#wana

[koenji]

Persian miniatures by Italy-based Iranian painter Aynaz Najafi @nazpainting

[arcadebroke]

[kweru-too]

SamBucky week day 6 - Bucky Barnes Appreciation Day

“Let’s match with papa”

West Asian Bucky and his babycat, Alpine

[lgbtawarenessproject]

West Asian and North African Lesbian and Queer Women's Pride Day

When I was initially doing research to plan my posts for this month I stumbled on WANA Lesbian and Queer Women's Pride Day. However, upon trying to do further research on it today, I have come to the realization that it only seemed to happen twice. Once in 2021 and again in 2022.

So instead here's a small history on it!

WANA LQWPD is honor of Sarah Hegazy (also spelled Hegazi or Higazy). Hegazy was an Egyptian activist, writer, tech professional, daughter and sister. In 2017 she was photographed at the concert of a gay musician waving a rainbow pride flag. As a result, Hegazy was detained and tortured for three months. The mental effects of this was tremendous. She suffered from PTSD, depression, anxiety, hallucinations and tremors among other things. Upon release Hegazy was granted Asylum in Canada. Shortly after arriving in Canada Hegazy's mother, who she cared very much for, passed from cancer in Egypt, but Hegazy was unable to return. Whilst in Canada, Hegazy remained a political and social activist. (You can read my full essay on Hegazy here)

During this time, Hegazy attempted suicide twice. Unfortunately, in June of 2020, she attempted a third time and succeeded.

This day was created in remembrance of Hegazy and as a way to highlight the struggles of lesbian, queer, and transgender women in the Middle East (later changed to West Asian) and North African regions.

On this day, it is asked that we remember and honor the lives of all of the women who fought for rights in the MENA and WANA regions.

Please take the time to look through the following sources and learn more about the who have, and who continue to fight.

In Memoriam: 8 Women Organizers Who Shaped the MENA Region - The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy

As International Women’s Month wraps up, we remember eight women organizers from the region who fought for a better region and in whose stor

In the Middle East, women journalists and activists have been driving crucial change

Through the years, the work of women journalists in the Middle East has gone far beyond reporting news and has become a vital force for trut

Five Women Human Rights Activists who are Changing the Middle East

By Tasnim Nazeer Despite setbacks in the wake of the “Arab Spring”, the region’s female activists gained strength following the …

If you would like to read the joint statements from the first and second years of WANA LQWPD you can find them here:

MENA_LQWPD | ANKH association | France

A year later Hegazy’s memory lives on as a group of lesbian and queer feminists in Egypt and Tunisia launch their first MENA Lesbian and Que

The second anniversary Sarah Hegazy | ANKH

Joint statement on the second anniversary of the death of the lesbian and queer activist Sarah Hegazy/ WANA Lesbian and Queer Woman's Pride

[libracorpvs]

one of the more subtle forms of racism (but probably the form i encounter most regularly) is the mythologising of arabs. case in point: you lot love to post all those photos of iraqi women circa 1960-80 dressed in western clothes, mourning the loss of their precious freedoms without a single critical thought about how your countries create and depend on sociopolitical strife for their resources. but, more importantly to the point i'm making, there's also no regard for the fact that those women are still alive. there's a notion that i'm somehow the exception to the rule when it comes it arabs/muslims - this is not true. a whole generation of a whole country grew up with the same ideals that my parents hold. e.g. all the women i know who are of my parents generation are educated to at least undergraduate level and had careers, i can count on one hand how many of them wear a hijab. we, their children, were brought up with the same ideals and values - my female cousins are architects, engineers, poets, doctors, etc. there's a western mythology about us that simply doesn't match up with reality, and rather than consider the nuances of the situation and think about how the mythology is, indeed a myth, it's easier to dismiss us as exceptions to the rule

[venicepearl]

In July 1948, during the 1948 Palestine war, the Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramle were captured by the Israel Defense Forces and their residents (totalling 50,000–70,000 people) were violently expelled. The expulsions occurred as part of the broader 1948 Palestinian expulsions and the Nakba. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in multiple mass killings, including the Lydda massacre, and in what is sometimes known as the Lydda death march. The two Arab towns, lying outside the area designated for a Jewish state in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, and inside the area set aside for an Arab state in Palestine, were subsequently incorporated into the new State of Israel and repopulated with Jewish immigrants. After their conquest the towns were given Hebrew names of Lod and Ramla.

The exodus, constituting the biggest expulsion of the war, took place at the end of a truce period, when fighting resumed, prompting Israel to try to improve its control over the Jerusalem road and its coastal route which were under pressure from the Jordanian Arab Legion along with Egyptian and Palestinian forces. From the Israeli perspective, the conquest of the towns, designed, according to Benny Morris, "to induce civilian panic and flight", averted an Arab threat to Tel Aviv, thwarted an Arab Legion advance by clogging the roads with refugees—the Yiftah Brigade was ordered to strip them of "every watch, piece of jewelry, or money, or valuables"—to force the Arab Legion to assume an additional logistical burden with the arrival of masses of indigent refugees that would undermine its military capacities, and helped demoralise nearby Arab cities.

Once the Israelis were in control of the towns, an expulsion order signed by Yitzhak Rabin was issued to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stating, "1. The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age….". Ramle's residents were bussed out, while the people of Lydda were forced to walk miles during a summer heat wave to the Arab front lines, where the Arab Legion tried to provide shelter and supplies. A number of the refugees died during the exodus from exhaustion and dehydration, with estimates ranging from a handful to a figure of 500.

[skizz-man]

i always . forget how like . freaky spongebob boys gets until i click on a video and am immediately met with The Accusations™

thanks meg henry and gus please never change it makes me laugh. i love the spongebob boys formula

[sacredwhores]

Kaizo Hayashi - The Trap (1996)