{ "article": { "title" : "On Bedouin Burger, Beirut, & Beyond: Lynn Adib x Collis Browne", "author" : "Lynn Adib, Collis Browne", "category" : "interviews", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/lynn-adib-bedouin-burger", "date" : "2025-11-21 09:10:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/SK-Lynn-25-Film-9.jpg", "excerpt" : "", "content" : "COLLIS BROWNE:Thank you for this conversation. It feels fitting to be doing it in Beirut. Both of us have a long-standing connection to Beirut, even though neither of us lives in Beirut. I know that you’re originally from Syria. When did you come to Beirut? What’s the connection?LYNN ADIB:I grew up in Syria until 2009, then I moved to Paris, where I lived for nine years. When the war in Syria stopped in 2018, I decided to leave France and go back to Syria. I went to Damascus and soon realized that it was going to be difficult for me to do the project I wanted to do in Damascus. Then I met Zeid Hamdan [the other half of duo Bedouin Burger], who was living in Beirut. I decided to go to Beirut because there was a lot happening there. I also have a lot of friends in Beirut. It’s crazy… it felt like destiny. It’s like Zeid and I needed to meet each other at that time in our lives. The project was created so organically… it was me and him just hanging out all the time. I was singing the tunes in the studio; he was working on them. Even the name of the band was a joke between me and him. It was a blessed period of our lives, even though Beirut was going through such a hard time. It was maybe the worst year in Lebanon since the war. It was 2019, a few months before Covid. Covid allowed us to be very creative. We had so much time, because time stopped… We had nothing to do but take refuge in the studio and work. This is one of the rare things I really miss about CCovid… our relationship to time.The name of the band came from the feeling of being like Bedouins, meaning that I really don’t feel I have a place I can call home, and every place is kind of my home. “Home” is where I meet beautiful people who nourish my soul. And I have found so beautiful people here in Beirut. The idea of home is related to this project… the notion of home has to change for us to survive.COLLIS:I love the idea of home as movable, or as a place tied to the people more than the land. I think it’s an idea that, especially in the region here, everyone kind of has to adopt. I think it’s a survival mode also… There is a long and complicated relationship between Syria and Lebanon, because historically these two countries share a very similar kind of culture. It was the same land. The border was drawn by the French. But in modern history, there are times when Syria has occupied Lebanon… But I’m interested in the Syrian perspective. Tell me more about this.LYNN:I don’t know where to start, because it’s such a broad conversation, but I’m just going to say what I felt when I came to Beirut as a Syrian. I did feel that speaking Arabic all the time was not a very good thing in a lot of settings. I was feeling that I had to use my French or English to fit into the society somehow. In Syria, it’s completely the opposite. When you speak French or English, people think you are just pretending to be on a higher social level, and they don’t really like that. So Arabic proficiency is something that is very respected in Syria. I am proud of the fact that I speak Arabic well, and it is something that I’ve missed here in Beirut. I’m privileged as a Syrian here because of my French education. I see other Syrians struggle… they take the jobs that Lebanese people don’t want to take. It is very hard for me to accept.Even yesterday… we went to a restaurant and all the servers were Syrian. I knew that from their accent. I’m very disappointed by what happened after the regime fell. I’m also very optimistic about Syria, about Lebanon, about the region, even though we know that the danger is nearby… but I still feel that this area is so blessed. I feel that I touch life when I’m in Beirut and in Damascus… that I can see what life looks like. I’m optimistic, also, because there are so many young people now in Damascus and Syria, and they’re trying to move things forward. We take as an example what happened in Lebanon, where Lebanon is culturally… there are so many things that are not working well here, and there is so much chaos, but in so many ways it’s very inspiring. I love that.COLLIS:We’re based in New York, so we were seeing the Syrian regime fall from afar… I guess at that point, you went back and visited family…LYNN:Yeah, I put on a concert there that was incredibly powerful for me, because I’d never sung in Syria. I mean, not after I left the choir, because I grew up singing in a choir… but under my name… this was the first official concert for me in Syria. It was a tiny concert, but it was incredibly powerful for me. We allowed ourselves to be happy for a while. I understand why people were also alarmed, especially people who were living there. I have so many friends who never wanted to leave Syria