saffo talks about politics and queer stuff

greece: a jewish history, part 2

2012-01-28T11:08:00.000-08:00

ok so i stayed up late last night after writing my last post and finally finished reading the book. once i finished the chapter on auschwitz i breathed a sigh of relief... it's not that i don't want to know about the holocaust. it's an important reality of history for us to face. but it was just so emotionally difficult to get through. i wanted to clarify on what i meant about that in the last post... i have read many horrible things, but this book... hits close to home, i guess. for instance, reading about greek christians in athens who helped jewish people escape, and knowing that that was my family. i have, for the longest time, avoided studying the history of the balkans and the eastern mediterranean--- out of fear of being cliché, maybe? anyway, feeling myself personally implicated in this story in a complicated way that i am not used to... this is an interesting challenge. but reading about the holocaust was just so emotionally draining.

of course, the next chapter, i should have realized, was no less depressing. while the majority of the greek jewish community was eradicated in the holocaust-- greece apparently had a higher rate of devastation of its jewish community than any other country in europe-- greek jews have received little attention in the history of the holocaust precisely because they are sephardic. (although not all of them are.) the book talks about this, and the memories of sephardic and ashkenazi holocaust survivors, and the role of greek jews in the eichmann trial in israel. but after the holocaust, as jews reterned from the camps, there was considerable tension between those who had survived the camps and those who had survived in hiding in greece. jews who had survived in greece did not want to believe the stories of those who returned from auschwitz. they were treated like shit, and there were brutal accusations of collaboration thrown around.

this was further exacerbated by the greek civil war. many greek jews who had survived had survived because of help from the leftist resistance. the right wing royalists (who were supported by the western bloc) now saw many greek jews as "disloyal"-- a combination of anti-semitism and anti-communism. furthermore, many who returned from the camps returned to find that they could not get their property back-- their houses had been taken by greek christians who refused to return them. they became, as fleming describes it "refugees in their own cities." this was further exacerbated by the fact that for the zionists, greece was an important route for jewish migration to palestine from northern europe. zionists were, in general, more concerned with northern (ashkenazi) jewish migration to palestine than the situation of greek jews in greece.

the last straw, though, apparently, was the draft in the late 1940s. greek jews along with all adult males in greece were conscripted into the army to fight the communists-- in many cases the same communists who had been instrumental to the survival of greek jews during the holocaust. (i have never found a sufficient queer critique of the gender politics of military conscription-- an issue that hits especially close to home for me. i hope someone uncovers these queer narratives and does justice to that queer story as well.) there was a deal made, however, between the right-wing greek royalist government and the zionists: greek jews could escape conscription if they agreed to revoke their greek citizenship and move to israel. so many did. in israel they found themselves marginalized because they were sephardic/ greek.

the last two chapters are incredibly fascinating but also leave much to be desired. fleming switches tone in a way that seems uneven as she describes the cultural representation of greek jews in israel with a very different methodology from the way she described greek jewish experience in earlier chapters. nonetheless, her study of cultural representation in israeli society is very interesting. she looks at films and music in israel and their representations of greek jews. first auschwitz and then israel were the first times when greek jews were really made greek. now, greek jews occupied an in-between space between ashkenazi and mizrahi jews, according to fleming. her treatment of racism in israeli society leaves much to be desired, however. she speaks of the "conflict" between ashkenazi and mizrahi jews, and makes only token reference to genocide of palestinians. there are times when her language irks me. with that said, however, there is only so much one can do in one chapter, and i think this chapter at least helps to open up some interesting questions. at one point she remarks that greek jews in israel became simulataneously orientalized AND hellenized-- occupying this in-between space between "east" and "west." (something i have heard say so many times about so many people and places in the eastern mediterranean... sometimes i want to make a list of everwhere and everyone who has been labeled "in between east and west" and ask what the hell does that really mean.)

