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Urbicide as a Weapon
How Israel Destroys Land, Memory, & Heritage
“I would eliminate the first row of houses in Beit Jala. And if the shooting continued? I would eliminate the second row of houses; and so on. I know the Arabs … For them, there is nothing more important than their house. So, under me, you will not see a child shot next to his father. It is better to level an entire village with bulldozers—row after row.”
— Ariel Sharon, nicknamed ‘the Butcher of Beirut’ and later ‘the Bulldozer,’ when asked what should be done with the Palestinians in the West Bank.
The Israeli war crimes against Palestine and Lebanon since October 2023 have not been limited to the genocide of hundreds of thousands of people; they have also extended to the destruction of the built environment, including homes, streets, neighborhoods, infrastructure, and buildings of cultural and historical significance, among others. The assault against all essential components that form cities and towns is not mere collateral damage but a deliberate and systematic effort by the Zionist entity to target the physical structures that make life on this land possible and through which we assert our existence as a society.
Understanding why such force is deployed against the structures we have built goes beyond the Israeli pretense of creating ‘buffer zones’ to ensure ‘Israeli security.’ It first requires recognizing the central role of land in settler-colonial projects.
The Centrality of Land
Land is the defining feature of settler-colonial structures – the foundation upon which a settler-colonial project is built. This territoriality operates through a “logic of elimination,” where erasure is a precondition for settler-colonialism to exist.
Over the past five hundred years, as European settlers built their empires, they insisted that the lands they conquered were empty – a concept that continues to shape green colonialism and so-called conservation practices today. Promoting the narrative that the lands they colonized were uninhabited was a deliberate strategy used to justify their dominance and claims of ownership while simultaneously concealing the extermination of Indigenous peoples.
The ‘Discovery’ doctrine, first used by Portuguese and Spanish settlers in Africa and the Americas (and later adopted by other European colonizers), and the Terra Nullius paradigm – most prominently used by British settlers in Australia and New Zealand, the French in North America, and the Dutch in South Africa – provided a legal framework through which they justified claiming lands as vacant, neglected, or unproductive upon their arrival, while dismissing and dehumanizing the millions of Indigenous peoples who were already residing there.
Following this same pattern, the Israelis deceptively propagated the notion that Palestine was a “land without people for a people without a land” as a tool to legitimize and justify their occupation. The idea that Palestinian land was a ‘desert’ is both satirical and absurd, considering it is located in one of the most strategically significant areas in the world – an ancient region that has been continuously inhabited by numerous civilizations throughout history. Zionists, however, were largely successful in spreading this falsehood.
This refusal to acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ presence created the conditions for ethnic cleansing, genocide, and various forms of violence, including the destruction of the conditions that make life possible on a territory, all in order to achieve the ultimate settlers’ objective: clearing the land of any obstacles to annexation and replacement.
Clearing the Land Through Urbicide
Urbicide literally means “killing the urban,” with “urban” referring to the features that define towns and cities. More specifically, urbicide is described as “both the destruction of the built environment that comprises the fabric of the urban as well as the destruction of the way of life specific to such material conditions.”
It is also worth adding that urbicide can encompass domicide, defined as “the killing of homes,” culturcide, referring to “the killing of culture,” and even ecocide, which is “killing the natural environment.”
Urbicide has been a consistent Israeli policy since the establishment of the entity. During the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing ‘catastrophe,’ 530 Palestinian urban areas, towns, and villages were entirely erased, with over 180 of them being transformed into recreational sites or national parks. Since 1967, approximately 60,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished.
In fact, this has been far from an occasional occurrence; it is an enduring process that does not always take the form of a sudden, large-scale event. Slow urbicide is a routine practice in Palestine. The demolition of homes, streets, neighborhoods (which are often renamed), infrastructure, and sources of livelihood is an everyday phenomenon at the heart of Israel’s mechanism to uproot Palestinians. This process is also accompanied by the construction of walls, checkpoints, the imposition of sieges, control of movement, and the fragmentation of Palestinian land, which continues to shrink as Jewish settlements expand. This falls within Israel’s demographic engineering strategy, aimed at minimizing Palestinian presence and ensuring the expansion of Jewish dominance. As Ehud Barak noted, demography is an “existential” matter for Israel.
Since October 2023, 90% of Gaza’s population, equivalent to almost a million people, has been displaced. Now, they have no functioning city or homes to return to. Israel has razed 70% of Gaza’s total infrastructure to the ground, equivalent to the destruction of 160,000 housing units, with a further 276,000 units severely or partially damaged. Without basic infrastructure to sustain life, a new reality is established in which Palestinians are left with no option but to either leave this now apocalyptic city or remain and die.
This was confirmed by Trump’s most recent comment to “clean out” Gaza, describing it as “a demolition site” and stating that Arab nations should “build housing at a different location,” insisting that Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza. Israel’s plan from the beginning has been to enforce perpetual displacement, prohibit any possibility of return, and ultimately, seek total eradication.
In South Lebanon, Israel wiped out 37 border towns throughout the war and has continued to demolish houses and shoot at anyone trying to return home, despite the ceasefire agreement. It also recently declared its plan to continue occupying five Lebanese hills.