during the revolution, who are all thinking about leaving now. It seems that there is a plan for Syria to be fragmented… and it’s happening within the Syrian society, unfortunately, by the creation of chaos and uncertainty and instability…COLLIS:It’s absolutely fueled by the external forces. It’s the colonial divide and conquer. That’s the story of Lebanon. Can music be a force to affect all of this?LYNN:It’s a question I always ask myself: does art really change things? I think it can when it really reflects the artist’s vision, purely and without any filter. Ziad Rahbani [Lebanese composer and son of legendary singer Fairuz], who passed just recently in July 2025, is one of the rare artists in the world who was so true to what he said that he suffered personally from it. He was alone. And this can change things. It can change something within people’s souls. But it’s very rare that we encounter this kind of art. It’s very rare. Authenticity; that’s what I’m getting at. We are in an era of over-consumption in general, including over-consumption of art and music. This is because of social media… We want to hear new things all the time. We want the artist to produce new material all the time. The artist doesn’t have time to be true to themselves and think about what’s going on and do something true to who they are, which actually can move things forward.We are consuming so much information all the time that we don’t have time to just stand still. This is what I feel is missing. Dictators and presidents and wars come and go, but culture and songs remain if they are authentic. They remain in our memory more than anything else, more than war.I do believe that at the end, it’s life that wins over death and darkness… and music is part of life, true music, beautiful music, authentic music is part of life, and it always wins. I don’t think it stops war right away. It doesn’t save a child in Gaza. But this is what’s crazy about life; our relationship to death is so fragile that sometimes, even if we die, it’s not that we really die. There’s something that remains and will change things later on.COLLIS:Are you creating new things as Bedouin Burger, that reflect the times?LYNN:In this album, Zeid and I were reflecting on the moment we met during the revolution here in Lebanon. All the songs were either songs that we love singing because they are traditional songs, or compositions of mine that I proposed to Zeid, or compositions we created together. “Nomad” was a song that was co-written by me and Zeid when we were both in France. It reflects on the feeling of living in exile. We kind of stopped time by doing this project. Thankfully, I have Zeid in my life who understands that I need to breathe, to do something different than Bedouin Burger, to go back a to something that’s personal. I’m really blessed that Zeid understands." } , "relatedposts": [ { "title" : "Venezuela should be neither dictatorship nor colony: An interview with union leader Eduardo Sánchez", "author" : "Simón Rodriguez", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/venezuela-should-be-neither-dictatorship-nor-colony", "date" : "2026-02-12 10:51:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Eduardo%20Sa%CC%81nchez%20rueda%20de%20prensa%20diciembre%202024.jpeg", "excerpt" : "Eduardo Sánchez is an important Venezuelan labor leader with decades of political and union work. He is the president of the National Union of Workers of the Central University of Venezuela (SINATRAUCV) and the Federation of Higher Education Workers of Venezuela (FETRAESUV). He is also a member of Comunes, an organization founded in 2024 that, in its founding documents, aims for the recovery of the legacy of the Bolivarian Revolution, which they believe the Maduro government has broken with, to the point of considering it a neoliberal and “anti-Chavista government.”", "content" : "Eduardo Sánchez is an important Venezuelan labor leader with decades of political and union work. He is the president of the National Union of Workers of the Central University of Venezuela (SINATRAUCV) and the Federation of Higher Education Workers of Venezuela (FETRAESUV). He is also a member of Comunes, an organization founded in 2024 that, in its founding documents, aims for the recovery of the legacy of the Bolivarian Revolution, which they believe the Maduro government has broken with, to the point of considering it a neoliberal and “anti-Chavista government.”Sánchez describes Comunes as “a grouping of left-wing sectors that propose an alternative to the polarization between the so-called reactionary left that rules the country, led by President Nicolás Maduro, and the fascist and right-wing sectors represented by the current headed by María Corina Machado. In other words, we are a third option, seeking to establish a political and social solution for the popular and workers’ movement, with the concept of the homeland as a fundamental element.” The following interview took place January 13.How would you characterize the events of the last few days in Venezuela, starting with the US attack?Since