for instance, she points out that there was one greek jew who testified to the destruction of the greek jewish community during the eichmann trial. on the one hand, there is frustration among romaniotes that the one representative of all greek jews during the trial is sephardic-- again, assimilating romaniotes into a sephardic narrative. she also makes the point that this representative was also the only non-ashkenazi jew to testify during the trials. she sitatuates this against a backdrop of "conflict" between ashkenazim and mizrahim. (her word.) that some saw the intervention of a non-ashkenazi holocaust victim could build a bridge between oppressed mizrahim who had not experience the holocaust and the ashkenazi ruling class who had. i think, overall, fleming does not give enough voice to the oppression of either mizrahim or palestinians in this account, which is unfortunate.

one thing that struck me, which she delves into a lot, is the phenomena of mizrahi actors and singers performing greekness-- adopting greek names, singing in greek, or even playing greek characters in films. she dedicates a significant amount of attention to the israeli film salamonico about a greek jew in israel named salamonico. she calls the film a "far better forerunner" to my big fat greek wedding. (lol.) he is a "pastiche of sephardic and romaniote elements." the character is constructed by an ashkenazi israeli writer who pays little attention to the nuanced experiences of greek jews-- particularly the cultural and class differences between salonikan-sepahrdic greek jews and romaniote greek jews. in particular, however, what struck me is that the actor who played salamonico was actually a mizrahi jew from morocco: "the actor who plays the role of salamonico– reuven bar-yotam– is moroccan, and built his career largely on a comedy routine in which he played a good-hearted greek." when speaking about mizrahi singers who perform greekness in this way, she says that "this has spawned the peculiar israeli phenomenon of the fake greek singer."

this makes me wonder many things... for instance, i would love to hear what fleming has to say about comparing this with similar phenomena in other locales. there have been, for instance, especially since 9/11 in the us, arab folks in the US opening "greek" restaurants. there is something to be said here about the in-between space of the simultaneously hellenized and orientalized signifier of "the greek," which i am not totally getting...

overall, the book is amazing. i definitely recommend it to anyone interested in greek, jewish, or (eastern) mediterrianian histories, as well as histories of nationalism, the fall of the ottoman empire, and the rise of the nation-state. while at times, especially in the last chapter, i wish it would do a better job of doing justice to the struggles of both palestinians and mizrahi jews in israel, i think this book has an incredible amount to offer to histories of the mediterranean, and struggles to decolonize. this book will definitely piss off zionists and greek nationalists alike-- and that is something that i love about it. i learned a great deal about greek history, jewish history, and the incredibly complicated ways in which identities are constructed. read this book.

greece: a jewish history

2012-01-27T18:27:00.000-08:00

so i've been reading greece: a jewish history by k. fleming for the past several weeks. i was hoping to have it finished before the semester started, but i didn't make it that far. i definitely recommend this book for anyone who is interested in understanding the history of the creation of the greek state, jewish history— particuarly sephardic history—, the fall of the ottoman empire, the holocaust (from a non-ashkenazi-centric perspective), zionism, the nation state, and this complicated mess that is identity. the book starts off by introducing us to a disaporic community of romaniotes in early 20th century new york. romaniotes are an ancient group of greek jews who have lived in the land that is now called greece for millennia. according to the book, they speak the same greek as greek christians and were historically very much assimilated into greek society. a common theme throughout the book is the complicated relationship between romaniotes in greece and the sephardic jews who began moving into what, at the time, was the ottoman empire (and today is the greek state) in 1492. (yes, 1492.) often times— in diaspora in the us, in concentration camps, and in relocation to occupied palestine— the lines between these two groups would become blurred into the category "greek jew."