History, Identity, and Memory
Massacring the city and transforming it into an uninhabitable wasteland is designed to not only erase its people from geography but also to remove them from history. Centuries of history have been wiped away through the Israeli execution of urbicide in both Gaza and Lebanon, with over 200 heritage sites now lying in ruins. These legacies, passed down from our ancestors, serve as a bridge between our past, present, and future continuity on this land.
In November, a so-called 71-year-old “historian” named Zeev Erlich was killed after infiltrating Lebanese territory with the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to examine archaeological sites and search for alleged biblical evidence to support the Israeli narrative. He had previously published a book on Jewish history in Gaza that “strengthened the connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.” In fact, Israel has long used archaeology as a tool to colonize more land. By erasing all material traces and archaeological evidence of Palestinian or Lebanese historical presence, the settlers can then “validate” their own ‘historical land claims,’ asserting that no symbol, monument, record, or proof exists that does not align with or challenge the Israeli narrative of history.
Some of the targeted sites in Gaza include one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries, museums with Canaanite artifacts, and libraries containing rare Quran manuscripts as well as ancient books on philosophy and medicine. In Lebanon, we are talking about the 5,000-year-old ancient city of Tyre, the historic town of Mhaibib with 2,000 years old structures, the ancient Tibnin fortress that can be traced back to the Bronze Age, the Shamaa citadel originating from the 12th century, and many others.
Wiping out heritage sites, along with places of worship, libraries, archives, museums, and cultural centers, amounts to a campaign of cultural cleansing aimed at striking at the very foundation of our society. Stripping us of these physical representations of our roots—those that tell our story and reflect our values and traditions—is an attack on our identity. Even the houses reduced to rubble, the markets, shops, schools, and parks are not merely structures devoid of meaning; they are repositories of memories and shared experiences. These are places where people express themselves, share social ties, celebrate together, and go about their daily lives.
Israel’s urbicide has been an attempt to redefine the significance of a place we have constructed over the course of thousands of years, and how we relate to it, by drastically transforming it beyond the point of recognition—severing that sense of familiarity and enforcing a sense of alienation aimed at breaking our will to remain.
Environmental Cost of Urbicide
Urbicide also comes with an astronomical environmental cost. While it will take some time before comprehensive assessments reveal the full extent of the environmental catastrophe inflicted on Lebanon and Gaza, a UN Habitat assessment focused on South Lebanon only (excluding the Beqaa) found almost 14,000,000 tonnes of debris generated from the destruction of buildings. The United Nations Environment Programme’s latest debris quantification in Gaza, revealed that the Israeli urbicide has left over 50,000,000 tonnes of debris in Gaza’s streets. This is ‘unprecedented’ devastation that could take more than 21 years to be fully cleared.
Experts have warned that the debris resulting from the extensive bombings contains threatening substances that contaminate the air, soil, and water resources—ranging from dust and toxic gases to asbestos, heavy metals, and a variety of other hazardous chemicals. Not to mention, there are still 12,000 decomposing martyrs’ bodies buried among the wreckage, along with thousands of unexploded ordnance.
Additionally, this environmental catastrophe will have far-reaching impacts that transcend Palestinian and Lebanese territories. The emissions from Israel’s war against Gaza and Lebanon jeopardize global climate mitigation efforts. A widely shared study published in January 2024 revealed that within the first 120 days alone, emissions from Israel’s war against Gaza ranged between 420,000 and 650,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, equivalent to the total annual emissions of 26 countries. The total amount of emissions released over the course of 15 months has yet to be determined, but the figures are expected to be alarmingly massive.
Conclusion
Today, reclaiming the places we have lost and rebuilding is an existential fight upon which our collective survival hinges. The transformation of the toxic wasteland created by Israel into vibrant places thriving with life once again is an indispensable act of resistance against erasure. Reinforcing our sense of belonging to the land, which Israel has systematically sought to eradicate, begins with restoring the critical infrastructures that would allow devastated cities, towns and villages to function once more, enabling displaced people to return home. This must be done carefully, retaining the place’s sense of identity, holding on to its historical memory, preserving its cultural significance, and repairing damaged heritage sites, all while simultaneously healing and regenerating the land from contamination.
Mending our bleeding wounds, however, also requires coming to terms with the fact that the struggle for liberating our lands is still in its early stages.
