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Dispatch from Gaza: Hind Khoudary
Hind Khoudary: Marhaba! (Hello) Let me show you where I am right now: I’m on a rooftop because it’s very hot and we don’t have any electricity, so this is the only way we can get some fresh air. I’m displaced in Deir al Balah right now and I have been displaced since November.
EIP: You said that it’s 8pm right now and that you’re on a rooftop; can you describe where you are and what it looks like and what it feels like and what you smell and take us to Gaza for a second?
HIND: So the main reason we’re on this rooftop is because this is the house of Motaz Al Azaiza, our colleague, who is hosting a group of journalists and friends at his house because we were displaced. He’s originally from Der El Balach.
After Motaz left, we stayed in his house. We’re a group of friends and journalists who have been covering this together since day one and have been displaced together. It’s our support system; we report in the morning and then we sit down and watch the sunset—here, I’ll show you the sunset— watching it is something I do every single day because it’s the only thing that keeps me going and revives my soul. We have not been eating for the past couple of weeks, especially after the Rafah invasion. No food is coming in, so every single day at this time we start searching for food. We ate noodles for the first week and then we started eating bread with cheese from another supermarket that started making dairy like cheese, goat cheese and lebneh.
The boys went grocery shopping and then we’re going to start eating in the next hour. We report all day and then just hang out here at night because it’s the only thing we can do. We can’t go out; we don’t have anywhere safe. Anything could happen any minute, so we try to find calmness and peace in those times where we’re sitting and not doing anything.
I think I’ve been dehydrated the past couple of months, which is so hard in the summer. We don’t drink a lot of water not only because we can’t find drinking water, but because there’s no access to bathrooms, we try not to eat or drink as much as possible. These are very small details that we don’t really say when we’re reporting, but it’s not just reporting this, but about living it and I think this is the hardest part.
I have been away from my family for for eight months now. They all left Gaza because it was unbearable for them to stay and they had the opportunity to leave so they left. I’m the only person who stayed in Gaza and I feel so sad, and so homesick. I miss my family. I miss my husband. I miss everything before October 7 actually.
EIP: Can you take us to that moment? Maybe it was October 7th, or maybe it was a few weeks later, but those first few weeks where this happened; where were you? What were you doing? What were the conversations?
HIND: On October 7, I was at home. I didn’t do any reporting; I was just shocked, you know? Then I went out reporting on the third day of this war because I’m a freelance journalist so I didn’t know who I wanted to work with or what I was gonna do. I didn’t know what was happening— no one did. I lived with my husband in Istanbul for the past four years, and we chose to settle back in Gaza in August. We shipped everything— we brought all our furniture and everything from Istanbul, so we were shocked that this happened.
Since the second or third day, when I started reporting, I did not see my family for an entire hour. I used to grab some moments with them, but, for example, my mom traveled without me seeing her. My husband traveled when I was in the north and he was in the south. There was no way to evacuate, so he left without me seeing him. My mom, the same thing. I was only able to see my brothers before they left. But it was very hard.
I left the house not thinking that I would never go back. I remember taking a t-shirt and a pair of jeans and that’s it, you know? I always thought that I’d go back home — and in the first couple of weeks I did go back home, but every time I went home, I never thought ‘okay, this is it.’ The last time I left, I took a couple of socks and a couple more t -shirts, because I felt like I was going to be stationed in another place. That was the last time I went home, and then when I evacuated south, I found this random Instagram reel, where I saw my house bombed. Khalas, ya3ni. It’s not there anymore. That’s when I started reminding myself, ‘okay, so I don’t have anything to wear. I don’t have a closet. I don’t have anything left. All I have right now is my phone and my laptop.
EIP: You saw it on a reel? You were just on the internet, and that’s how you found out?
HIND: Exactly. I never imagined that this is how I’d know that my house was bombed. I cried so much that day. I remember my heart crying, it was so painful, because it’s something my father built, and my father passed away in 2012, and it was the only thing that reminds me of him.
Since then, every time I go to a place, and it’s wiped off and reduced to rubble, I remember the house, and I remember that I’m not even able to go and see my house —even if it was just rubble— because we’re not allowed to go there.
It’s a cycle of violence, a cycle of heartaches and heartbreaks. But at the same time, I continue to report because I feel like people need to know what’s going on, but it’s not easy. There were a couple of times that I was mentally collapsing and physically collapsing and emotionally collapsing— it’s not easy, it’s very hard but I need to do this.
