Habib Siddiqui

  At this moment in history, we find ourselves in a society defined by relentless speed, overwhelming amounts of information, the proliferation of misinformation, and widening inequality. [1]   Fascist politics are increasingly legitimized, long-term commitments are devalued, and the far-right’s vision of society constantly shifts, maintaining control through chaos and confusion. In such an environment, memory becomes fragmented and diluted, stripped of its complexity. The gravity of loss and its emancipatory possibilities are divorced from both the past and present, with little effort made to examine how it shapes politics, democracy, and the future. Loss is now produced and legitimized through historical amnesia—a refusal to interrogate, critically engage, or unearth history as a resource for addressing current crises. Now, 23 years after 9/11, we must ask ourselves: what lessons have we truly learned from that tragic day? How did we, as a society, squander the political and moral op

  Fifty-two years ago, almost to the day, on   September 8, 1972 , I survived the first of many Israeli air and sea raids on my refugee camp in northern Lebanon. I was less than two hundred yards from the area across the river where a group of us young kids met every day, between 4 and 5 p.m., to play in the large field, swim in the river or in the Mediterranean Sea. At first, I heard what sounded like a humming plane. Before I could even turn my head to look up at the sky, I was startled by the booming sound of low-flying fighter jets passing overhead, dropping massive rockets onto the open field. The first bomb exploded in the northwest corner of the field, creating a massive fireball—a black column of smoke intertwined with a glowing red blaze. The shockwave threw me off my bike. Soot filled the air and fragments rained down like strafing bullets all around me. In less than 15 minutes, the once grassy green play area of approximately 20 acres was transformed into a lunar landscape,

  In the Gaza genocide, now expanded to the West Bank, the US and UK have not only provided the main weapons of physical annihilation, they are also collaborating with their junior partner Israel in the war of public disinformation and deception. By now, it has become obvious to most observers in the US and UK that the provision of advanced weapons to the apartheid state, including thousands of American 2000-pound bunker-buster bombs, precision-guided air-to-ground hellfire missiles, and assorted other instruments of mass destruction, is part of an effort to wipe out the Palestinian civilian population through death and eventual deportation. Britain’s military corporation BAE provides Israel with parts of the F-35 fighter jets along with “systems for naval drones, missile guidance and components in fighter jets used against Palestinians in Gaza” (Lee-Doktor 2024). Both governments are widely out of touch with their constituents. By May 2024, a Data for Progress poll indicated that 70%