the early hours of January 3, the US aggression against Bolívar’s homeland, against Venezuelan soil, materialized. According to statements by US spokespeople themselves, more than 150 aircraft invaded Venezuelan territory to bomb specific areas of Caracas, Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira. This is an unprecedented event in Venezuelan politics, which has caused outrage because Venezuelan soil has been sullied by the insolence of an imperialist power that, abusing its military might, has taken it upon itself to intervene in our country and remove the president. Not that we defend the president as such, but we do not believe that anyone has given the US president carte blanche to be the world’s policeman and come and control our country. This is a problem for Venezuelans that we Venezuelans must resolve ourselves. Therefore, we condemn this aggression as a disgraceful act that we hope will not happen again in any of our countries on the continent.President Maduro has led an authoritarian government that arose from an unfortunate event, which leaves doubts about its legitimacy, given that he lost the July 28 elections and arrogated them to himself, generating a process of repression, imprisoning anyone who protested, and acquiring a dictatorial character, which today bears responsibility for what is happening with the current crisis. The gringos have intervened, taking advantage of the crisis and with the support of an anti-national sector of the country that called for intervention and is now very poorly regarded by Venezuelan society.What is the current situation on the streets?The situation on the streets of Venezuela is one of astonishing calm, as a result of the fact that more than 70% of Venezuelans did not sympathize with Maduro’s regime, in addition to its repression, imprisonments, and deaths, as well as the economic and social deterioration that has engulfed the Venezuelan working class, which has paid a high price for a crisis it did not create, which has impoverished its wages and plunged it into a state of critical poverty. Today, when the government sought the support of the working class and the people, the response was negligible, with only a small percentage mobilizing due to the general discontent that existed.This does not mean support for the intervention; everyone laments that more than 100 Venezuelans have died as a result of treacherous bombings against Bolívar’s homeland, and that the concept of homeland has been sidelined and the country’s sovereignty violated.How do you interpret Trump’s announcements that he will allegedly run the country and take over Venezuelan oil?For us, there is now a dilemma: republic or colony. Facing it, we are putting forward our proposals to unify the country, to unify the working people around the concept of the Republic. We cannot be a colony of anyone, much less of the gringos, who have been the most reactionary and recalcitrant imperialist power on the continent, responsible for interventions that have taken place since the beginning of the last century, and who now seek to arrogate to themselves rights they do not have in order to turn us into a protectorate.The call we are making to Venezuelan society and the workers’ movement is for unity and action, and to the interim government, which also lacks legitimacy, despite being the element with which they intend to make a transition, is that any solution that is proposed must be framed within the Constitution and the democratic process. Relations with the US from a commercial point of view must be within the framework of respect for the Venezuelan Constitution and laws, and not under the guise of a kind of protectorate where they are giving orders on the premise that if they are not obeyed, they will bomb again.We believe that the country has sufficient political reserves to achieve an independent, autonomous, democratic, and patriotic state that can lead this country and put an end to the attempt to impose a dictatorship by a government that claimed to be revolutionary but ended up being neoliberal and capitalist, and prevent us from becoming a protectorate of a foreign power. We consider it important for the country to move towards democracy, allowing us to elect our president in accordance with the Constitution and laws of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.What message would you give to workers in other countries who are closely following the situation in Venezuela?This situation is very unfortunate for the entire continent. It represents a wake-up call to the different peoples of the world, in the understanding that the gringos now consider that they are once again managing the region as their backyard, and from that point of view they simply intend to take our oil, our gold, our rare earths, turn Venezuela into a kind of protectorate or colony, and take over the wealth of our country.It is important that the peoples of the world see themselves in the mirror of the Venezuelan situation, which today stands at a crossroads between becoming a US colony or continuing