EIP: Do you remember the last conversation you had with your husband when he was still in Gaza? What was going through your head when you talked last?
HIND: laughing I think we were fighting about the fact that he didn’t want me to report and go to the field because he was terrified. He found me in the middle of a battlefield, like literally in the middle of a battlefield, and he could not do anything about it. I’m a very stubborn person, and of course you wouldn’t like your partner to be in the middle of airstrikes and bombs and everything. He was terrified. That was the last conversation we had, that I wanted to go report and this was it. I remember the last time I saw him in Gaza, I wanted to visit him and it had been a month without seeing him. This was November and I went to see him and hug him, then we learned one of our best friends was killed. I literally had only an hour to see him before my friend was going to pick me up to go back to the office. I spent the hour crying with him and then I went back to the office.
Even having time to enjoy with the people close to you, you can’t because you’re overwhelmed with everything going on. We lost a lot of dear people, you know? It’s very hard and I think we did not have time to grieve, and to express or process the amount of loss. This is all going to start showing in the next few years because we have been squeezed emotionally—we’re trapped. I’m very happy that my family is not here because I won’t feel worried about them. I won’t feel like anything’s going to hurt them. This is the only thing that’s giving me a little bit of comfort, let’s say.
EIP: This all seems so intense and I’m a journalist and have never even come close to covering something like this. What is a day in the life for you in terms of your job? Like, how do you choose which sort of event to cover?
HIND: It depends. For example, a couple of days ago, it was 5am when my colleagues woke me up, like ‘Hind, they [Israel] targeted a UN school.’ There’s no coffee, there’s no wake up, there’s no ‘wash your face’, there’s no ‘comb your hair’— nothing. You just start running.
Even now as I’m talking to you, there could be some huge explosion or a huge event and I’d leave you and go. I don’t ever remember choosing what to cover. It comes to you. You don’t choose it; it happens, you go there, you start reporting and this is how it works.
EIP: Do you have any sort of anecdotes or memories or stories of people that come to mind?
HIND: My uncle. My cousin. My friend— my friends. The people I used to hang out with— like shisha hangouts every night— they were killed. My uncle, when we had Eid Al Adha in Ramadan, used to call me, I used to call him. We used to gather. He’s not there. My uncle was killed in the Al Shifa operation, and I remember that they said that he was killed, but they do not know where or how, then there was a photo circulating on social media of people killed in the Al Shifa operation, and I zoomed into the picture, like ‘This looks like my uncle! Is that him? No, no no, it’s not him.’ After they withdrew from the area, my mom was like this photo is your uncle, and I see him killed laying on the floor and on his lap is my cousin, and beside him is his sister in law, and a group of people. This is my uncle. Now every time I see people killed I don’t look at the photos; I don’t want to recognize anyone.
EIP: Do you get a chance to talk about this with the people you’re working with, or the friends you’re living with?
HIND: All the time when we’re sitting together on the rooftop, we ask, ‘okay, so if we get an airstrike what’s gonna happen?’ I had this conversation yesterday with one of my friends, who said, ‘No, maybe you’re gonna fly to another street, ‘ and I’m like ‘Okay, but are we gonna hear anything if it happens? Then I’m like ‘no no it’s not gonna happen.’ We’re traumatized, and all of these scenes and all of these memories come to you every single time.
I remember when we were in the office back in Gaza City, I always had a bottle of water with me because if anything happened and the building was bombed, I wanted to have some water with me. Many civilians were trapped under the rubble, but I could have sips of water and I could live more. That’s how I used to think.
Every time you see someone, bil sudfa (by coincidence) in the market or something, we do not recognize each other. Everyone’s pale, everyone lost a lot of weight, everyone’s sad and overwhelmed. It’s so heartbreaking actually.
EIP: You kind of mentioned it before, but I’d like to go into it a little more. What is the reason you stayed? What is the importance of being a journalist in Gaza in this moment?
HIND: The first thing is the fact of loving Gaza itself. Like, I’m in love with Gaza. Like, everyone knows that and always tells me, enti bint Gazeh (you are a daughter of Gaza) I’m a Gazzeweya, as in I’m originally a Gazan. I’m so connected to this place; I’m connected to the sea. I’m connected to the sky, I’m connected to the people, to the clouds, to everything. When I was away in Istanbul, I used to tell my husband every single day, ‘I want to go back to Gaza’. Every single day, ‘I want to go back. I want to go back.’