the book really brings home the conflicted and contradictory relationships between romaniotes, sephardim, greek orthodox christians, muslims, and turks— and offers a view into some of the contradictory ways in which identities are created, destroyed, and re-written by acts of state. for instance, she argues that the population transfers between greece and turkey in the 1920s were what sealed the deal in terms of defining greekness as equated with greek orthodox christianity— since most of the "greeks" who were sent from turkey to greece, she argues, were, for all intents and purposes, culturally turkish. (they spoke turkish; they had turkish cultural practices; they just happened to belong to the greek orthodox church.) at times i wish the book would delve a little deeper into class difference as well, as that is something that is present but sometimes not brought into dialogue with the other conflicts which the book discusses. (for instance, the book details several attacks against greek jews that happened starting in the 19th century, some of which remain unclear how much of the attack was about the victims being jewish and how much was about them being bourgeois.)

the book details the conflicts that rose as the newly created greek state, which was limited to what is now southern greece, sought to annex more lands that it saw as historically greek. both greece and bulgaria had their eyes set on salonika— the biggest jewish city in europe, in the still-to-this-day contested region known as macedonia. sephardic jews there were particularly weary of what would happen if their city were to fall into greek hands— and their apprehensions would later prove to be right. as a result, salonikan jews allied themselves with the ottoman empire. towards the end of the 19th century, salonikan jews' alignment with the ottoman empire contributed to anti-semitism in greece. jewish communities that were more strongly romaniote in greece were pitted against sephardic salonika. the book claims that the resulting greco-turkish war in the 1890s was the first time when jews fought against and killed other jews in a war. (i dont know if that's really the first time, but it is a striking fact.)

one event that particularly stands out to me is that vision plan that salonikan jews had— dreading both the possibility of greek or bulgarian annexation— was the creation of an independent city-state of salonika. apparently this plan was supported by both muslims and greek christians in the city as well. but it collapsed in part because salonikan jews could not get the support of international jewish communities— because those communities were so strongly zionist, and they saw the creation of an independent jewish safe-haven outside of palestine as a threat to the zionist vision of colonizing palestine. without the support of the international jewish community, and then backlash from both greek and bulgarian nationalists, and the eventual straining of relations with the increasingly turkish naitonlists ottoman government, salonikan jews would not find the support they needed to defend themselves against an increasingly antagonistic greek expansionist state. salonika would come under greek occupation— an occupation that would prove in many ways disastrous for the jewish population. hence, greek nationalists, bulgarian nationalists, zionists (jewish nationalists) and eventually turkish nationalists as well all, in effect, conspired to destroy the jewish community in salonika. fleming makes the point about how zionism came to be dependent on jewish suffering outside of palestine. (it's a shame she misses the fact that this was, in fact, exactly part of the vision that herzl had for zionism.)

i have not yet gotten to the part about greek jewish flight to the state of israel. this is the part i am the most interested in reading, as i hope to gain a deeper understanding of the multi-tiered layers of israeli apartheid, and the place of greek, sephardic, and ladino language and culture in apartheid israel— and their complicity in apartheid and the reasons why many were forced into this situation. my understanding is that greek jews occupied a place somewhere between mizrahi and ashkenazi jews in israel. i know that greek jews, by and large, considered greece to be their home and did not feel at home in israel— in fact there has since been a mass migration of greek jews back to greece. it would be great to see moments of solidarity with palestinians— although i won't hold my breath.

i am in the middle of reading the chapters on the holocaust. it is strange for me: i have read so many horrible histories of horrible things happening to people. (i was a history major and i studied the history of colonialism. i should be used to reading about genocide by now.) but, for some reason, i have had to put the book down several times now because of the emotional reaction i have been having. i have literally burst into tears reading about the destruction of the jewish community in athens. i have also cried tears of joy reading about islands in which jews and christians banded together to protect the jewish populations of the islands. several times i have not wanted to believe that these things happened. "NO!" i find myself wanting to scream, "I DONT WANT THAT TO BE HOW IT HAPPENED!" sometimes searching for a silver lining in all of it feels like a search for a needle in a haystack. i want there to be stories of respect and solidarity between all the different people of the (former) ottoman empire. and when there are silver linings— such as stories of christian-jewish solidarity against the holocaust— it is doubly tragic that it takes something as horrible as the holocaust for these stories to reach the pages of printed history.