on the path of the Republic. We call on the working classes of Latin America and the world to unite to avoid ending up in a situation like the one we are now experiencing. We call on them to fight the authoritarian regimes that have brought so much pain to the different countries of the American continent. The call is for unity as a class, with a perspective of struggle, not only for labor rights but also for the homeland, a fundamental and unifying concept of each of the countries that make up the Latin American homeland, which continue in the struggle for self-determination, to expand and develop democracy to place it at the service of the majority." } , { "title" : "Against Kurdish Erasure: Sleeping in the Courtyard", "author" : "Holly Mason Badra", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/against-kurdish-erasure", "date" : "2026-02-11 09:17:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/img_0230%20copy.png", "excerpt" : "With Kurds in Rojava (Western Kurdistan) and Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan) facing insurmountable violence and displacement at the hands of the Iranian, Syrian, and Turkish forces, we in diaspora mobilize in anger and strength. Rojava offers an example of Kurdish liberation so rooted in feminist, ecological, and participatory practices that it must be protected. The threat of erasure follows us from Rojava to Rojhelat where the martyrs that spark revolution and move us to action across the globe are Kurdish women like Jina Amini and Rubina Aminian. It’s imperative to acknowledge their Kurdish identity as we remember and point to them as conduits.", "content" : "With Kurds in Rojava (Western Kurdistan) and Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan) facing insurmountable violence and displacement at the hands of the Iranian, Syrian, and Turkish forces, we in diaspora mobilize in anger and strength. Rojava offers an example of Kurdish liberation so rooted in feminist, ecological, and participatory practices that it must be protected. The threat of erasure follows us from Rojava to Rojhelat where the martyrs that spark revolution and move us to action across the globe are Kurdish women like Jina Amini and Rubina Aminian. It’s imperative to acknowledge their Kurdish identity as we remember and point to them as conduits.*A group of Kurdish college students posing with their musical instruments by Pirdí Delal. Zaxo, Kurdistan, 1970’s. *Photo credit: Raz Xaidan/The Jiyan Archives“I open my ponytail in class and the horses shriek.”This line is from Nahid Arjouni’s poem “My Roots Were Somewhere With You” and constantly plays in my mind. I’ve been so moved by the circulating imagery of Kurdish fathers braiding their daughter’s hair. This tenderness is balm and antidote. This tenderness falls against a backdrop of continued state violence while Kurds in Rojava and Rojhelat are fighting for their existence and rights against the Syrian, Turkish, and Iranian regimes. Erasure continues in multiple forms and in dangerous misrepresentations.This emergence of braiding as protest is in response to a video of a Syrian soldier claiming he cut off a Kurdish female fighter’s braid in Raqqa. The Kurdish braid is a loud symbol. It’s a representation of cultural continuity and protection.Power and Politics in Kurdish Women’s Braids*I want to tell you a story about my mother braiding her little sister’s hair in Baghdad. *She braided her sister’s hair while their father napped. While braiding her sister’s hair, they practiced the Arabic they were learning in school. Only Arabic in public; only Kurdish at home. These were the rules and a slip up in either space was punishable. Their father woke. Small hands braiding, sisters talking and laughing, and he physically reprimanded them for the linguistic transgression. Such anger and violence. And it comes from a deep well of oppression and linguicide. Still, the daughters bear the weight of it all.I see the man who held the female peshmerga’s braid walking back his claims, saying it wasn’t real, it was a joke. Regardless of the truth—the “joke” holds hefty reverberations. The “joke” is offensive, it’s harmful, it’s violent. It speaks to perceptions of Kurdish dispensability.The same aunt—whose hair my mom was braiding—brushed and braided my hair when I was 5 days postpartum. I felt comfort return to my body. When my sister-cousin braids my hair, I feel loved and protected. The tradition lives on. This display of braiding spreading among our communities all over the world is a refusal. A refusal to be erased.Possibly a double exposure or composite, this 1977 image shows a woman pictured twice - confident, braided, and in sunglasses, Qamişlo, Kurdistan. Photo credit: Hedîya Xan/The Jiyan Archives.With Kurds in Rojava and Rojhelat facing insurmountable violence and displacement, we in diaspora mobilize in anger and strength. Rojava offers an example of Kurdish liberation so rooted in feminist, ecological, and participatory practices that it must be protected. The threat of erasure follows us from Rojava to Rojhelat