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"title" : "Urbicide as a Weapon: How Israel Destroys Land, Memory, & Heritage",
"author" : "Sarah Sinno",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/urbicide-as-a-weapon-how-israel-destroys-land-memory-and-heritage",
"date" : "2025-03-21 16:29:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/2024_10_28_ErasingLebanon_1.jpg",
"excerpt" : " “I would eliminate the first row of houses in Beit Jala. And if the shooting continued? I would eliminate the second row of houses; and so on. I know the Arabs … For them, there is nothing more important than their house. So, under me, you will not see a child shot next to his father. It is better to level an entire village with bulldozers—row after row.”",
"content" : " “I would eliminate the first row of houses in Beit Jala. And if the shooting continued? I would eliminate the second row of houses; and so on. I know the Arabs … For them, there is nothing more important than their house. So, under me, you will not see a child shot next to his father. It is better to level an entire village with bulldozers—row after row.” — Ariel Sharon, nicknamed ‘the Butcher of Beirut’ and later ‘the Bulldozer,’ when asked what should be done with the Palestinians in the West Bank.The Israeli war crimes against Palestine and Lebanon since October 2023 have not been limited to the genocide of hundreds of thousands of people; they have also extended to the destruction of the built environment, including homes, streets, neighborhoods, infrastructure, and buildings of cultural and historical significance, among others. The assault against all essential components that form cities and towns is not mere collateral damage but a deliberate and systematic effort by the Zionist entity to target the physical structures that make life on this land possible and through which we assert our existence as a society.Understanding why such force is deployed against the structures we have built goes beyond the Israeli pretense of creating ‘buffer zones’ to ensure ‘Israeli security.’ It first requires recognizing the central role of land in settler-colonial projects.The Centrality of LandLand is the defining feature of settler-colonial structures – the foundation upon which a settler-colonial project is built. This territoriality operates through a “logic of elimination,”1 where erasure is a precondition for settler-colonialism to exist.Over the past five hundred years, as European settlers built their empires, they insisted that the lands they conquered were empty – a concept that continues to shape green colonialism and so-called conservation practices today.2 Promoting the narrative that the lands they colonized were uninhabited was a deliberate strategy used to justify their dominance and claims of ownership while simultaneously concealing the extermination of Indigenous peoples.The ‘Discovery’ doctrine, first used by Portuguese and Spanish settlers in Africa and the Americas (and later adopted by other European colonizers), and the Terra Nullius paradigm – most prominently used by British settlers in Australia and New Zealand, the French in North America, and the Dutch in South Africa – provided a legal framework through which they justified claiming lands as vacant, neglected, or unproductive upon their arrival, while dismissing and dehumanizing the millions of Indigenous peoples who were already residing there.Following this same pattern, the Israelis deceptively propagated the notion that Palestine was a “land without people for a people without a land” as a tool to legitimize and justify their occupation. The idea that Palestinian land was a ‘desert’ is both satirical and absurd, considering it is located in one of the most strategically significant areas in the world – an ancient region that has been continuously inhabited by numerous civilizations throughout history.3 Zionists, however, were largely successful in spreading this falsehood.This refusal to acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ presence created the conditions for ethnic cleansing, genocide, and various forms of violence, including the destruction of the conditions that make life possible on a territory, all in order to achieve the ultimate settlers’ objective: clearing the land of any obstacles to annexation and replacement.Clearing the Land Through UrbicideUrbicide literally means “killing the urban,” with “urban” referring to the features that define towns and cities. More specifically, urbicide is described as “both the destruction of the built environment that comprises the fabric of the urban as well as the destruction of the way of life specific to such material conditions.”4It is also worth adding that urbicide can encompass domicide, defined as “the killing of homes,” culturcide, referring to “the killing of culture,” and even ecocide, which is “killing the natural environment.”5Urbicide has been a consistent Israeli policy since the establishment of the entity. During the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing ‘catastrophe,’ 530 Palestinian urban areas, towns, and villages were entirely erased, with over 180 of them being transformed into recreational sites or national parks.6 Since 1967, approximately 60,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished.In fact, this has been far from an occasional occurrence; it is an enduring process that does not always take the form of a sudden, large-scale event. Slow urbicide is a routine practice in Palestine. The demolition of homes, streets, neighborhoods (which are often renamed), infrastructure, and sources of livelihood is an everyday phenomenon at the heart of Israel’s mechanism to uproot Palestinians. This process is also accompanied by the construction of walls, checkpoints, the imposition of sieges, control of movement, and the fragmentation of Palestinian land, which continues to shrink as Jewish settlements expand. This falls within Israel’s demographic engineering strategy, aimed at minimizing Palestinian presence and ensuring the expansion of Jewish dominance. As Ehud Barak noted, demography is an “existential” matter for Israel.7Since October 2023, 90% of Gaza’s population, equivalent to almost a million people, has been displaced.8 Now, they have no functioning city or homes to return to. Israel has razed 70% of Gaza’s total infrastructure to the ground, equivalent to the destruction of 160,000 housing units, with a further 276,000 units severely or partially damaged.9 Without basic infrastructure to sustain life, a new reality is established