i don't want to go into the gruesome details of the holocaust‚— not that it's not important, but because i might just burst into tears right now trying to recount some of these stories—... the book definitely captures some gutwrenching stories, for sure. but rather i want to just point out a few things that stuck out to me. for one, there was the marginalization of greek-jewish sephardim in the camps. the vast majority of jewish holocaust victims were ashkenazi. (although let's not forget there were also non-jewish holocaust victims.) there is a very long and nuanced and difficult argument to be made about the problems of holocaust historiography, which i will not get into. but suffice it to say that an account of jewish non-ashkenazi holocaust victims was.... well... "refreshing" is not the right word, since the story is absolutely tragic. but it's an important intervention into the written history. one thing that was fascinating is that since, by the time of jewish deportation from greece, many greek jews spoke both ladino and greek (ladino, also known as judeo-spanish, is a sephardic language closely related to spanish), greek and spanish were sort of lumped together as "mediterranean." in the camps. the camps were, according to fleming, one of the first times when greek jews really got to be greek. they were known simply as "the greeks." she recounts a moment when a sephardic greek jew from salonika and a (presumably non-jewish) spanish political prisoner met in auschwitz and bonded over both speaking spanish.

another thing that struck me-- many of the sephardim in greece had ties with many other places. before incorporation into the greek state, this proved advantageous, as many were bouregois cosmopolitan folks, whereas romaniotes tended to be poorer. many romaniotes assimilated into sephardic culture as a result— and the sephardic community in salonika was a strong hegemonic force into which other jewish cultures were assimilated. following incorporation into the greek state, this reversed— as those who were more tied to the region and had connections with greek christians had the upper hand. many sephardim, however, had spanish or italian citizenship. in fact, during the occupation of greece, while part of greece was controlled by italy, the italian government actually tried to help greek jews with italian citizenship escape. (they also tried to help greek jews with spanish citizenship, but the fascist spanish government was not interested.) this was a big shock for me: mussolini's italy actually tried to help greek jews escape the nazis! (really?!)

there are so many more stories in this book. and there are so many more that remain untold. the incredibly complex interweaving of greek, jewish, spanish, mediterranean, ottoman, turkish, muslim, orthodox christian, italian, albanian, bulgarian histories and identities... the contingent nature of identity itself. the crime of the nation-state and nationalism. zionism's complicit role in the destruction of jewish communities outside of palestine. the complicated and tragic reasons why many greek jews chose zionism. and, of course, the unfathomable horrors of the holocaust. i feel like i could write and talk and read and learn more about this forever. but i will stop for now. i will just say, if you have a chance... READ this book.

reading list

2012-01-22T18:10:00.000-08:00

you may have noticed i added two new things at the top: "links" and "reading list." i hope to work on building these in the coming weeks if and when i find the time...

"links" is pretty self-explanatory.

as for "reading list." several friends of mine have for a while been asking me to write down recommendations for stuff they should read. i'm hoping to compile an annotated bibliography of books and other references worth checking out. i'm not sure yet exactly how i'll organize it. but keep posted. more to come in the future!

looking back

2012-01-19T23:53:00.000-08:00

you know, looking back on all my past blog entries... i can't help but feel embarrassed by some of the older ones... things i said that i'm not quite feeling anymore, reading different meanings into text that might not be the ones i originally intended, seeing the stories that and the struggles i may have unintentionally left out...

but i think that embarrassment is also a sign of growth. i realize that this blog has, in many ways, chronicled a great deal of the growth i have gone through in the past several years. i started it up a few short weeks or months before i came out as trans. (yeah, that's right, i wasn't trans when i first started this blog.)

i've started getting a lot more readers since my may post last year "a parthenon in denver," which has been, by FAR, my most popular blog post ever. that seems to have been the moment when this blog entered a new phase.