where the martyrs that spark revolution and move us to action across the globe are Kurdish women like Jina Amini and Rubina Aminian. Their Kurdish identities must be acknowledged as we remember and point to them as conduits— otherwise state violence and harm is perpetuated.It is within this spirit of anti-erasure that I initially put together Sleeping in the Courtyard, a multi-genre collection of writing by contemporary Kurdish women and nonbinary writers living all over the world. One of the contributors, Choman Hardi, fiercely proclaims, “As a poet, I believe it is my duty to ruin the façade of normality and fairness that prevails.” It is within this current landscape that I invite you to spend time with some poems from the collection and excerpts from the book’s introduction as our communities resist erasure.\Sleeping in the Courtyard cover image artist attribution, Shayan Nuradeen**The first offering is a poem by Nahid Arjouni who is a Kurdish poet known for her exploration of femininity and war. **She lives in Sanandaj in Eastern Kurdistan (touching Iran). This poem was translated from the Persian by Shohreh Laici who is a US-based Iranian journalist, writer, and translator. Her documentary My Room in Tehran Is Called America is currently in production by Pirooz Kalayeh and explores her fight for freedom of expression.My Roots Were Somewhere with YouSuch a small worldyou spend your days with the broken pieces of me,fallen to earth.I delete the borders from the books, from my hairs, too;Father said, “Cut it off.”He added, “Fuck the horses’ whinnies, we don’t belong to this country!Don’t you understand?”I disturb the earth and spread some of my ancestors’ soil nearthe geraniums,and throw more on the broken and ugly asphalt of the streets.I throw it on the face of the child who calls Grandma “foreigner,” laughing.Father said, “It happens a lot when your roots are somewhere else,”and then he stopped talking.My roots were somewhere with you,and only the strange horses loved my whinny, those who belong to no land.I think of my roots at school, in my headscarf, while the smell of bloodin the national anthemmade me deeply sad!I think it’s the earth’s stupidity which lets us break it into pieces, borders.I think it’s the politicians’ stupidity that never lets soldiers in love feardeath in war.Sometimes I think my teachers are dumb, those who believe war is holyand that not wearing the hijab helps the enemy.I open my ponytail in class and the horses shriek.Father said, “Your roots were somewhere else,” and I was thinking of youwho are somewhere else.You hate the blood,the politicians, too, those who never let soldiers in love fear war.In her essay “Poetry’s power to speak the unspeakable: the Kurdish story,” Choman Hardi writes, “It may be difficult for others to understand what it feels like to be forcibly deported, to see your homes given to ‘settlers,’ to witness the renaming of your neighbourhoods and towns. It may be difficult to imagine what it is like not to be allowed to speak your mother tongue, to witness public assassination of your people, to grow up with images of mass graves, gassed victims, hanged leaders. It is even more difficult to describe what it is like to see history repeat itself when you witness your defeat again.”\Sleeping in the Courtyard commission image 1 artist attribution, Shayan Nuradeen**I turn us now to another poem in Sleeping in the Courtyard—by exiled writer Meral Şimşek. **Meral is a poet, novelist, and editor born in Amed (Diyarbakir) in Northern Kurdistan. Her publications and accolades are many. Due to the content of her books and the awards she received, the Turkish government accused her of making propaganda. The prosecutor’s office requested a prison sentence of up to thirty years. After a lengthy and tumultuous escape from Turkey to Greece and back to Turkey, PEN Berlin managed to bring her safely to Germany in 2022. This poem is translated from the Turkish by Öykü Tekten who is a poet, translator, archivist, and editor splitting her time between Granada and New York. She is the general editor of the Kurdish Poetry Series at Pinsapo Press.Dream and Realityclean tables were setwhen the sun was scorchedbread was a stranger to our countryjust as othering ourselves,we burned and scattered our dreamsand sterilized all hopesour refugee hearts turned to the loop of nightwhile the gods bore bastard seedsin crimson gardens of paradisewe were banned from life, from falling in loveit was the time of laughter in thymeeach of us shouldered, one by one,uncontainable weary dreamswe fell silent in orphaned solitudessurrendered ourselves so that the worldwould be a better placein fact, we massacred ourselvesfor a worthy life through slimy consolationshistory of our consciousness filled with delusionsnothing more than a chain of silenced paradoxesunanswered questions resided with our stagnationblaming each sin on the darknessas they became our biggest unanswered questionwas it our dream that was the realityor our reality, the dream?