in which Palestinians are left with no option but to either leave this now apocalyptic city or remain and die.This was confirmed by Trump’s most recent comment to “clean out” Gaza, describing it as “a demolition site” and stating that Arab nations should “build housing at a different location,” insisting that Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza.10 Israel’s plan from the beginning has been to enforce perpetual displacement, prohibit any possibility of return, and ultimately, seek total eradication.In South Lebanon, Israel wiped out 37 border towns11 throughout the war and has continued to demolish houses and shoot at anyone trying to return home, despite the ceasefire agreement. It also recently declared its plan to continue occupying five Lebanese hills.History, Identity, and MemoryMassacring the city and transforming it into an uninhabitable wasteland is designed to not only erase its people from geography but also to remove them from history. Centuries of history have been wiped away through the Israeli execution of urbicide in both Gaza and Lebanon, with over 200 heritage sites now lying in ruins. These legacies, passed down from our ancestors, serve as a bridge between our past, present, and future continuity on this land.In November, a so-called 71-year-old “historian” named Zeev Erlich was killed after infiltrating Lebanese territory with the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to examine archaeological sites and search for alleged biblical evidence to support the Israeli narrative. He had previously published a book on Jewish history in Gaza that “strengthened the connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.”12 In fact, Israel has long used archaeology as a tool to colonize more land. By erasing all material traces and archaeological evidence of Palestinian or Lebanese historical presence, the settlers can then “validate” their own ‘historical land claims,’ asserting that no symbol, monument, record, or proof exists that does not align with or challenge the Israeli narrative of history.13Some of the targeted sites in Gaza include one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries, museums with Canaanite artifacts, and libraries containing rare Quran manuscripts as well as ancient books on philosophy and medicine.14 In Lebanon, we are talking about the 5,000-year-old ancient city of Tyre, the historic town of Mhaibib with 2,000 years old structures, the ancient Tibnin fortress that can be traced back to the Bronze Age, the Shamaa citadel originating from the 12th century, and many others.Wiping out heritage sites, along with places of worship, libraries, archives, museums, and cultural centers, amounts to a campaign of cultural cleansing aimed at striking at the very foundation of our society. Stripping us of these physical representations of our roots—those that tell our story and reflect our values and traditions—is an attack on our identity. Even the houses reduced to rubble, the markets, shops, schools, and parks are not merely structures devoid of meaning; they are repositories of memories and shared experiences. These are places where people express themselves, share social ties, celebrate together, and go about their daily lives.Israel’s urbicide has been an attempt to redefine the significance of a place we have constructed over the course of thousands of years, and how we relate to it, by drastically transforming it beyond the point of recognition—severing that sense of familiarity and enforcing a sense of alienation aimed at breaking our will to remain.Environmental Cost of UrbicideUrbicide also comes with an astronomical environmental cost. While it will take some time before comprehensive assessments reveal the full extent of the environmental catastrophe inflicted on Lebanon and Gaza, a UN Habitat assessment focused on South Lebanon only (excluding the Beqaa) found almost 14,000,000 tonnes of debris15 generated from the destruction of buildings. The United Nations Environment Programme’s latest debris quantification in Gaza, revealed that the Israeli urbicide has left over 50,000,000 tonnes of debris16 in Gaza’s streets. This is ‘unprecedented’ devastation that could take more than 21 years to be fully cleared.Experts have warned that the debris resulting from the extensive bombings contains threatening substances that contaminate the air, soil, and water resources—ranging from dust and toxic gases to asbestos, heavy metals, and a variety of other hazardous chemicals. Not to mention, there are still 12,00017 decomposing martyrs’ bodies buried among the wreckage, along with thousands of unexploded ordnance.18Additionally, this environmental catastrophe will have far-reaching impacts that transcend Palestinian and Lebanese territories. The emissions from Israel’s war against Gaza and Lebanon jeopardize global climate mitigation efforts. A widely shared study published in January 2024 revealed that within the first 120 days alone, emissions from Israel’s war against Gaza ranged between 420,000 and 650,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, equivalent to the total annual emissions of 26 countries.19 The total amount of emissions released over the course of 15 months has yet to be determined, but the figures are expected to be alarmingly massive.ConclusionToday, reclaiming the places we have lost and rebuilding is an existential fight upon which our collective survival hinges. The transformation of the toxic wasteland created by Israel into vibrant places thriving with life once again is an indispensable act of resistance against erasure. Reinforcing our sense of belonging to the land, which Israel has systematically sought to eradicate, begins with restoring the critical infrastructures that would allow devastated cities, towns and villages to function once more, enabling displaced people to return home. This must be done carefully, retaining the place’s sense of identity, holding on to its historical memory, preserving its cultural significance, and repairing damaged heritage sites, all while simultaneously healing and regenerating the land from contamination.Mending our bleeding wounds, however, also requires coming to terms with the fact that the struggle for liberating our lands is still in its early stages. Wolfe, P. (2006) “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of genocide research 8.4, 2006: 387-409 ↩ Gershon, L. (2020). How Conservation Is Shaped by Settler Colonialism. Jstor Daily. Retrieved from: https://daily.jstor.org/how-conservation-is-shaped-by-settler-colonialism/ ↩ Vilar, P. (2024) Destruction of Gaza heritage sites aims to erase – and replace – Palestine’s history. The Conversation. Retrieved from: https://theconversation.com/destruction-of-gaza-heritage-sites-aims-to-erase-and-replace-palestines-history-240722 ↩ Coward, M. (2008). Urbicide: The Politics of Urban Destruction. Taylor & Francis. ↩ Salhani, J. (2024). Genocide, urbicide, domicide – how to talk about Israel’s war on Gaza. Al Jazeera. Retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/3/genocide-urbicide-domicide-how-to-talk-about-israels-war-on-gaza ↩ Buxbaum, J. (2024). How Israel is Erasing the Nakba Through Nature. The New Arab. Retrieved from: https://www.newarab.com/analysis/how-israel-erasing-nakba-through-nature ↩ Morris, B. (2002). Camp David and After: An Exchange. The New York Review. Retrieved from: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2002/06/13/camp-david-and-after-an-exchange-1-an-interview-wi/ ↩ Tondo, L. & Tantech, M. (2025). Fifteen months of Israeli bombardment leave conditions in Gaza ‘unimaginable’ The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/13/israel-gaza-war-15-months-unimaginable ↩ Visual Journalism Team. (2025). Gaza Strip in maps: How 15 months of war have drastically changed life in the territory. BBC. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-20415675 ↩ France 24. (2025). Trump floats plan to ‘just clean out’ Gaza and resettle Palestinians in Jordan and Egypt. France 24. Retrieved from: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250126-trump-floats-plan-to-just-clean-out-gaza ↩ National News Agency Lebanon. (2024). Israeli Enemy’s Military Operations Wreak Havoc on Souther Lebanon, Destroying Over 37 Towns and 40,000 Housing Units. National News Agency Lebanon. Retrieved from: https://www.nna-leb.gov.lb/en/justice-law/736177/israeli-enemy-s-military-operations-wreak-havoc-on ↩ Uddin, R. (2024). Israeli archaeologist ‘examining ancient site’ in Lebanon killed by Hezbollah. Middle East Eye. Retrieved from: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-archaeologist-ancient-site-lebanon-killed-hezbollah ↩ Leathem, M. H. (2024). Why archaeologists must speak up for Gaza. Al Jazeera. Retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/25/why-archaeologists-must-speak-up-for-gaza ↩ Saber, I. (2024). A ‘cultural genocide’: Which of Gaza’s heritage sites have been destroyed? Al Jazeera. Retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/14/a-cultural-genocide-which-of-gazas-heritage-sites-have-been-destroyed ↩ UN-Habitat. (2025). Building destruction and debris quantities assessment, Nabatieh South (revised). United Nations Human Settlements Programme. Retrieved from: https://unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/2025/01/unh-uob-usj_building_destruction_and_debris_quantities_assessment_nab-south_revised_22-01-2025.pdf ↩ United Nations Environment Programme (2024). Gaza Strip - Preliminary Debris Quantification: Damage Assessment Analysis: 1 December 2024. https://wedocs.unep.org/20.500.11822/46832 ↩ Gunter, J. (2025). ‘In every street there are dead’: Gaza rescuers reckon with scale of destruction. BBC. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8x00mgjxmo ↩ Tantech, M. & Burke, J. (2025). Bombs buried in Gaza rubble put at risk thousands returning to homes, say experts. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/25/bombs-buried-in-gaza-rubble-put-at-risk-thousands-returning-to-homes-say-experts ↩ Neimark, B., Bigger, P., Otu-Larbi, F., Larbi, R. (2024). A Multitemporal Snapshot of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Israel-Gaza Conflict. Retrieved from: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4684768 ↩ "
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Skims, Shapewear, and the Shape of Power: When a Brand Expands Into Occupied Territory",
"author" : "Louis Pisano",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/skims-shapewear-and-the-shape-of-power",
"date" : "2025-11-17 07:13:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Skims_Israel.jpg",
"excerpt" : "On the evening of November 11, Kris Jenner celebrated her 70th birthday inside the fortified sprawl of Jeff Bezos’s $175 million Beverly Hills compound, hidden behind hedges so tall they violate city regulations, a rule he bypasses with a monthly $1,000 fine that functions more like a subscription fee than a penalty. The theme was James Bond, black tie and martini glasses, a winking acknowledgment of Amazon’s new ownership of the 007 franchise. Guests surrendered their phones upon arrival, a formality as unremarkable as valet check-in. Whatever managed to slip beyond the gates came in stray fragments: a long-lens photograph of Oprah Winfrey stepping out of a black SUV, Mariah Carey caught mid-laugh on the curb, Kylie Jenner offering a middle finger through the window of a chauffeured car. The rest appeared hours later in the form of carefully curated photos released by an official photographer, images softened and perfected until they resembled an ad campaign more than documentation. Nothing inside was witnessed on anyone’s own terms.",
"content" : "On the evening of November 11, Kris Jenner celebrated her 70th birthday inside the fortified sprawl of Jeff Bezos’s $175 million Beverly Hills compound, hidden behind hedges so tall they violate city regulations, a rule he bypasses with a monthly $1,000 fine that functions more like a subscription fee than a penalty. The theme was James Bond, black tie and martini glasses, a winking acknowledgment of Amazon’s new ownership of the 007 franchise. Guests surrendered their phones upon arrival, a formality as unremarkable as valet check-in. Whatever managed to slip beyond the gates came in stray fragments: a long-lens photograph of Oprah Winfrey stepping out of a black SUV, Mariah Carey caught mid-laugh on the curb, Kylie Jenner offering a middle finger through the window of a chauffeured car. The rest appeared hours later in the form of carefully curated photos released by an official photographer, images softened and perfected until they resembled an ad campaign more than documentation. Nothing inside was witnessed on anyone’s own terms.The guest list felt less like a party roster and more like an index of contemporary American power. Tyler Perry arrived early, Snoop Dogg later in the evening, Paris Hilton shimmering in a silver column that clung like liquid metal. Hailey Bieber drifted past in a slinky black dress, while Prince Harry and Meghan Sussex appeared in images that were quietly scrubbed from the family grid a day later. Nine billionaires circulated among the luminaries, their combined wealth brushing toward $600 billion. