With permission I’m reposting my friend Yussra’s substack article today. She is particularly skilled at finding diverse venues for sharing her well-informed views, as I saw back in April when she presented her poetry and essays at a Creative Mornings event in Kittery, Maine. Yussra publishes essays, videos, poetry, and excellent cartoons on her substack “With Struggle Comes Liberation.” Her unique perspectives as a Muslim woman and an Iraqi American therapist are valuable.
Aug 24, 2026
It can be overwhelming to think about how many world events unfold in a single day, and there’s so much, too much, that I’ve been wanting to talk about, so let’s take a step back. On August 15, I had the honor of performing another public poetry reading of my “Anthology for the Colonized,” this time at the Haley Art Gallery. You can read more about the event through their online post or on page 18 of a local Maine newspaper. Gallery owner Jacqueline Abramian was an incredibly generous host (huge shoutout to Karina Quintas for connecting us), and the art at her gallery mesmerized me (more on that below). My anthology this time featured old and new works of mine that meant a lot for me to get to share, but I especially cherished the political discussion that followed the reading.
The audience was filled with old friends, amazing activists, and caring locals who had varying degrees of awareness about Palestine. Some were Palestinian, some had been to Palestine, and only after quoting Miko Peled did I realize that we were in the company of a board member of Dar Alhurriya. Most of us stuck around for hours talking about oppression around the world and how to fight injustice effectively (since we can only figure out what we should do to help “by obsessing over the question,” as Shaykh Omar Suleiman once said). I could sense over the course of the conversation, and I pray I’m right, that a few people shifted their perspectives away from the mainstream liberal narrative and toward a deeper understanding of the Palestinian experience. We talked about overlooked topics like the legal right for the people of Palestine to resist the illegal Israeli occupation according to international law, as well as the imperative for American voters to stop falling for the “lesser evil” rhetoric and to start considering support for genocide an absolute dealbreaker.
Although it was one of the most meaningful days of my life, the conversation that felt so profound for so many of us also gutted us to the core. It was heartbreaking hearing at the event from one of our dear activist friends from Palestine that a few weeks ago, her nephew had been killed by Israelis after suffering a year in their torture camps. A witness who had been locked up with him said that the Israeli authorities had used dogs to rape him, and our friend told the audience through tears that an inspection of her nephew’s corpse revealed that not one spot of his precious skin had been left untouched by the Israelis’ sadistic abuse. She showed us a photo of her nephew from before his abduction, a handsome, promising young man in his early twenties. I will never forget the way she wailed as she spoke, and we all cried right with her, the room filling with a heaviness that the heart cannot encompass, while I simultaneously felt awed by her courage to share her sorrow with us when it was still this fresh. To this day, talking about the Iraq War can get me too emotional, but my own homeland’s story doesn’t compare to the unparalleled inferno actively facing Palestine, and my soul struggles to comprehend this level of cruelty, when the grief, already such an overwhelming beast, so greatly surpasses the typical human experience of bereavement, and with violations this unthinkable, I’m just left thinking that the dictionary needs new words to describe Israel’s depravity. May ar Rahman shower the young martyr and his family with His ultimate mercy, along with the countless Palestinians who are in their exact situation.
This is the second nephew of hers that Israel has murdered.
At a certain point during the event, I noticed that sitting in the back was a hijabi who was missing an arm. I didn’t get the chance to meet her before she left the gallery, but it’s humbling to wonder if she’s from Gaza and whether it was Zionism that claimed her limb. When I write about Palestine, never having seen it for myself, I’m typically thinking about an American audience and how to get them to understand what’s really been happening. I don’t imagine Palestinians witnessing my efforts to amplify their voices. Yet every once in a while, I’m followed online by someone in Palestine, or I meet someone whose relatives have lived through or died in the genocide, and I get this feeling of inadequacy.
Palestine, if you can hear me: you never chose me to represent you with these words of mine, and I’m so sorry that we’ve offered you little more than solidarity.
Speaking of solidarity, I’ve grown obsessed with the oil painting that was behind me during the reading, called “Solidarity” by Congolese Ugandan refugee Jozimar Matimano, in which a Black man standing in front of a wall of concrete and barbed wire is holding up an American flag, yet it’s clenched in his fist, so it’s more like he’s raising his fist in power rather than raising the flag, like he’s holding the flag accountable, crushing its fabric in his struggle, and it’s both his oppressor and his chance at liberation, or so I see it (and see if you can spot the flags of Palestine and Israel in the painting).