So, the thing that’s making me report is my connection to Gaza. The second thing is that I wanted to report about Gaza and about the Gazan people. I always wanted to uplift their voice.
The third thing is when people interact and are engaging with everything we’re doing, and the amount of solidarity we’re receiving, it really gives us a very big push to keep going.
I think these are the three main reasons. The biggest reason is to continue the journey of our fellows that were killed by the Israeli forces.
I remember posting and then going to report or posting something and then not having internet connection, then when we opened our Instagrams, and saw the amount of engagement and the amount of interaction and the amount of followers we received, we were shocked, to be honest.
I never imagined that a fifteen second video would really change people’s thinking and how they perceive it [the situation]. For me, I tried to do very short videos or talk on Instagram very normally and naturally [candidly]. I never overthought what I wanted to say and I think that was the reason why I really connected to the people. It’s because I’m a very normal person; I’m just saying what’s happening, you know? When we found people were really talking about us, like if you had no internet for one day, you’d find people asking about you.
We found how important it was; people are not relying on news outlets and TVs anymore, they’re relying on us and that’s where the responsibility increased, we found that we had weight on our shoulders. We have to write, we have to report, we have to tweet. We’re the source for a lot of people. There has been a very big impact and the reason, the main thing is, Gazan journalists were able to be the voice, and despite the fact that no foreign journalists or international journalists are coming in, we’re doing a great job.
Topics:
Filed under:
Location:
{
"article":
{
"title" : "Dispatch from Gaza: Hind Khoudary",
"author" : "Hind Khoudary",
"category" : "interviews",
"tags" : "Gaza, journalism, displacement",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/dispatch-from-gaza-hind-khoudary",
"date" : "2024-08-30 12:05:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/2024_EIP_Hind_Khoudary_Quote_S1.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "Hind Khoudary: Marhaba! (Hello) Let me show you where I am right now: I’m on a rooftop because it’s very hot and we don’t have any electricity, so this is the only way we can get some fresh air. I’m displaced in Deir al Balah right now and I have been displaced since November.EIP: You said that it’s 8pm right now and that you’re on a rooftop; can you describe where you are and what it looks like and what it feels like and what you smell and take us to Gaza for a second?HIND: So the main reason we’re on this rooftop is because this is the house of Motaz Al Azaiza, our colleague, who is hosting a group of journalists and friends at his house because we were displaced. He’s originally from Der El Balach.After Motaz left, we stayed in his house. We’re a group of friends and journalists who have been covering this together since day one and have been displaced together. It’s our support system; we report in the morning and then we sit down and watch the sunset—here, I’ll show you the sunset— watching it is something I do every single day because it’s the only thing that keeps me going and revives my soul. We have not been eating for the past couple of weeks, especially after the Rafah invasion. No food is coming in, so every single day at this time we start searching for food. We ate noodles for the first week and then we started eating bread with cheese from another supermarket that started making dairy like cheese, goat cheese and lebneh.The boys went grocery shopping and then we’re going to start eating in the next hour. We report all day and then just hang out here at night because it’s the only thing we can do. We can’t go out; we don’t have anywhere safe. Anything could happen any minute, so we try to find calmness and peace in those times where we’re sitting and not doing anything.I think I’ve been dehydrated the past couple of months, which is so hard in the summer. We don’t drink a lot of water not only because we can’t find drinking water, but because there’s no access to bathrooms, we try not to eat or drink as much as possible. These are very small details that we don’t really say when we’re reporting, but it’s not just reporting this, but about living it and I think this is the hardest part.I have been away from my family for for eight months now. They all left Gaza because it was unbearable for them to stay and they had the opportunity to leave so they left. I’m the only person who stayed in Gaza and I feel so sad, and so homesick. I miss my family. I miss my husband. I miss everything before October 7 actually.EIP: Can you take us to that moment? Maybe it was October 7th, or