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan joined Bill Gates at the poker table, while Bezos himself wandered through the party with Lauren Sánchez, doing the kind of effortless hosting that comes with having $245B in the bank.Jenner, dressed in red vintage Givenchy by Alexander McQueen, floated from conversation to conversation. She paused for a warm embrace with Perry, raised a glass with Hilton, and eventually made her way to the dance floor with Justin Bieber. At 70, she remains the family’s central command center, equal parts mother, manager, strategist, and brand steward. The celebration functioned as a kind of coronation, a reaffirmation that the Kardashian-Jenner empire is not stagnating but expanding, stretching itself into new sectors and new narratives with the same relentless ease that has defined its last decade.Just two weeks earlier, on a bright Monday in late October, a very different scene unfolded at the SKIMS flagship on the Sunset Strip. That morning, the boutique had been cleared to host Hagiborim, the Israeli nonprofit that supports children of fallen IDF soldiers and orphans of the October 7 attacks. Around a dozen girls wandered the store, laughing among themselves, perusing tank tops, and snapping selfies before assembling outside with those unmistakable beige SKIMS shopping bags. The images of the visit were sparse and easily missed unless one went searching; they appeared only on Hagiborim’s Instagram highlights. The event took place on October 28, less than a week before news began to circulate about SKIMS’s upcoming entry into the Israeli market.The launch itself unfolded with clinical precision. On November 10th in partnership with Irani Corp, SKIMS went live on Factory 54’s Israeli website, with in-store boutiques planned for December and ten to fifteen standalone stores projected to open across Israel by 2026. The company’s official language remained on brand, warm and relentlessly forward-looking. It spoke of “inclusivity,” of “community presence,” of broadening the global market. Nowhere did it acknowledge the war in Gaza, though the border sits just over an hour away and the headlines that week were filled with rising casualty counts and allegations of cease-fire violations, an entirely different reality unfolding parallel to the brand’s expansion.Hours after the SKIMS launch, Kardashian’s Instagram shifted into overdrive. She posted a carousel of herself in a gray bikini, captioned with a single emoji racking up millions of likes. The images came just two days after news of her fourth unsuccessful attempt at the California Bar had broken, a reminder that in the Kardashian ecosystem, social media momentum often outweighs any setback.Beneath the SKIMS machine which just raised $225M in funding is a quieter network of capital. Joshua Kushner, Jared’s younger brother, the polished, soft-spoken investor whose firm helped seed Instagram, owns a 10 percent stake and a board seat in SKIMS, a detail that surfaces only in required filings and the occasional business-page profile. The Kushner family’s ties to Israel run far deeper than the brand’s marketing conveys: long-standing real-estate ventures in Tel Aviv, and a family foundation that has funneled at least $342,000 to Friends of the IDF and another $58,500 to West Bank settlement groups and yeshivas in places like Beit El and Efrat. Jared Kushner’s diplomatic work on the Abraham Accords carved geopolitical corridors that SKIMS now moves through. The brand may position itself as apolitical, but the infrastructure of its Israel expansion is built on deeply political ground.Fashion media, however, showed little interest in any of this. A wide sweep through the archives of Business of Fashion, WWD, and Vogue Business yields nothing, not a single headline, not even a line buried in a retail digest. The launch through Factory 54, the long-term plan for as many as fifteen stores, the philanthropic event with Hagiborim, all of it passed in silence in the sector that usually treats Kardashian business moves as reliable traffic drivers.Instead, their coverage was devoted wholly to Kris Jenner’s birthday. Harper’s Bazaar published three separate pieces. W Magazine dubbed it “the Kardashians’ own Met Gala.” Vogue broke down the night with a dutifully detailed recap that leaned heavily on Harry and Meghan’s brief presence, clearly recognizing their value as SEO gold.The Kardashians operate with a level of intentionality that has outpaced many political campaigns. They understand the choreography of public-facing narratives better than any other family in American media. The Hagiborim visit, girls only, modest branding, no Kim in sight, served as a small preemptive gesture, a way to soften potential critique before the Israel launch rolled out. While the party dominated the feed, the expansion passed unnoticed and the charity event remained strictly confined to the margins, a calculated sequence, not chaos, the kind of PR mastery we’ve come to expect from Kris Jenner.The same instinct shapes their political signaling. On Inauguration Day 2025, as Donald Trump took the oath of office for a second term, Kim posted a silent Instagram Story of Melania Trump stepping out in a navy ensemble and wide-brimmed hat. She offered no caption, no endorsement, no framing. The image disappeared within 24 hours, but not before sparking a brief firestorm. It is the same familiar pattern, presence without explanation, the kind of ambiguity that allows the public to fill in the blanks while the family remains insulated.Beyond their insulated world, the conflict continues. Inside the bubble, the champagne is crisp, the Hulu cameras are rolling and the narrative is intact. What remains for the public is the split-screen: Kris Jenner blowing out seventy candles beneath a ceiling of crystals, surrounded by some of the wealthiest people alive; and Kim Kardashian posing in a studded bikini, eyes locked on the lens, hinting at the next product drop. Between the two lies a series of transactions, commercial, political, and moral, that the audience is never invited to examine.As for Kris Jenner’s birthday, it will be remembered. The launch will fade. The girls who posed with their new SKIMS pajamas will grow older; the war will either end or shift into some new phase. And the Kardashian-Jenner machine will keep moving, calculating every image, every post, every angle, ensuring the story that matters most is always the one they control."