Solidarity was a big theme during our conversation. We talked about the history of solidarity between Palestine and Cuba, and how all of the different stories of injustice around the world might seem overwhelming, but they actually all stem from the same one evil, and just as our oppressors are united, we too must learn to recognize our struggles, our peoples, and our liberation as connected. What follows is my attempt to highlight a handful of stories I’ve been thinking about lately, but as a disclaimer, I’m a therapist, not a journalist, and my coverage of the populations, resources, and atrocities below by no means encapsulates all or even necessarily the most pressing pieces of information to be found; it’s just my best effort at bearing witness to oppression around the world. From the deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo-Kinshasa to India and Pakistan’s violent repression of Kashmir to the recent US admission that they killed civilians in Yemen to Israel’s continued occupation of Lebanon despite the sham of a withdrawal agreement signed last month, there are so many massive stories I didn’t get a chance to cover in this roundup, and even for the stories I do explore here, the brevity of my discussion measures the limits of my knowledge and time rather than the importance of their plights, so please feel free to share more in the comments. Unshockingly, pretty much all of the suffering I mention in this essay in some way traces back to the Zionist world order, but the Epstein class and all of these enemies of humanity can only continue their corruption of this beautiful Earth through our silent permission.
Let’s get loud.
Support Cuba: https://www.give2cuba.com
US sanctions have contributed to a rise in infant mortality in Cuba
(photo by Robert Wallis).
The United States has imposed sanctions on Cuba dating back to before the sixties, but recently, living conditions in Cuba have gotten far worse thanks to the policies of our latest criminal-in-chief. When you hear American media personalities say “free Cuba,” recognize it as a manipulation attempt betraying one of the US government’s most common imperialist strategies: justifying the Western empire’s self-serving and oppressive control of a foreign land by claiming they are “liberating” its people from their own “tyrannical” leaders. We saw the US use the same tactics in Venezuela after kidnapping the president and his wife at the start of 2026 (with the couple still in prison in New York City awaiting “trial” next year!), and the US certainly made use of this hypocritical rhetoric when invading Iraq in 2003, as if to say, “We’re not invading, we’re helping! We’re saving these uncivilized brown people from themselves.”
Somehow it’s the arrogance that boils my blood most of all.
It should come as no surprise that Venezuela’s new US-approved government recently reestablished diplomatic ties with Israel for the first time since 2009. Meanwhile, Columbia just recognized the Golan Heights as Israeli territory (occupied Syrian land that even the spineless international community acknowledges as stolen), and Argentina’s president was awarded the “Jewish Nobel Prize” in 2025 “for his unequivocal support of Israel during one of the most difficult times since the founding of the Jewish State,” and he has kissed the Western Wall in Jerusalem to join the ranks of the other sycophantic war criminals that rule over our corrupted world. So I have to ask: why exactly do South American politicians feel the need to lend their support to a few million land thieves thousands of miles across the ocean? Isn’t that odd, isn’t that proof that we are living in an age of empires, its vassals merely masquerading as independent nation states?
But turning back to the Caribbean, I recently came across an article arguing that the Trump administration should be investigated for genocide against Cuba. Author Nikos Mottas explores legal definitions and historical precedent, writing that “imperialism helps manufacture the wound and then points to the bleeding as evidence that the victim is diseased.” Reading these words, I felt like I was transported back to my childhood listening to the mainstream media openly lie to my neighbors about Iraq as bombs rained down on my loved ones. I’m also reminded of the complicit Western world’s overemphasis on debating whether the genocide in Gaza really counts as a genocide, back before Israel’s cartoonishly obvious evil plots were explicitly and repeatedly spelled out in front of the entire world.
I remember thinking back then, I don’t care if you call it a genocide or a pizza party. Are you okay with what you are seeing, the continual mass slaughter of children? And sure, I can appreciate that the precise classification of the nature of US imperialism and its impact on the Cuban population can have implications in terms of international jurisprudence, that not all injustices are exactly the same. But regardless of which terms officially apply in Cuba or anywhere else, oppression is oppression, and war crimes by any other name would smell as foul.