regretfully, im not going to have as much time to dedicate to writing as i did before i started school. but i definitely plan to keep posting as much as i can. maybe i will find the time and the energy to write a post as elaborate and researched as the "parthenon in denver" post or the "srebrenica" post. (which you should check out if you haven't already!)

i would love to hear thoughts from readers out there. feel free to drop a line... leave a comment on this post, let me know what you think of the blog. leave a comment on one of my posts. wherever. say whatever's on your mind. i write what i write for my readers. let me know, how long have you been reading this blog? did you just stop by? have you been a loyal reader for years? what are your favorite posts? what are things you'd like to see more of? what annoys you? what do you think could be improved? do you like the layout? would you like to see it changed? why do you read what i write? be honest. i can take it. =P

maybe i haven't mentioned it before, but i really do appreciate it when people leave comments on my blogposts. having those comments as a marker showing that people took the time to read and leave their thoughts, shows that people appreciated reading what i have to say. the more comments i get, the more motivated i feel to keep writing. so yeah, i definitely appreciate everyone who's taken the time to leave their thoughts. i've gotten some really great ones, and i still look back years later and appreciate when people took the time and energy to share their thoughts.

...

what i'm trying to say is, it's been a long journey. i want to say thank you to all my readers out there. to those who have been reading for a while, thanks so much! to those who have just stopped by, welcome!

much love,
~saffo

what AM i?

2012-01-15T21:03:00.000-08:00

my mother tells me that she thinks about egypt every day.
i tell her so do i.
she asks me... which egypt? egypt today, or egypt in 1956?
i tell her... both.
i ask her... "what AM i?"
she tells me i'm an american.
my heart sinks.

some trannyrage for ya

2012-01-07T16:02:00.001-08:00

i get really sick of biting my tongue around parents. so i just want to put this out here in general. if you have children or plan to have children and consider yourself to be my friend and/or an ally to LGBT people, please read this and seriously consider the position of power that you occupy/ will occupy.

dear straight/cisgender 'allies' who have or plan to have kids- did you/will you just assume, based on your childs genitalia, what their gender is? did/will you assume that this child is a girl or this child is a boy? why? if you have a child with male genitalia, are you planning to have them circumcised? are you aware that this is a form of sexual mutilation of your child that they CANNOT consent to and is completely unncessary, and can cause serious complications?

if you are planning to have children, please educate yourself beforehand about intersex people and their experiences. many people are born with bodies and genitals that do not match the medical-industrial complex's definition of 'male' or 'female'. DO NOT LET THE DOCTOR SURGICALLY MUTILATE THIS BABY.

please, if you have or plan to have children, make a commitment to yourself to educate yourself about trans and intersex issues. please do not assume the gender of your child based on their genitals. please make a commitment to learn more about gender-inclusive parenting. please be aware that *most* people in my community bear scars from our relationships with our families, especially our parents. many times these scars are from wounds that were not inflicted intentionally, but out of ignorance. then again, most oppression happens out of ignorance. if you consider yourself an ally, then please take it upon yourself, act WITHIN YOUR OWN FAMILY, to be a part of the solution, not the problem, for queer, trans, and intersex people.

Home

2012-01-07T14:53:00.000-08:00

So it's my first post of the new year. A few years ago a friend of mine commented that she enjoyed the fact that I have a mix of personal stories as well as more large-scale political things on my blog. I haven't really posted anything personal on here in a while, so I figure I might as well...

Part of what's weird about being back in school is the notion of "break"— that there's a certain segmented amount of time where I go back to being just myself and not a "student." Well, I'm on winter "break" right now. I spent part of it at my parents house (not home, my parents house) for xmas. After that I hopped on a train and rode all the way to Denver.