}
,
{
"title" : "Unpublished, Erased, Unarchived: Why Arab-Led Publishing Matters More Than Ever",
"author" : "Céline Semaan",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/unpublished-erased-unarchived",
"date" : "2025-11-13 10:25:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Unpublished.jpg",
"excerpt" : "At a moment when news of Gaza, West Bank, South Lebanon, and Beirut are slowly disappearing from the headlines—and from public consciousness—Arab writers face a singular burden: We must write the stories that no one else will print. We live in a media landscape that refuses to see us as fully human. A recent analysis from Giving Compass suggests that traditional media skews Palestinian news: seven major U.S. news outlets found that Palestinian stories were 13.6% to 38.9% less likely to be individualized than Israeli ones. Meaning, Palestinians appear as abstractions—statistics, masses, “civilians”—not as people with names, losses, or lives. Meanwhile, reports from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) show that UK outlets had a fourfold increase in coverage only when Gaza was framed through the lens of “criticism of Israel,” not Palestinian experience itself.",
"content" : "At a moment when news of Gaza, West Bank, South Lebanon, and Beirut are slowly disappearing from the headlines—and from public consciousness—Arab writers face a singular burden: We must write the stories that no one else will print. We live in a media landscape that refuses to see us as fully human. A recent analysis from Giving Compass suggests that traditional media skews Palestinian news: seven major U.S. news outlets found that Palestinian stories were 13.6% to 38.9% less likely to be individualized than Israeli ones. Meaning, Palestinians appear as abstractions—statistics, masses, “civilians”—not as people with names, losses, or lives. Meanwhile, reports from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) show that UK outlets had a fourfold increase in coverage only when Gaza was framed through the lens of “criticism of Israel,” not Palestinian experience itself.Against this backdrop of erasure, the scarcity of Arab women’s voices in publishing is even more alarming. A bibliometric study spanning 1.7 million publications across the Middle East and North Africa shows that men publish 11% to 51% more than women. What’s more, women’s authorship is less persistent, and men reach senior authorship far faster. Arab women are not only under-published but also systematically written out of the global record.This is why Slow Factory has founded Books for Collective Liberation, an Arab-led, independent imprint committed to telling Arab stories the way they should be told: authentically, empathetically, and wholly. We publish work that would never survive the filters of legacy publishing: the political hesitation, the “market concerns,” the fear of touching Arab grief, joy, or its future. Independence is not an aesthetic choice; it is the only way to protect our stories from being softened, sanitized, or structurally erased.Our forthcoming title, On the Zero Line, created in partnership with Isolarii, is a testament to that mission. It stands on the knife’s edge where memory is threatened with extinction—a book that documents what official archives will not. It is a testimony that refuses to disappear.But books alone are not enough. Stories need a home that is alive, responsive, and politically unafraid. That is the work of Everything is Political (EIP), our independent media platform and growing archive of essays, investigations, and first-person journalism. In an era where Big Tech throttles dissenting voices and newsrooms avoid political risk, EIP protects the creative freedom of Arab writers and journalists. We publish what mainstream outlets won’t—because our lives, our histories, and our communities, dead or alive, should not depend on editorial courage elsewhere.Together, Books for Collective Liberation and Everything is Political form an ecosystem of resistance: literature and journalism that feed each other, strengthening each other, building memory as infrastructure—a new archive. We refuse the fragmentation imposed on us: that books are separate from news, that culture is separate from politics, that our narratives exist only within Western frameworks. This archive is not static; it is a living, breathing record of a people determined to write themselves into the future.When stories from Gaza, Beirut, and the broader Levant fail to make the news—or make it only as geopolitical abstractions—the result breeds distortion and public consent to eliminate us. It is a wound to historical truth. It erases whole worlds. We will not let that happen.Independent, Arab-led publishing is how we repair that wound. It is how we record what happened, in our own voice. It is how we ensure that no empire, no newsroom, and no algorithm gets to decide which of our stories survive.Tonight, we gather at Palestine House to celebrate the launch of On the Zero Line, a collection of stories, essays, and poems from Gaza, translated in English for the first time. This evening, we are centering the lived experiences of Palestinians from Gaza who have been displaced in London. I have the honor of interviewing journalist Yara Eid and Ahmed Alnaouq, project manager of the platform “We are not Just Numbers.” Here, we will discuss how mainstream literature and journalism have censored us—and how we can keep our stories alive in response."