Support Sudan: https://sapa-usa.org
Sudanese families fled Al Fashir during massacres committed by the Emirati-funded
Rapid Support Forces starting in October 2025 (photo from Anadolu Agency).
In less than a month, Sudan has experienced over a hundred civilian deaths, and the attacks on the ground and by drone in highly populated areas have continued to result in mass displacement (we’re talking thousands of people) in the month of August 2026. At this point, over a third of all health facilities in Sudan are no longer operational as a result of the ongoing genocide. While some outlets might frame the fighting between the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary and the Sudanese Armed Forces as a civil war (again, we heard the same nonsense about Iraq), it would be naive to ignore the involvement of external powers. It’s no secret that the Zionist-aligned United Arab Emirates funds the RSF and launders gold from Sudan to sell its smuggled wares in the international market. I traveled to the Emirates a few times as a teenager to visit family who took refuge there after the Iraq War, and I’d never seen so much gold in my life. I didn’t know as much at the time, but even back then, the picture looked very wrong. The UAE’s persistent denials of any wrongdoing do nothing to address the ample evidence of their role in Sudan’s genocide.
A few weeks ago, I saw a video that really stopped me in my tracks, and I can’t believe the world has moved on from it. Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the current vice president and prime minister of the UAE and the absolute monarch of Dubai, was visiting London and walking alongside his entourage when a brave Sudanese man directly confronted him, yelling clearly, “UAE is killing my people in my country. Stop killing my people! Emiratis! You are killing my people. I’m Sudani, you are killing my people!”
In response, one of the “men” walking with Dubai’s ruler replied, “F*** you, f*** your people. Motherf***er, Black b****.”
The slurs from the monster continued, yet the Sudanese man, his phone recording in his hand, didn’t back down, his voice unshaken as he followed the royal party while replying, “You said Black? They’re killing my people in my country. Stop killing Sudanese!” He raised his voice as he repeated the accusations and named the killers for all of London to hear, calling out UAE president Mohamed bin Zayed.
If I had to guess, I’d assume that since this clip went viral in a Western context, it’s not unlikely that the impulsive and openly genocidal member of the royal crew has been fired, not because Emirati leaders disagree with his sentiment in the slightest, but because he embarrassed them while abroad and would have, in a just world, caused a diplomatic incident. This video is the latest example of Western society acknowledging the offence of racial slurs while supporting actual racial massacres. It’s like the Ben Gvir effect; how many times have European politicians condemned him for sounding racist, for saying the quiet part out loud and bragging about his war crimes, while these very same politicians have the blood of thousands of Palestinians on their hands? Words are only disgusting because of their implications, like implications of supremacist beliefs or that the speaker would justify violating human rights. Surely the actual physical violation of those rights is far more despicable than the language used to describe such atrocities, yet politics is all about image. A psychopath in the public eye is just someone who forgot to shed a fake tear when drawing his weapon and aiming at a child. At any rate, thanks to the courageous stand of that Sudanese man, the illusion of the powerful being civilized faltered for one uncomfortable moment that we shouldn’t let them forget.
Support Immigrants: https://lighthouseme.org/resources
“THIS IS BLOOD,” reads the pavement of Biddeford, Maine, following the ICE murder
of a young father from Columbia in July 2026 (photo by Robert F. Bukaty).
It was devastating to hear last month that ICE has murdered Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero (sometimes spelled Johan), a young Columbian father, in my family’s very own community. The ICE officer evidently killed him in his car because Joan was trying to get away from the armed terrorist when he was gunned down. Joan was working in the US legally at the time, not that his murder would have been justified if his freaking paperwork weren’t in order. It was later revealed that Joan wasn’t even the target of the ICE raid, and that the killer, a US Army veteran, had a long legal history of “terrifying and violent behavior” against women. Joan’s young widow Karolina delivered a heart-wrenching statement in the wake of her husband’s murder.
The beautiful young Columbian family destroyed by ICE in Maine.