maybe it was a few weeks later, but those first few weeks where this happened; where were you? What were you doing? What were the conversations?HIND: On October 7, I was at home. I didn’t do any reporting; I was just shocked, you know? Then I went out reporting on the third day of this war because I’m a freelance journalist so I didn’t know who I wanted to work with or what I was gonna do. I didn’t know what was happening— no one did. I lived with my husband in Istanbul for the past four years, and we chose to settle back in Gaza in August. We shipped everything— we brought all our furniture and everything from Istanbul, so we were shocked that this happened.Since the second or third day, when I started reporting, I did not see my family for an entire hour. I used to grab some moments with them, but, for example, my mom traveled without me seeing her. My husband traveled when I was in the north and he was in the south. There was no way to evacuate, so he left without me seeing him. My mom, the same thing. I was only able to see my brothers before they left. But it was very hard.I left the house not thinking that I would never go back. I remember taking a t-shirt and a pair of jeans and that’s it, you know? I always thought that I’d go back home — and in the first couple of weeks I did go back home, but every time I went home, I never thought ‘okay, this is it.’ The last time I left, I took a couple of socks and a couple more t -shirts, because I felt like I was going to be stationed in another place. That was the last time I went home, and then when I evacuated south, I found this random Instagram reel, where I saw my house bombed. Khalas, ya3ni. It’s not there anymore. That’s when I started reminding myself, ‘okay, so I don’t have anything to wear. I don’t have a closet. I don’t have anything left. All I have right now is my phone and my laptop.EIP: You saw it on a reel? You were just on the internet, and that’s how you found out?HIND: Exactly. I never imagined that this is how I’d know that my house was bombed. I cried so much that day. I remember my heart crying, it was so painful, because it’s something my father built, and my father passed away in 2012, and it was the only thing that reminds me of him.Since then, every time I go to a place, and it’s wiped off and reduced to rubble, I remember the house, and I remember that I’m not even able to go and see my house —even if it was just rubble— because we’re not allowed to go there.It’s a cycle of violence, a cycle of heartaches and heartbreaks. But at the same time, I continue to report because I feel like people need to know what’s going on, but it’s not easy. There were a couple of times that I was mentally collapsing and physically collapsing and emotionally collapsing— it’s not easy, it’s very hard but I need to do this.EIP: Do you remember the last conversation you had with your husband when he was still in Gaza? What was going through your head when you talked last?HIND: laughing I think we were fighting about the fact that he didn’t want me to report and go to the field because he was terrified. He found me in the middle of a battlefield, like literally in the middle of a battlefield, and he could not do anything about it. I’m a very stubborn person, and of course you wouldn’t like your partner to be in the middle of airstrikes and bombs and everything. He was terrified. That was the last conversation we had, that I wanted to go report and this was it. I remember the last time I saw him in Gaza, I wanted to visit him and it had been a month without seeing him. This was November and I went to see him and hug him, then we learned one of our best friends was killed. I literally had only an hour to see him before my friend was going to pick me up to go back to the office. I spent the hour crying with him and then I went back to the office.Even having time to enjoy with the people close to you, you can’t because you’re overwhelmed with everything going on. We lost a lot of dear people, you know? It’s very hard and I think we did not have time to grieve, and to express or process the amount of loss. This is all going to start showing in the next few years because we have been squeezed emotionally—we’re trapped. I’m very happy that my family is not here because I won’t feel worried about them. I won’t feel like anything’s going to hurt them. This is the only thing that’s giving me a little bit of comfort, let’s say.EIP: This all seems so intense and I’m a journalist and have never even come close to covering something like this. What is a day in the life for you in terms of your job? Like, how do you choose which sort of event to cover?HIND: It depends. For example, a couple of days ago, it was 5am when my colleagues woke me up, like ‘Hind, they [Israel] targeted a UN school.’ There’s no coffee, there’s no wake up, there’s no ‘wash your face’, there’s no ‘comb your hair’— nothing. You just start running.Even now as I’m talking to you, there could be some huge explosion or a huge event and I’d leave you and go. I don’t ever remember choosing what to cover. It comes to you. You don’t choose it; it happens, you go there, you start reporting and this is how it works.EIP: Do you have any sort of anecdotes or memories or stories of people that come to mind?HIND: My uncle. My cousin. My friend— my friends. The people I used to hang out with— like shisha hangouts every night— they were killed. My uncle, when we had Eid Al Adha in Ramadan, used to call me, I used to call him. We used to gather. He’s not there. My uncle was killed in the Al Shifa operation, and I remember that they said that he was killed, but they do not know where or how, then there was a photo circulating on social media of people killed in the Al Shifa operation, and I zoomed into the picture, like ‘This looks like my uncle! Is that him? No, no no, it’s not him.’ After they withdrew from the area, my mom was like this photo is your uncle, and I see him killed laying on the floor and on his lap is my cousin, and beside him is his sister in law, and a group of people. This is my uncle. Now every time I see people killed I don’t look at the photos; I don’t want to recognize anyone.EIP: Do you get a chance to talk about this with the people you’re working with, or the friends you’re living with?HIND: All the time when we’re sitting together on the rooftop, we ask, ‘okay, so if we get an airstrike what’s gonna happen?’ I had this conversation yesterday with one of my friends, who said, ‘No, maybe you’re gonna fly to another street, ‘ and I’m like ‘Okay, but are we gonna hear anything if it happens? Then I’m like ‘no no it’s not gonna happen.’ We’re traumatized, and all of these scenes and all of these memories come to you every single time.I remember when we were in the office back in Gaza City, I always had a bottle of water with me because if anything happened and the building was bombed, I wanted to have some water with me. Many civilians were trapped under the rubble, but I could have sips of water and I could live more. That’s how I used to think.Every time you see someone, bil sudfa (by coincidence) in the market or something, we do not recognize each other. Everyone’s pale, everyone lost a lot of weight, everyone’s sad and overwhelmed. It’s so heartbreaking actually.EIP: You kind of mentioned it before, but I’d like to go into it a little more. What is the reason you stayed? What is the importance of being a journalist in Gaza in this moment?HIND: The first thing is the fact of loving Gaza itself. Like, I’m in love with Gaza. Like, everyone knows that and always tells me, enti bint Gazeh (you are a daughter of Gaza) I’m a Gazzeweya, as in I’m originally a Gazan. I’m so connected to this place; I’m connected to the sea. I’m connected to the sky, I’m connected to the people, to the clouds, to everything. When I was away in Istanbul, I used to tell my husband every single day, ‘I want to go back to Gaza’. Every single day, ‘I want to go back. I want to go back.’So, the thing that’s making me report is my connection to Gaza. The second thing is that I wanted to report about Gaza and about the Gazan people. I always wanted to uplift their voice.The third thing is when people interact and are engaging with everything we’re doing, and the amount of solidarity we’re receiving, it really gives us a very big push to keep going.I think these are the three main reasons. The biggest reason is to continue the journey of our fellows that were killed by the Israeli forces.I remember posting and then going to report or posting something and then not having internet connection, then when we opened our Instagrams, and saw the amount of engagement and the amount of interaction and the amount of followers we received, we were shocked, to be honest.I never imagined that a fifteen second video would really change people’s thinking and how they perceive it [the situation]. For me, I tried to do very short videos or talk on Instagram very normally and naturally [candidly]. I never overthought what I wanted to say and I think that was the reason why I really connected to the people. It’s because I’m a very normal person; I’m just saying what’s happening, you know? When we found people were really talking about us, like if you had no internet for one day, you’d find people asking about you. We found how important it was; people are not relying on news outlets and TVs anymore, they’re relying on us and that’s where the responsibility increased, we found that we had weight on our shoulders. We have to write, we have to report, we have to tweet. We’re the source for a lot of people. There has been a very big impact and the reason, the main thing is, Gazan journalists were able to be the voice, and despite the fact that no foreign journalists or international journalists are coming in, we’re doing a great job."
