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#leila al attar
elierlick · 2 years
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Shortly after the first Gulf War, Iraqi artists installed a "dog-like" George HW Bush mosaic reading “BUSH IS CRIMINAL” in the Al Rasheed Hotel. Everyone who passed through the hotel, where most foreign dignitaries would stay, would have to walk on the face of the president.
The U.S. military was apparently unhappy with the unflattering Bush portrait. Rumor in Baghdad is that they intentionally murdered the artist, Leila al-Attar, with precision Tomahawk missiles months after installation. A strike hit her house, killing her and blinding her daughter.
U.S. soldiers smashed the Bush mosaic with hammers and chisels in 2003. The notoriously Islamophobic commander, Lt. Col. Rick Schwartz, boasted that he threw a portrait of Hussein onto the floor for soldiers to stomp on instead as they trashed and pillaged the country.
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leila-khaled · 6 years
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It’s women’s history month and I wanna talk about the Arab women I love and look up to
1)Djamila Bouhired: 
leading Algerian heroine and revolutionary, she played an instrumental role in triggering the Battle of Algiers and endured severe torture. Djamila was cognizant of her revolutionary spirit since childhood, When all the Algerian students repeated every morning “France is our mother”, Bouhired would stand up and scream “Algeria is our mother!”
2)Layla Al Attar: 
was one of Iraq’s most respected and influential painters in the 1970s and 80s and a leading figure in Arab art. following installation of one of her provocative pieces; which was a huge mosaic portrait of George H. W. Bush on the floor of the main entrance of Al Rasheed Hotel, where senior Iraqi officials stayed and held their press conferences, with the phrase “Bush is Criminal“ written beneath it forcing everyone who steps into the hotel to walk over the portrait of bush she installed. Layla was murdered alongside her husband by a U.S Missile attack that targeted the house she resided in, her daughter was blinded in the attack.
3)Leila Khaled: 
“Splashed across the pages of newspapers, many marvelled at how Khaled was so elegantly attired as she boarded planes with her male companions, dressed as if heading out on holiday while concealing weapons under her clothing. I wonder about her willingness to undergo a reported six plastic surgeries, while still in her late 20s, to remain unidentifiable and continue hijacking planes for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). She shrugs off talk of the surgery with a deep exhale of her ever-present cigarette. She calls it “a minor sacrifice. Now women are going to change their faces, their lips, and all these plastic surgeries that they do to beautify themselves, but they didn’t beautify their minds.” She continues, “I did that. Beautified my mind."”
4)Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim: 
Sudanese writer, revolutionary, socialist leader and women’s rights activist. She was the first woman in Africa and the Arab speaking world to become a member of parliament. In 1952 she founded the Sudanese Women’s Union with other women and fought for women’s rights across Sudan.
5)Souha Bechara: 
Lebanese revolutionary who endured and survived 10 years of grueling torture following a failed attempt to assasinate General Antoine Lahad of the SLA, a Zionist backed fascist militia
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