Comments online from repulsive people justify Joan’s murder by “reasoning” that if he didn’t want to be killed via street execution, then he shouldn’t have tried fleeing when the violent lunatic approached him. It’s the same “logic” we hear about how Palestinians deserve their genocide for ever daring to fight back against the Israeli occupation, as though decades of Israeli war crimes could be negated by a single day of resistance. Somehow, the actual murderers face no scrutiny in their eyes, while the frightened victims are apparently to blame for how they handled the threats to their life.
The pathetic ugliness of hateful rage on full display as an ICE supporter
screams in the face of a safety marshal providing security for demonstrators
against ICE after Joan’s murder (photo by Robert F. Bukaty).
Inhumane US policies continue to disproportionately impact Black and Hispanic immigrants, who fill ICE dungeons after getting abducted from their homes, who live in fear while working longer hours for less pay with fewer legal protections under conditions that the poorest citizens would refuse to accept for themselves. Recently, the Trump administration revoked temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the United States. The Haitian community in the US has become a load-bearing pillar of society, and should they be forced to leave, they face the threat of violence in Haiti, and the American citizens who came to rely on them will suffer their absence. Although their struggle doesn’t compare to what the Haitian community is facing, families are now facing the loss of their caregivers for their elderly and disabled loved ones, as tens of thousands of Haitians under TPS have been working as home care aides and nursing assistants for tens of thousands of American families. Cruelty to one group results in the suffering of the collective.
A gentleman named Monsanto Maler, having escaped gang violence in Haiti,
falls to his knees outside of a Department of Homeland Security office in August 2026,
an ankle monitor suddenly locked onto his limb without reason (photo by Carol Guzy).
Support Palestine: https://www1.hhrd.org/Campaigns/Palestine-Relief
Palestinians run as Israelis bomb the Al-Muttaqin Mosque
in Gaza City in July 2026 (photo by Omar el Qattaa).
May God be with all of the oppressed people I describe in this essay, and all of the ones who aren’t even on my radar, yet are always on His, and may He guide us to do right by each other. It can be tough to know where to look, but I feel compelled to mention that the Israeli settler terrorists and Israeli occupation forces have now entered a third week of their siege on Qusra in the West Bank, preventing families from leaving and preventing food and medicine from entering the village. To zoom out, below is some data on recent Israeli war crimes across Palestine from a wide variety of outlets and organizations, but to really visualize some of the numbers on Israel’s genocide, I recommend checking out the infographics designed by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. Without further ado, let me paint a recent picture of PALESTINE IN NUMBERS…
94% of Palestinians in Gaza lack basic shelter necessities.
Israel attacked Palestinian journalists a documented 108 times in July 2026.
Palestinians from a single clan buried 112 loved ones after the recent recovery of their remains from the rubble in Gaza.
Israel killed 300 children in 300 days of “ceasefire” in Gaza.
Israeli settlers and forces committed 467 attacks against Palestinian communities in the West Bank and demolished at least 75 buildings in a single week in August 2026.
Israel established 592 illegal settlements and outposts in the West Bank.
Israel detained 630 Palestinians in the West Bank in July 2026.
Israel limits aid to the West Bank through over 900 physical obstacles.
Israel has killed more Palestinians since the October 2025 “ceasefire” (over 1,200) than the total Israeli death toll of October Seven (for which Israel is also responsible).
Israel violated the “ceasefire” 3,795 times from October 2025 to July 2026.
I’ll end this unwieldy essay as I began it, by talking about the Haley Art Gallery. The week after my reading, I went back to the gallery to learn about the Gaza Soup Kitchen from one of its amazing board members, Omama Y. Marzuq, and once again, the conversations following the presentation were truly special. When Israel murdered soup kitchen chef Mahmoud Almadhoun in 2024, his last word was “مستمرين” (mustamirreen, meaning “we will continue”). The soup kitchen feeds thousands of Gazans a day across many locations, and our friend told us it has even become a means for Palestinians to reclaim occupied land in northern Gaza. Some tikkiyya locations are threatened by Israel’s arbitrarily shifting “yellow line” as the Jewish supremacist invaders seek to occupy more and more of what’s left of Palestine, and the soup kitchen workers and their loved ones have been directly targeted and some have even been killed by Israel, but mustamirreen indeed, until Palestine, until everyone, is free insha’Allah.
Chef Mahmoud Almadhoun, who helped run the Gaza Soup Kitchen
until an Israeli drone strike martyred him in November 2024.
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