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Culture Must Be the Moral Compass That Geopolitics and Economics Will Never Be",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/culture-must-be-the-moral-compass-that-geopolitics-and-economics-will-never-be",
"date" : "2025-07-15 16:14:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/2025_7_Opposing_Nazism_1.png",
"excerpt" : "The widespread cultural rejection of Nazism in the West did not emerge spontaneously from humanity’s innate sense of right and wrong. It was not simply that people around the world, and especially in the West, were naturally alert and to the moral horror of fascism.",
"content" : "The widespread cultural rejection of Nazism in the West did not emerge spontaneously from humanity’s innate sense of right and wrong. It was not simply that people around the world, and especially in the West, were naturally alert and to the moral horror of fascism.Rather, the transformation of Nazism from a nationalist ideology admired by many Western elites into the universal symbol of evil was a story of narrative engineering and the deliberate construction of collective memory. It is a story that reveals a larger truth: culture has always been the moral compass that geopolitics and economics cannot, and will not, provide on their own.And at this moment, it is crucial to understand and use the power of culture to shift geopolitics, and not the other way around.Understanding this history matters today more than ever. Because if it was possible to turn Nazism into the ultimate taboo, it is equally possible to reposition other violent ideologies and state projects—such as Israel’s ongoing system of apartheid and settler colonialism—as morally indefensible. But to do so requires acknowledging that cultural reckonings don’t simply arrive; they are made.Pre-War Ambivalence: When Fascism Was FashionableContrary to the comforting myth that the world naturally recoiled from Nazism, in the 1920s and 1930s many influential Americans and Europeans viewed Hitler’s Germany with admiration. American industrialists like Henry Ford openly praised Hitler’s economic management and fierce opposition to communism. Ford even funded antisemitic propaganda through his publication, The Dearborn Independent. British aristocrats, including the Duke of Windsor, flirted with Nazi sympathies, seeing Germany as a model of discipline and order.It was only when Hitler’s ambitions clashed with the strategic interests of other nations that fascism became intolerable. And even then, many major US and UK companies maintained their business interests with the Nazis, including Ford, IBM, GM (Opel), Standard Oil (now ExxonMobil), Chase Bank, and of course Coca-Cola, who famously created the brand Fanta so that it could break the boycott and do business with Nazi Germany.This distinction is critical: condemnation of Nazism began not as a moral imperative, but as a political necessity. Germany’s aggression threatened the European balance of power, British imperial security, and eventually, American economic and military interests. The moral narrative would only come later, after the fighting was over.It is important to learn from the past and see that only culture can shift perception, and to use culture to shift the economic realities that would otherwise wait to be shaped by politics.Wartime Shifts: From Enemy State to Symbol of EvilWorld War II did not instantly transform public opinion. For many Americans, the war in Europe remained remote until the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Even then, the decision to fight Nazi Germany was entangled with power politics: Hitler declared war on the United States first, effectively forcing Roosevelt’s hand.Nevertheless, the war provided fertile ground for a reframing of Nazism. Wartime propaganda efforts by the Allies recast the Nazi regime as a brutal, alien threat to civilization itself. Hollywood joined in: The Great Dictator (1940) ridiculed Hitler’s delusions of grandeur, while Casablanca (1942) romanticized resistance. Images of goose-stepping soldiers, swastika flags, and shattered cities circulated widely.As the Allies advanced, they encountered the first concrete evidence of the Holocaust: ghettos, mass graves, and emaciated survivors. Yet even then, much of this evidence remained unknown to the general public. It was only after liberation that the full horror became impossible to ignore.Post-War Revelation: The Holocaust and the Cultural BreakThe turning point came in 1945, with the liberation of the camps and the Nuremberg Trials. The images and testimonies from Auschwitz, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen revealed the industrial scale of genocide. Millions murdered with chilling efficiency. A systematic attempt to erase an entire people. For the first time, the abstract notion of “Nazi evil” was grounded in visceral, visual evidence.Sociologist Jeffrey Alexander describes this phenomenon as the cultural construction of trauma. Atrocities do not automatically generate collective memory; they must be narrated, documented, and ritualized until they become an inescapable moral reference point. The Nuremberg Trials played this role by broadcasting confessions and evidence to a global audience. Schools, museums, and the press reinforced the narrative: Nazism was not simply defeated; it was unmasked as pure, irredeemable evil.Cold War Myth-Making: The Free World Versus FascismThe Cold War further cemented this narrative. To build legitimacy against the Soviet Union, the United States and its allies positioned themselves as the moral victors of World War II, the saviors of Europe from fascism. In reality, many of the same powers—Britain, France, and the United States—continued their own brutal colonial projects and enforced systems of racial hierarchy at home.But the cultural story was powerful: the West stood for freedom; the Nazis had embodied totalitarian darkness. School textbooks, popular films, and Holocaust memorialization institutionalized this story, forging a