\Sleeping in the Courtyard commission image 2 artist attribution, Shayan Nuradeen**Sleeping in the Courtyard is dedicated to all writers in exile. **Many of the women in this book are writers in exile. They are exiled writers simply for being women and being writers (the two coexisting at once poses a threat). The fact that the intersecting identity as a Kurdish woman daring to write often means risking one’s safety—simply for writing creatively—also proves that there must inherently be power in writing, if these women are seen as a threat just for doing it.Exile and erasure are tools of the oppressor. This collection is the antithesis of erasure. In 2022, when the phrase “Women Life Freedom” rang out in protests transnationally and across digital spaces in response to the death of Jîna Mahsa Amini, many in the Kurdish community felt a twinge of pain and frustration at the lack of recognition for where this outcry originates. “Women Life Freedom” comes from the Kurdish “Jin-Jiyan-Azadî,” which is a verbalization from Kurdish women’s liberation movements. More than that, though, there was pain for the erasure of Jîna’s name and identity as a Kurdish woman. Arrested by the Iranian state for improperly wearing her hijab, the protests in response that spread worldwide were not anti-hijab campaigns but more about the right to choose. The martyr who sparked the revolution that famous writers such as Marjane Satrapi have written about was a Kurdish woman. Why is it important to recognize her as Kurdish? Why is it important to note the origins of “Women Life Freedom” as Kurdish? Because of the way that Kurdish women are erased from the narrative and Kurdish cultural production is co-opted. More than that, it was the Iranian state that forced Jîna to go by her “official” government name, so it perpetuates further violence when she is not referred to by her Kurdish name in death. It perpetuates further violence when a phrase from Kurdish women’s freedom movements is used in spaces where Kurdish culture and existence is suppressed and criminalized. To gain a deeper understanding of these contexts and implications, turn to “Why ‘Jîna’: Erasure of Kurdish Women and Their Politics from the Uprisings in Iran” by Farangis Ghaderi and Ozlem Goner. The goal here is not to defame the power and necessity of this movement for Iranian women (and Kurdish women alike). The point here is that within feminist solidarities, there must be a recognition of Kurdish women’s roles and contributions in order for true liberation and justice to take place. This book uplifts and spotlights the role that Kurdish women (past and present) play in social, political, and cultural progress.- Excerpt from Introduction to Sleeping**It is in this spirit that I want to finish this offering, **to leave you with one of my own poems in the collection– a love poem– because it has been powerful to see the queer Kurdish iconography within the current global protests for Rojava. The Kurdish flag next to the progress pride flag. The Kurdish flag’s sun inserted into the progress pride flag. I am healing.WaitingWinter branchessilhouettethe darkening sky.In trying to be tender,I slice a pearand add cinnamon.The gate swings on a hinge.Imaginea crescent moon:the beloved’s ear.And in hereyea silhouetteof winter branches.We are all waiting, not passively, but actively. While we wait for an end to the oppression, subjugation, and state violence against our people, we care for each other, for our communities, for our families, for our land.Publication notes:“My Roots Were Somewhere With You” by Nahid Arjouni (translated by Shohreh Laici) was first published in Two Lines Press, no.29 (2018)“Dream and Reality” by Meral Şimşek (translated by Öykü Tekten) was first published in The Markaz Review (2022)“Waiting” by Holly Mason Badra was first published in Bethesda Magazine (2018)" } , { "title" : "“Fuck My Political Career. People Are Dying.”", "author" : "Maya Al Zaben, Cameron Kasky", "category" : "interviews", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/cameron-kasky-west-bank-politics", "date" : "2026-02-11 08:46:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cameron%20Kasky0102-2.jpg", "excerpt" : "Why Cameron Kasky Ended His New York Congressional Run to Call Attention to the West Bank", "content" : "Why Cameron Kasky Ended His New York Congressional Run to Call Attention to the West BankPhoto Credit: Alizayuh VigilPolitical urgency has a way of shifting when you witness systemic, unflinching violence and oppression. The 25-year-old activist Cameron Kasky knows this from experience. Last December, Kasky traveled to the West Bank while running for Congress, expecting the experience to inform his platform. Instead, his visit to the West Bank rearranged his priorities entirely. His campaign, and the limits of electoral politics, stopped making sense.