Nermine Haboush (30/12/23)
Jabr Abu Hadrous (29/12/23)
Abdallah Hamad (29/12/23)
Ahmad Khair El-Deen (28/12/23)
Muhammad Khair El-Deen (28/12/23)
Ahmed Jamal Al-Madhoun (24/12/23)
Mohammed Abu Hwaidi (23/12/23)
Rizq Arrouq (22/12/23)
Muhammad Al-Saidi (22/12/23)
Adel Zorob (19/12/23)
Abdullah Alwan (18/12/23)
Haneen Ali Al-Qashtan (17/12/23)
Mashal Ayman Shahwan (16/12/23)
Assem Kamal Musa (16/12/23)
Rami Badir (15/12/23)
Ali Ashour Abu Malek (15/12/23)
Samer Abu Daqqa (15/12/23)
Khamis Hussain (15/12/23)
Ahmed Abu Abseh (13/12/23)
Hanan Ayad (13/12/23)
Narmeen Qawas (13/12/23)
Abdel Kareem Oudeh (12/12/23)
Mohammed Abu Samra (10/12/23)
Doaa al-Jabour (9/12/23)
Ola Atallah (9/12/23)
Hossam Omar Ammar (8/12/23)
Hamada Al-Yaziji (6/12/23)
Abdul Hamid Al-Qarinawi (3/12/23)
Mahmoud Salem (3/12/23)
Shaima Al-Jazzar (3/13/23)
Hassan Farajallah (3/12/23)
Hudhayfah Lulu (3/12/23)
Muhammad Farajallah (2/12/23)
Abdullah Darwish (1/12/23)
Muntaser Al-Sawwaf (1/12/23)
Marwan Al-Sawwaf (1/12/23)
Adham Hassouna (1/12/23)
Nader Al-Nazli (25/11/23)
Amal Zuhd (24/11/23)
Mostafa Bakeer (24/11/23)
Mohamed Mouyin Ayyash (23/11/23)
Mohamed Nabil Al-Zaq (21/11/23)
Assem Al-Barash (21/11/23)
Jamal Haniyeh (21/11/34)
Farah Omar (21/11/23)*
Rabih Al Maamari (21/11/23)*
Ayat Khadoura (20/11/23)
Alaa Al-Nimr
Bilal Jadallah (19/11/23)
Abdelhalim Awad (18/11/23)
Sari Mansour (18/11/23)
Hassouneh Sleem (18/11/23)
Mostafa El Sawaf (18/11/23)
Amr Salah Abu Hayah (18/11/23)
Mossab Ashour (18/11/23)
Mahmoud Matar (15/11/23)
Ahmed Fatima (13/11/23)
Yaacoub Al-Barsh (13/11/23)
Mousa Al-Barsh (12/11/23)
Ahmed Al-Qara (10/11/23)
Yahya Abu Manih (7/11/23)
Mohamed Abu Hasira (7/11/23)
Mohamed Al Jaja (5/11/23)
Haitham Harara (3/11/23)
Mohamad Al-Bayyari (2/11/23)
Mohammed Abu Hatab (2/11/23)
Majd Fadl Arandas (1/11/23)
Iyad Matar (1/11/23)
Imad Al-Wahidi (31/10/23)
Majed Kashko (31/10/23)
Nazmi Al-Nadim (30/10/23)
Yasser Abu Namous (27/10/23)
Duaa Sharaf (26/10/23)
Zaher Alafghani (25/10/23)
Jamal Al-Faq’awi (25/10/23)
Saed Al-Halabi (25/10/23)
Ahmed Abu Mahadi (25/10/23)
Salma Mkhaimer (25/10/23)
Hudhayfah Al-Najjar
Mohamed Al Hassani
Mohamed El-Shorbajei
A’ed Ismail Al-Najjar (24/10/23)
Iman Al-Aqili (24/10/23)
Mohammed Imad Labad (23/10/23)
Roshdi Al-Sarraj (22/10/23)
Mahmoud Abu Zarifa (22/10/23)
Hany Al-Madhoun (21/10/23)
Mohammed Ali (20/10/23)
Khalil Abu Aathra (19/10/23)
Sameeh Al-Nady (18/10/23)
Mohammad Balousha (17/10/23)
Issam Behar (17/10/23)
Abdulhadi Habib (16/10/23)
Yousef Maher Dawas (14/10/23)
Salam Mema (13/10/23)
Ali Nisman (13/10/23)
Husam Mubarak (13/10/23)
Issam Abdallah (13/10/23)*
Abdul Rahman Shihab (12/10/23)
Anas Abu Shamala (12/10/23)
Ahmed Shehab (12/10/23)
Mustafa Al-Naqeeb (11/10/23)
Rajab Al-Naqeeb (11/10/23)
Mohamed Fayez Abu Matar (11/10/23)
Saeed Al-Taweel (10/10/23)
Mohammed Sobh Abu Rizq (10/10/23)
Hisham Alnawajeha (10/10/23)
As’ad Shamlakh (8/10/23)
Mohammad Jarghoun (7/10/23)
Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi (7/10/23)
Mohammad Al-Salhi (7/10/23)
*lebanese journalist | could not find date of martyrdom
spent the whole day confirming all of these names and looking through multiple resources. the ones with dates are journalists who’s date of martyrdom and/or exact cause of death is stated by sources besides the government media office official list.