shared moral identity that could be contrasted against communist “evil.”This process was neither accidental nor purely altruistic. It was a strategic use of culture to consolidate power, project moral authority, and deflect scrutiny of the West’s own violence. The lesson is clear: collective memory is not a neutral mirror of reality. It is built, contested, and leveraged.The Sociological Core: Why Public Opinion ShiftsTo understand how an ideology once admired by many became the universal emblem of inhumanity, we must look beyond military defeat. Several mechanisms combined:Symbolic Association: Nazism transformed from a nationalist experiment into a symbol of mechanized genocide and racial supremacy.Cultural Trauma: The Holocaust became a shared wound that redefined moral frameworks across the West.Visual Storytelling: Images and films, rather than mere text, anchored the horror in the public imagination.State Rebranding: The Allies used anti-Nazism to build a postwar myth of moral superiority, even as they pursued imperial ambitions elsewhere.These insights are not simply historical trivia. They are a roadmap for how cultural shifts happen—and how they can be deliberately engineered.Israel, Palestine, and the Next Cultural ReckoningToday, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians—systematic dispossession, apartheid laws, and repeated military assaults—remains largely protected in Western discourse. Politicians insist on Israel’s right to defend itself. Media narratives default to framing the violence as a “conflict” rather than an occupation. Solidarity with Palestinians is often smeared as antisemitism.Yet history shows that moral consensus is not fixed. With enough sustained exposure, narrative work, and cultural pressure, the global imagination can be reshaped. Just as Nazism’s legitimacy eroded, so too can the idea of Israel as an unassailable “victim-state.”This is not a call to equate the Holocaust with the Nakba—each is historically distinct. It is, however, an argument that the techniques which made Nazism morally intolerable—trauma visualization, reframing language, relentless storytelling—are tools available to any liberation movement.Here is how such a transformation could unfold:1. Narrative InversionIsrael’s founding story must be contextualized: a state born from the trauma of European antisemitism that, in turn, created the dispossession of another people. Exposing this contradiction—survivors becoming occupiers—breaks the simplistic binary of oppressor and victim.2. Visual Culture and TestimonyJust as photographs of emaciated bodies in camps forced an awakening, so too can images of bombed Gazan neighborhoods, amputee children, and anguished families. Digital archives and survivor testimonies can anchor these experiences in collective memory.3. Linguistic ReframingTerms like “apartheid,” “settler colonialism,” and “ethnic cleansing” shift perception from tragic conflict to structural violence. Legal frameworks—UN reports, ICC filings—can fortify these terms with institutional legitimacy.4. Media SaturationBypassing corporate media gatekeepers requires a multi-platform strategy: TikTok clips, Substack essays, livestreamed trials of Israeli policy, viral documentaries. Saturation is what makes denial unsustainable.5. Global RealignmentPositioning Palestine within global struggles—Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, anti-colonial movements—expands solidarity. When the Global South embraces Palestinian liberation as part of its own decolonization, moral isolation will deepen.6. Cultural Institutions and EducationJust as Holocaust education became standard in Western curricula, Nakba education can be mainstreamed. Museums, memorials, and fellowships can institutionalize remembrance and scholarship.7. Policy Pressure and Legal ActionPublic consensus is the soil in which policy change grows. Boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, coupled with legal prosecutions of war crimes, transform moral clarity into material consequences.8. Making Occupation a LiabilityWhen supporting Israel becomes politically and financially risky—akin to defending apartheid South Africa—corporate and governmental alliances will fracture. Reputational risk can be a powerful motivator.Conclusion: Cultural Reckonings Are EngineeredIt was not “natural” for the West to reject Nazism. It took defeat, trauma exposure, and decades of cultural labor to enshrine anti-Nazism as a foundational moral principle. Similarly, it is not inevitable that the world will recognize Israel’s oppression of Palestinians as an urgent moral crisis. It will require strategic, sustained, and courageous cultural work.Culture—more than geopolitics or economics—sets the terms of what is morally acceptable. It is the compass that can point humanity toward justice. But only if we are willing to pick it up and use it."
}
,
{
"title" : "Neptune Frost",
"author" : "Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman",
"category" : "screenings",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/eip-screening-neptune-frost",
"date" : "2025-07-12 16:00:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/netune-frost-movie-poster.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Thank you for all who joined the special screening of Neptune Frost, with exclusive introduction from writer/director Saul Williams. Stay tuned and become a member for our next edition of our EIP monthly screening series.",
"content" : "Thank you for all who joined the special screening of Neptune Frost, with exclusive introduction from writer/director Saul Williams. Stay tuned and become a member for our next edition of our EIP monthly screening series.Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing. Co-directed with the Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region’s natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry. Set between states of being – past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience – Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends."