Denver felt more like home than anywhere else I've been. It's kind of amazing. All that I've talked about "home"ness and how hard it is to find a place to call "home." What does "home" mean? What does it mean for a queer, trans, anarchist girl from a Greek-Egyptian family, who grew up in New Jersey, to call a place "home"?

Well, I realized something as soon as I got off the train and started walking down the 16th street mall in the cold of winter at 7 on a friday morning and I looked up at the mountains and the buildings... and said "I'm home."

I only lived in Denver for about a year and a half. And yet, something really changed in me during that time. Before I moved to Denver, I had been traveling for a year. I had started my travels in Santa Cruz, California, and ended up traveling to and from the bay area, the central valley, and then I briefly visited Denver, then Chicago, then Tennessee, then back to Denver, then Northern California, then Oregon... at some point I went to Portland, before going back to Northern California, the Bay, Northern Cali again, then back to Oregon... then back to New Jersey... then back to Denver, to stay.

Somehow, in Denver, I feel like I found a place that I could call "home."

Visiting this time was somewhat bittersweet. Well, part of the bitter was the fact that I caught the flu and was bedridden for a significant portion of my visit. Everything had changed and yet everything was also still the same.

I felt a bittersweetness on this trip because I felt so at home in Denver, and yet I knew my life was calling me to New York. Things had changed. *I* had changed. I feel like, in many ways, I have been burnt by the very things I have been searching for. So much had changed in *me*. I have been assimilated back into the academic-industrial complex. I have found something that I had been searching for, but maybe lost something else in the process.

But I also felt the sweetness of knowing that wherever I went, whatever I did, Denver would still remain home. I have to make sure to keep visiting periodically, I realized, or else I might lose this connection.

Part of me feels the need to adopt another place, because I won't be able to call the place where my family is from "home." I want so badly to travel to Greece someday. But I am also afraid. I am trans and this makes everything so fucking complicated. Queer and trans people are constantly displaced in some of the most complicated ways. I don't know what it all means.

I hope to move back to Denver someday. I feel like there were so many stories left unfinished there. But it also felt like it was time to move on— like I was done and it was obvious that I needed to go somewhere else to find what I was looking for. But I hope to go back someday.

Of course, when you leave a place you keep a nostalgic image in your mind of what that place was like— and that nostalgic image is sometimes brutally confronted by a reality when you return. There was nothing brutal about my return— but I was reminded that the reality of a world is always vastly more complex than the bits and pieces you cary with you.

this just made my day...

2011-11-14T17:22:00.001-08:00

had a shitty day today. but this made up for everything.

more info here.

One-State, Two-State, Red State, Blue State: It's not up to you (unless you're Palestinian)

2011-11-09T10:52:00.000-08:00

Privilege is something that is deeply ingrained in people, to the point that it often becomes impossible for those who have it to see it. What might be patently obvious to the oppressed is often impossible for the privileged to see. One form of privilege that Americans have, especially formally educated ones, is the sense of entitlement to make decisions about what's best for others. Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than when it comes to Palestine.

Personally, I have my opinions about the one-state and the two-state "solutions" (I prefer the no-state solution, but if there's going to be a state, I don't think, at this point, a two-state solution is viable.) But that's not the point. The point is it's NOT UP TO ME TO DECIDE. In fact, it's not up to ANYONE to decide besides Palestinians. Whether there's going to be one state, two states, no state, or thirty-seven states, this is not up to any of us who are not Palestinian.

If we are going to act in solidarity with Palestinian liberation, we need to hold ourselves accountable to Palestinians.

What I'm saying is, stop pretending to be an expert. You should educate yourself, you should think critically, you should act... but we all need to hold ourselves accountable. For those of us who are not Palestinian— IT IS NOT UP TO US.

One thing we DO need to do, however, is listen, and respond. The BDS movement is a movement that has been endorsed by an enormous base of Palestinian organizations, representing many different segments of Palestinian society. It tells us pretty clearly that the most important thing outsiders can do to support the Palestinian struggle is support the BDS movement. This is secondary only to the work that Palestinians are doing by themselves, on the ground.