“Fuck my political career,” Kasky told me, midway through our portrait photoshoot as he unbuttoned his suit jacket and set it aside. “People are dying.”Kasky, who is best known in the U.S. as a Parkland high school shooting survivor and gun reform activist, had spent days moving between Palestinian villages under military occupation. He went as an American citizen but more importantly, as a candidate running to succeed Congressman Jerry Nadler in New York’s 12th Congressional District. But when he returned, Kasky realized that what he witnessed could not wait for election cycles or party alignment. So he bowed out of the race.“When you see the conditions people there are living under [in the West Bank], [I began to have a] one-track mind, which is: what can I do to help everyone?” he said. “Given my circumstances, given the nature of where we are at on Israel-Palestine, the upcoming midterm being something for which many politicians are going to want to reposition themselves on Palestine, and given the momentum that I have in this political context in the country, I do not know if I will be able to help as much six months from now.”Photo Credit: Alizayuh VigilKasky was tired when he showed up to our shoot. He was fresh off a train from lobbying in D.C. for justice in the West Bank. Actually, taking off the suit was his idea. He wanted to look like what he felt like: just another guy. He chose to wear a simple black T-shirt and an olive tree necklace he’d picked up in Hebron. When I asked what he wanted to listen to while we snapped the photos, he said anything but the Drake I already had on. He wanted to look sad, because, he said, that was the truth. And still—visibly exhausted—he couldn’t stop talking, in the best way, about everything that happened during his trip to the West Bank.While in the West Bank, Kasky traveled through Beit Sahour, Hebron, Sebastia, Tuwani, Tulkarem, Bethlehem, and a small shepherd village in the South Hebron Hills called Umm al-Khair. Each place looked different, but they all shared the condition of occupation.As an American, his body moved differently through space than that of the Palestinians he had met. He could pass where Palestinians could not. He could film until a soldier barked at him to stop. In Hebron, for instance, he accompanied a woman named Nasrin home through a military checkpoint. What should have been a 10-minute walk became 90, as Israeli soldiers turned people away arbitrarily and with no explanation.Umm al-Khair, however, is where things really changed for him.The village is surrounded by Israeli settlements. There are no paved roads, no infrastructure, and at least 14 demolition orders hanging over it. Every night, residents stay awake watching grainy security cameras for settlers who might arrive on ATVs or in so-called “security vehicles.” Children grow up with the knowledge that their homes can disappear at any moment.There, Kasky met a 19-year-old student who had been kidnapped and beaten by settlers at 17. When asked about his future, the boy answered simply: “There is no future. I only think about tomorrow. Will there be settlers tomorrow?”What struck Kasky was how plainly he said it.“And it was just so interesting to me because he didn’t say that to try and make a political point or to add some sort of dramatic effect to the conversation. He was just speaking from his heart and saying, I don’t get to think in the future. I don’t know what the future is. My home can be destroyed.”In another encounter, Kasky met a young woman whose husband had been shot dead by a settler while holding their baby.She showed him a photo of her children. Kasky told her he dreamed of having beautiful children of his own someday. The woman replied: “Inshallah, they will play together.”He knows they probably never will.“I will never be allowed into the state of Israel again,” he said. “And you’re even more likely to be turned away trying to come in from Jordan. So an unfathomable amount of things would have to change dramatically for me to ever be able to see the people of Umm al-Khair again.”Even still, he tries to keep in touch with all of the people he met in Umm al-Khair, though he knows that danger lurks for them at every corner. Every time the young woman Kasky met takes more than a couple of hours to write him back, he feels a creeping fear that something unthinkable has happened. When she finally does, there is a rush of relief. But that, he says, is the feeling people there live with all the time.All throughout his experience, one nagging thought couldn’t escape his mind. “‘God damn it, I can’t believe I have to run for Congress right now,’” he kept thinking. “Because if I weren’t running for Congress right now, I would spend a very long time here.”Photo Credit: Alizayuh VigilWhen Umm al-Khair residents say, ”See you tomorrow, Inshallah,” they are not saying these words casually. It’s clear in the darkly sardonic inflection of their voice that they say it because they genuinely do not know if they will see each other again. When they promise tomorrow, they have to say “God-willing,” because only God can bless them with another day.Although morbid, Kasky says the residents continue to infuse every day with humor, love, and a real sense of community.