The fact that people keep conflating critiquing government practices and policies with hating an entire religion with its own diaspora of practice is concerning, like in the long term
exactly. people are conflating their own identity with a genocidal regime and then scream bloody murder when you criticise the regime because THEY feel like it’s an attack on their identities 💀 it’s so stupid.
i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: people who think criticising israel and wanting to dismantle an ethno-religious apartheid state is a sign of antisemitism are only giving their religion and ethnicity a bad name.
it is a farce to believe that israel is the only way jews can be free. it is a farce to believe that jews are more marginalised than the palestinians as a whole.
there was absolutely no need to establish the state of israel in the first place. palestinians welcomed jewish refugees. they only demanded the british reduce the number of jews migrating to palestine because the zionists were saying things like “build a jewish land as jewish as england is english” or “remove the arabs from the land for the jews” or “a land with no people for a people with no land”
it’s completely understandable to not want crazy psycho colonisers and settlers to enter your land from europe of all places when they’ve been spreading ideologies of ethnic cleansing and taking over your land based on THEIR religious scriptures.
and not even that, the very first chapter (well technically second but the first chapter is just defining ethnic cleansing so my brain doesn’t count it HAHA) of ilan pappé’s ethnic cleaning of palestine describes what is truly written in jewish scriptures.
of course there are multiple types of zionism (as you often hear israeli leftists and pro-israel people talk about when you criticise zionism) but this—political zionism—is what’s being weaponised and used in modern day israel to oppress the palestinians. not that the other models or zionism are not rooted in colonial projects as well lol but that’s a separate post for a different day.
the point is… it doesn’t take a genius to understand why palestinians opposed the eventual large emigrations of jews from around the world to palestine. if you’ve seen my post on the timeline of the nakba, you’ll understand exactly what i mean.
having a connection to a land thousands of years back does not give you the right to claim someone else’s home as your own. and saying that should not automatically label you as antisemitic because that implies that your religion supports and endorses the ethnic cleansing of native people from the land to “build your holy land”.
and even so, the land is not just holy to jews. it’s holy to christians and muslims too. it’s valuable and dear to all people of abrahamic religions. so it makes no sense for one group to claim the entirety of it on religious grounds.
nor does it make sense for a marginalised group to claim someone else’s land because they have been ethnically cleansed from the land they were born in. the reward of jewish suffering cannot come at the expense of the suffering of palestinians. i’m not sure why that’s so hard to understand. i don’t see where the antisemitism is in all this.
and i certainly don’t understand the idiots rattling on about “the second coming of holocaust vibes” because zionists are being criticised and as a result there is a spike in antisemitic sentiment among bigoted individuals. how can you worry about a second holocaust when there is a genocide ACTIVELY HAPPENING RIGHT NOW that is being carried out by YOUR STATE, on the basis of YOUR IDENTITY, endorsed by YOUR PEOPLE.
how one can overlook the killings of 20K people and think “gosh i’m worried they’re going to start executing my people again”? i’ll never understand.