}
,
{
"title" : "Uranus & The Cycle of Liberation",
"author" : "Céline Semaan",
"category" : "",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/uranus-and-the-cycle-of-liberation",
"date" : "2025-07-11 16:25:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_Uranus.jpg",
"excerpt" : "I’m definitely not an astrologer. I don’t even know where Uranus is in my chart. But I do know how to read systems and translate them to the public. What I’ve learned, through years of designing for social and environmental justice, is that history doesn’t just unfold. It cycles upwards. And if we learn to pay attention to those cycles, we can prepare—not just to resist collapse, but to shape what comes after.",
"content" : "I’m definitely not an astrologer. I don’t even know where Uranus is in my chart. But I do know how to read systems and translate them to the public. What I’ve learned, through years of designing for social and environmental justice, is that history doesn’t just unfold. It cycles upwards. And if we learn to pay attention to those cycles, we can prepare—not just to resist collapse, but to shape what comes after.Even if you don’t care about astrology, the timing of these celestial movements provides us a way to examine macro trends that we can learn from. History may not exactly repeat itself, but it does echo.Uranus—the planet astrologers associated with upheaval, rebellion, and technological transformation—entered Aries in May 2010 and stayed there until 2018. That cycle coincided with a surge in political uprisings, many of which redefined our understanding of mass resistance in the 21st century.The Arab Spring began in late 2010, starting in Tunisia and erupting across the Middle East. It wasn’t just about corrupt regimes—it was about reclaiming voice, land, and dignity after decades of foreign interference, neoliberal decay, and post-colonial repression. From Tahrir Square to Pearl Roundabout, these movements were leaderless, fast, and media-savvy.Occupy Wall Street followed in 2011, challenging the violent inequality embedded in late capitalism. In 2013, Black Lives Matter emerged after the murder of Trayvon Martin, later exploding into a global uprising in 2014 and again in 2020. Standing Rock (2016) reminded the world that Indigenous resistance was not only alive but visionary. #MeToo (2017) became an international reckoning with patriarchy and sexual violence, a reminder that personal testimony is political terrain.Across these years, protests were decentralized, digitized, and visual. Social media moved from a personal tool to a frontline of collective witnessing. Livestreams replaced press conferences. Memes became political language. Design itself became a protest, and Slow Factory built the visual language for it.This was not coincidental but archetypal, because Uranus in Aries, even symbolically, tells the story of radical ignition, collective fire, visionary unrest.And yet, none of it was sustained. What followed was a backlash: fascist resurgence, climate denial, propaganda wars, and intensified state surveillance. We saw mass demobilization, media fatigue, and widespread disinformation. Many of the movements that sparked global hope were either crushed, co-opted, or burned out.So now, as Uranus moves through Taurus (2018–2026), the terrain has shifted. Taurus is about materiality, land, value, and stability. It demands we not only rise up, which is crucial, but to build. We are asked to not only critique systems, but replace them. Not just “burn it all down”, but radically imagine what’s next.This is the political and spiritual context I hold as I continue my work.At Slow Factory, we spent the past decade offering free education, cultural strategy, and ecological design rooted in climate justice and human rights. And with Everything is Political, we’re building an independent media platform not beholden to corporate donors or foundation filters—a place where movement memory, critical analysis, and cultural clarity live. If we don’t design the next phase of liberation, someone else will design it for us.This work isn’t about virality. It’s about continuity. We are here to hold political memory. To protect the intellectual commons. To ensure that the next generation doesn’t forget who stood for truth—and who profited from silence.The ask is to build the very systems we are all looking for, and for that we deserve the time, energy and support to imagine, design and co-create as a community. We can’t delegate our liberation to politicians, and we certainly won’t see startups capitalizing on the changes our society needs. Perhaps we will witness the hyper privatization of every single service our communities need, but we must strategize for during and after collapse. Funding structures will have to be challenged, as they are designed to sustain themselves and uphold status quo. However, we are witnessing the collapse of every industry: media, education, banking, all industries we rely on, will be challenged. We are going to need to rely on our creative skills and our ability to build true solidarity across our communities towards a common goal outside of dogma and division. It’s a cultural moment, and we are here for it.Resistance isn’t just about protest. It’s about imagination. And imagination requires discipline, community, and space.We are creating that space right here. And together we can co-create together if everybody puts in effort and care. For now, we are imagining what systems of mitigation amidst systems collapse will look like. Will we outsource our infrastructure to highly funded Silicon Valley funded platforms feeding off of public data feeding ads markets and Ai learning in real time from our work? Or are we truly invested in building sovereign media? I personally invest in the latter, and hope you all join us. Because we are the majority, and truly if we align we are unstoppable."
}
]
}