“It was so shocking to me because I was like, ‘If I were living in these conditions, I don’t understand how I could laugh at all,”’ he explained. “But then I remembered my own experience as a school shooting survivor with all these victims of gun violence whom I’ve met, and everybody’s funny. And you realize that it’s because humor is one of the only weapons we have against trauma.”The violence in Gaza, he says, felt indistinguishable from what he had witnessed as a child. He struggled to reconcile the outrage Americans expressed over the shooting at his school with their relative silence about violence abroad. That’s why, when he returned to the U.S., Kasky no longer believed politics could come first.People questioned his decision to step away from the congressional race, especially his ability to help. Some voiced that perhaps he could do more for Palestine if he actually got elected—that Israel would not pause its next violent move to see how his election turned out.“The people I met can’t wait until November,” he said, thinking back to the residents of Umm al-Khair. “Their villages can be destroyed any day… Settlers who come from my own district in New York could kill them. I can’t make an emergency less urgent just because I’m running for office.”So, he began working directly with lawmakers, including California Congressman Ro Khanna, to push for legislation that addresses the human rights violations in the West Bank. Kasky says that having this experience, being in the West Bank physically, gives him leverage with lawmakers.“It’s easier to get a meeting when you say: ‘I saw this with my own eyes.’”The villages changed the scale of what he was seeing. For Kasky, Gaza and the West Bank are not separate moral categories. Destruction in Gaza is explosive and immediate, but it is just as procedural in the West Bank.“What’s happening in Gaza is snapping their neck,” he said. “What’s happening in the West Bank is slowly choking them out.”He rejects the idea that settler violence is a fringe problem, pointing to the leadership now shaping anti-Palestinian violence in the West Bank for evidence, namely Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has publicly called for Palestinian towns to be destroyed and pushed to legalize settlements built in violation of international law. More recently, he has advanced policies allowing Israelis to purchase land in the occupied West Bank.“[Smotrich] makes Netanyahu look like a Care Bear,” Kasky explains. “He is exploiting the world’s attention towards Gaza to turn the West Bank into even more of a Wild West murder party. And nobody’s paying attention.”In addition to legislative action, Kasky also seeks to challenge the language Zionists, particularly American Zionists, are taught. As a Jewish American raised in a Zionist education system, Kasky feels a responsibility to speak directly to those who were shaped by it, having seen up close how its worldview is taught.“When you have a Zionist upbringing and you have friends with progressive values, you are presented with a choice when Israel-Palestine comes into the conversation,” Kasky said. “You can either blame your friends and assume that they’re wrong and fall victim to some predatory form of Jew hatred. Or you could make yourself uncomfortable and engage with educational materials to which you had previously been unexposed.”“I’ve lost [extended] family members over this ,” he said. “They think I’m a terrorist, and I’m like, ‘Okay, whatever. If you love this foreign country more than you love your family, that’s your problem.’”Photo Credit: Alizayuh VigilAs the shoot came to a close, Kasky seemed visibly more at ease. Somewhere in the conversation, I learned he is a Scorpio and that his parents were divorced. Small facts, but ones that shifted the tone. He felt more relaxed. He truly was just another guy who wanted to make a difference.I later asked Kasky what the word “activist” meant to him. In a world where activism is often reduced to slogans online, he talked about action.“It could mean accompanying undocumented individuals to immigration court to make sure they have somebody with them to serve as a support system while ICE is presumably waiting in the wings to pounce on their right to be free and safe,” Kasky said.He also thought back to a lot of the Westerners that he met in Palestine who sought to help by simply being there–a “protective presence,” he called it. “You are accompanying people who are on their own land to plow their fields and live their lives so you can serve as something of a buffer when the armed settlers come.” In his view, activism is simply knowing what tools are at your disposal and putting them to work for something that matters. It’s carrying the stories and experiences people in the West Bank shared with him—and telling the world about them.As he took his leave, Kasky turned to me and made a little gesture that I’ll never forget. It is a gesture he had learned from Muslim friends in the U.S. years earlier, one that took on new meaning in Palestine: a hand to the heart, then a subtle nod.Tap. “See you tomorrow, Inshallah.” Nod. That’s how he says hello and goodbye now." } ] }