never mind how antisemitism is not even a systemic issue. jews are not systemically discriminated against for being jewish. most ashkenazi jews can get away with being jewish with nobody batting an eye other than bigoted people being vile and disgusting. palestinians on the other hand not only are being oppressed by israel and actively being killed and displaced, they are also frequently profiled for being arabs. they are frequently profiled for being muslims. they are systemically profiled. especially in western countries. look at how all the western universities support israel and speak up for israel yet nobody squeaks a word out for palestine. students have to make individual efforts to show solidarity.
refaat alareer was a UCL alumnus yet they refused to even say “rip refaat” on their page. point blank refused. 3 students from brown university were shot for wearing keffiyeh. and yet, universities still want to police students for saying “from the river to the sea” and “intifada” as if they’re calls for genocide.
and even if they are (they’re NOT but let’s imagine)… a call for a genocide cannot take precedence over AN ACTUAL genocide??
ugh sorry this got so long, anon. i got a lil angry. it’s just baffling to me how people can ignore the palestinians like this and refuse to show even an ounce of empathy.
someone on twitter said:
the double standard of the palestinian “conflict” is that any palestinian violence justifies any israeli violence, but no israeli violence ever justifies palestinian violence.
and i haven’t stopped thinking about this since.
any violence by israel is seen as self defense on a land they took by force. and any retaliation by palestinians is seen as an act of “terrorism” even though it was their land that was stolen. it was their people who were massacred and ethnically cleansed in 1948.
it is the palestinians who are constantly being oppressed. it is the palestinians who are largely stateless. it is the palestinians who do not have a right to return. it is the palestinians who are being silenced. it is the palestinians who are being murdered in cold blood.
israel must be dismantled and palestine must be liberated. the palestinians must receive compensation and a restoration of their rights. they must be given their land back. no questions asked.
and before all that… there MUST be a permanent ceasefire and an end to occupation.
a lot of the coverage of the Palestinian genocide is focusing on the US student protests and the narrative is constantly in danger of shifting away from what the protests are actually about and a lot of the language is now speaking in terms of police brutality, silencing of free speech, etc. It's not a radical thing to say that this isn't exactly helpful to the Palestinian cause if the actual reasons for the protests aren't constantly front and center. A lot of people have already made this point. I do not think the genie can necessarily be put back in the bottle with how the protests and the police reaction to them are entering the public consciousness of the USian people. A lot of people are or will become aware of these protests through the lense of these simply being instances of police brutality, and police brutality is a critical issue that many USamericans are very passionate about thus making it difficult to reframe the context of these images of police slamming white professors into pavement towards awareness of Israels decades long illegal occupation and systematic and indiscriminate displacement and murder of Palestinians. What I feel needs to be done is try to reframe these images flooding the internet not *away* from issues of police brutality and homesoil fascism, but in the wider context of imperialist governments taking the lessons they learn oppressing "foreign peoples" and turning them inwards. That police brutality is not disconnected from imperialist mass murder. That the one thing connecting the assaulted USian protester and the trans israeli denied gender affirming care for refusing to serve in the fascist Israeli military and the Palestinian child buried alive for the crime of being Palestinian... the one thing connecting them is that, sooner or later, they are all victims of power. Our rights are granted to us inequitably, unevenly, and are just as quickly stripped away when we do not serve the interests of fascist power. We are either a tool of the state or an enemy of the state. The Palestinian, not the innocent or the guilty but the human being Palestinian, is murdered because she can not be useful to the state while she is still breathing. She can never have the "privilege" of being a tool. I'll say it again: We outside of Palestine who can go to protests, who have families, who are able bodied, who can work, who can keep their head down or speak without immediate retaliation have the "honor" of choosing to be a tool of the state or an enemy of the state. The Palestinian has no choice.
There will always be an armed cop ready to arrest you and kill your brother as long as there is a bomb ready to drop on the heads of Palestinian children. Fascism trickles up and inward.
Who are the Shompen?
The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.
Why is there risk of genocide?
India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".
Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”
The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.
This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.
The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).
And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.
Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”
On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”
How to help
The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:
From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.
Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.
Sources:
India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.
‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.
Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.
The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.
[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.