Kaldewey ; v. 53 English and Arabic HOLLIS number: 99156665172003941

[sefarad-haami]

Un breve resumen: judíos y musulmanes en Marruecos

🇪🇸 El primer capítulo de "Judíos y musulmanes en Marruecos: sus mundos interrelacionados," editado por Joseph Chetrit, Jane S. Gerber y Drora Aarussy, explora la rica interacción cultural y política entre judíos y musulmanes en Marruecos. La conferencia "Uncommon Commonalities: Jews and Muslims in Morocco," organizada en junio de 2019 en Nueva York por el "American Sephardi Federation Institute of Jewish Experience," reunió a académicos de diversas partes del mundo para examinar esta interacción. La presencia judía en Marruecos se remonta al siglo VIII a.C., con la guerrera/priestisa Kahina resistiendo las conquistas musulmanas. Durante la Edad Media, la vida judía en Fez se vio enriquecida por correspondencias con estudiosos en Irak, conservadas en la Geniza de El Cairo. A pesar de enfrentar restricciones y el impuesto de jizya, los judíos marroquíes mantuvieron una vibrante vida cultural que incluía poesía, música y rituales compartidos con sus vecinos musulmanes. La colonización francesa en el siglo XX trajo cambios significativos, y aunque la comunidad judía marroquí ha disminuido de más de 250,000 en 1956 a aproximadamente 2,500 hoy en día, su influencia persiste en las comunidades judías en Israel, Francia, Canadá y Estados Unidos.

El capítulo también aborda la profunda influencia mutua en el ámbito lingüístico y cultural, destacando la interacción a través del "Darija" y el uso de múltiples lenguas en la vida cotidiana. Las mujeres judías adoptaron proverbios musulmanes y poesía oral beduina, mientras que el poeta israelí Najara (1555-1628) fusionó melodías árabes con poesía litúrgica hebrea. En el contexto político, la caída de Granada en 1492 y la posterior expulsión de los judíos de España llevaron a una migración significativa hacia Marruecos, aunque la recepción no siempre fue acogedora. Las fuentes históricas y crónicas reflejan un panorama complejo de desafíos y adaptaciones para los refugiados. A pesar de las dificultades, los judíos en Marruecos lograron establecer comunidades prósperas y transformar sus tradiciones culturales.

🇺🇸 The first chapter of "Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds," edited by Joseph Chetrit, Jane S. Gerber, and Drora Aarussy, explores the rich cultural and political interactions between Jews and Muslims in Morocco. The conference "Uncommon Commonalities: Jews and Muslims in Morocco," held in June 2019 in New York by the "American Sephardi Federation Institute of Jewish Experience," gathered scholars from around the world to examine these interactions. Jewish presence in Morocco dates back to the 8th century BCE, with the warrior-priestess Kahina resisting Muslim conquests. During the medieval period, Jewish life in Fez was enriched by correspondence with scholars in Iraq, preserved in the Cairo Geniza. Despite facing restrictions and the jizya tax, Moroccan Jews maintained a vibrant cultural life, including shared poetry, music, and rituals with their Muslim neighbors. French colonization in the 20th century brought significant changes, and although the Jewish community in Morocco has decreased from over 250,000 in 1956 to approximately 2,500 today, its influence remains in Jewish communities in Israel, France, Canada, and the United States.

The chapter also addresses the profound linguistic and cultural influence between Jews and Muslims, highlighting interactions through "Darija" and the use of multiple languages in daily life. Jewish women adopted Muslim proverbs and Bedouin oral poetry, while the poet Israel Najara (1555-1628) blended Arabic melodies with Hebrew liturgical poetry. In the political context, the fall of Granada in 1492 and the subsequent expulsion of Jews from Spain led to significant migration to Morocco, although the reception was not always welcoming. Historical sources and chronicles reflect a complex picture of challenges and adaptations for the refugees. Despite these difficulties, Jews in Morocco succeeded in establishing prosperous communities and transforming their cultural traditions.