}
,
{
"title" : "The British Museum Gala and the Deep Echoes of Colonialism",
"author" : "Ana Beatriz Reitz do Valle Gameiro",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/the-british-museum-gala-and-the-deep-echoes-of-colonialism",
"date" : "2025-11-11 11:59:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/the-younger-memnon-statue-british-museum%20copy.jpg",
"excerpt" : "When it comes to fashion, few things are as overblown, overanalyzed, and utterly irresistible as a gala. For instance: hear the name “Met Gala”, and any fashionista’s spine will tingle while every publicist in New York breaks into a cold sweat. While New York has been hosting the original event at the Metropolitan Museum since 1948 and Paris had its Louvre moment in 2024, London finally decided to answer with an event at the British Museum on 18 October this year.",
"content" : "When it comes to fashion, few things are as overblown, overanalyzed, and utterly irresistible as a gala. For instance: hear the name “Met Gala”, and any fashionista’s spine will tingle while every publicist in New York breaks into a cold sweat. While New York has been hosting the original event at the Metropolitan Museum since 1948 and Paris had its Louvre moment in 2024, London finally decided to answer with an event at the British Museum on 18 October this year.The invitation-only event drew high-profile guests such as Naomi Campbell, Mick Jagger, Edward Enninful, Janet Jackson, Alexa Chung, and James Norton. With a theme of ‘Pink Ball,’ the night drew inspiration from the vibrant colors of India and walked hand-in-hand with the museum’s ‘Ancient India: Living Traditions’ exhibition, adding a touch of colonial irony à la British tradition.Unlike its always-talked-about New York counterpart, or Paris’s star-studded affair last year that reunited figures like Doechii, Tyra Banks, Gigi Hadid, and Victoria Beckham, London’s event felt less memorable fashion-wise. With little buzz surrounding it - whether due to a less star-studded guest list, unremarkable fashion, or its clash with the Academy Museum Gala - it ultimately felt more like an ordinary night than a headline-making affair.But the event was not entirely irrelevant. In fact, it prompted reflections rarely discussed in mainstream media. Notably, because in spite of the museum’s sprawling collection of objects from other marginalized countries, the event ‘‘celebrated’’ Indian artifacts looted during colonial rule. Equally noteworthy is the institution’s partnership with BP - the British oil giant whose exports reach Israel, a state that, in the twenty-first century, stands as a symbol of colonialism and the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. And, of course, every penny raised went to the museum’s international initiatives, including an excavation project in Benin City, Nigeria, and other archaeological digs in Iraq.Although excavation is often portrayed as a means of preserving the past, archaeologists acknowledge that it is inherently destructive - albeit justifiable if it provides people with a deeper understanding of the human past. As Geoffrey Scarre discusses in Ethics of Digging, a chapter in Cultural Heritage Ethics: Between Theory and Practice, it matters who has the authority to decide what is removed from the ground, how it is treated, whether it should be retained or reburied, and who ultimately controls it. Something that feels especially relevant when discussing the objects of marginalized communities and the legacies of countries shaped by European colonialism, now just laid bare as trophies to embellish the gilded halls of Euro-American institutions.That the British Museum’s collections were built on the wealth of its nation imperialism is hardly news. Yet the institution, like so many others, from the Louvre to the Met, continues to thrive on those very foundations. As Robert J. C. Young observes in Postcolonial Remains, “the desire to pronounce postcolonial theory dead on both sides of the Atlantic suggests that its presence continues to disturb and provoke anxiety: the real problem lies in the fact that the postcolonial remains.”Although postcolonialism is often mistakenly associated with the period after a country gained independence from colonial rule, academics like Young, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Frantz Fanon acknowledge that our world is still a postcolonial one, with cultural, political, and economic issues reflecting the lasting effects of colonization. Its aftermath extends beyond labels like “Third World” or the lingering sense of superiority that still marks the Global North; it also fuels a persistent entitlement to our art, culture, and legacy.This entitlement can be seen in the halls of many museums worldwide. And though looting may not always be illegal - as in how these institutions acquire those objects - it is certainly unethical. For decades, scholars and activists have debated that these institutions should restitute the legacies taken from other lands, objects stolen through wars of aggression and exploitation. Still, these museums deliberately choose to hold them, artifacts that bear little cultural resonance for their current keepers, but profound meaning for the people from whom they were taken.But these debates are no longer confined to academic circles. Take Egypt, for instance. Its long-awaited Grand Museum finally opened its doors three decades after its initial proposal in 1992 and nearly twenty years since construction began in 2005. Now fully operational, breathing fresh life into Egypt’s storied past through showcasing Tutankhamun’s tomb among other relics of the country, it is demanding the return of its legacy. Egypt’s former and famously outspoken Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass, for instance, recently told the BBC: “Now I want two things, number one, museums to stop buying stolen artefacts, and number two, I need three objects to come back: the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum, the Zodiac from the Louvre, and the Bust of Nefertiti from Berlin.” Beyond the direct call-out, Dr. Hawass has initiated online petitions demanding the return of the artifacts, amassing hundreds of thousands of signatures. Nevertheless, the world’s great museums remain silent, and the precious Egyptian treasures are still very much on display.With African, Asian, and Latin American legacies still held captive within Euro-American institutions, the echoes of colonialism linger well into the 21st century, keeping the postcolonial order intact. Even fashion, an industry that loves to believe it exists beyond politics, proves such. Whether through events that claim to celebrate certain things but end up being meaningless, the current Eurocentrism that still dominates the industry, or how many labels still profit from the aesthetics of marginalized nations without acknowledgment, fashion, much like museums, reproduces the very hierarchies postcolonial theory seeks to expose.Ultimately, the British Museum’s latest event does not celebrate Indian culture or Nigerian history through its excavation in Benin City. Like so many Euro-American institutions, it reinforces imperial power - masquerading cultural theft as preservation.In fashion as in museums, spectacle too often conceals empire - and beauty, unexamined, can become complicity."
}
]
}