If you are serious about liberation, you need to be serious about accountability and solidarity.

Learn more about the BDS movement here:
www.bdsmovement.net

10 Years

2011-10-03T02:26:00.000-07:00

this friday, the united states will have been at war in afghanistan for a decade.

the united states has been at war my entire adult life.

the united states has always been at war.

from 1492 to the present, the united states has always been at war.

do you remember where you were when it happened? october 7th, 2001. march 20th, 2003.

i remember shock and awe on cnn. bombs dropping on baghdad. the people i knew and cared about watched on in horror. and we knew we were not innocent.

those are people's homes! you're dropping bombs on people's homes! don't you know people live there! how could you do this to another human being? what the fuck is wrong with you!

protest after protest. i learned how to scream in 2003. tears pouring down my cheeks i wouldn't be able to speak normally for days after a protest.

february 15th, 2003. the largest mass mobilization across the world, ever. 30 million people took to the streets that day. but even that couldn't stop the war machine.

and now, it's 2011. the world looks back on what happened 10 years ago. millions have died. millions upon millions more have been displaced. the united states speaks out against human rights abuses and war criminals in other countries while dick cheney is living it up in a mansion somewhere in wyoming.

march 23rd, 2003. i had my first ever experience with police brutality. the war in iraq taught me what imperialism is. the war in iraq taught me what a police state is.

the war goes on and on with no sign of stopping. millions have died. what have we learned?

may god forgive us.

Jewish Privilege: or, a Really Fucking Hard Conversation to Have

2011-10-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

This is one of the hardest conversations to have in the Palestine solidarity movement. The question of Jewish privilege. Even among the most radical anti-Zionist circles, we often find ourselves— for strategic or whatever other reasons— privileging Jewish voices over others. And this is a problem. While, at the same time, Jewish anti-Zionist voices are an important part of the movement— for strategic reasons, and also because all voices are valuable in this movement. This is particularly hard considering the reality of anti-Semitism in the world and throughout history.

How can a historically oppressed group also have privilege? This is the crux of the irony that is Zionism. But let's look at the reality— anyone who is Jewish in the United States can get a free trip to occupied Palestine, get citizenship, and have the state subsidize them to move onto occupied Palestinian land. That is a real form of privilege. Also, Palestinians are constantly, whenever they speak out, forced to prove that they are not anti-Semitic. Of course nobody should be anti-Semitic, because anti-Semitism is racism and it has no place in the movement. But the expectation that Palestinians are burdened with that proof, that is racism.

Let me give you an example... imagine if Jewish people were constantly expected to prove that they are not Zionist. For example, when people equate Jewish symbols with Zionism... that is anti-Semitism. Jewish people have the right to be Jewish and not have people assume that they are Zionists. But Palestinians are not granted the same right. That is a form of racism. That is a form of Zionism.

So I hesitate to talk about Judaism within the anti-Zionist movement, because I feel that it is, in no small part, a distraction from the real issue at hand— colonialism.

Make no mistake, I think the role of Jewish anti-Zionists is extremely important. And they have a lot of hard work to do within their own communities. I have a tremendous amount of respect for my Jewish anti-Zionist friends. But I don't think the position of Jewish anti-Zionism should be heroified. And it should be framed around, and held accountable to, Palestinians.

Police Brutality

2011-10-01T00:35:00.001-07:00

Cops almost start a riot, arrest people for filming. Trigger warning on this one.

Azis!

2011-09-26T23:39:00.001-07:00

Yes, please =D

Soldiers as victims of the military-industrial complex

2011-09-22T23:55:00.000-07:00

I have been having a back-and-forth for a while now about how to understand the place of US soldiers in the struggle, and it's a really troubling question for a lot of reasons.

On one hand, we have the fact that the vast majority of soldiers join the military for economic reasons. Ground-level soliders are almost entirely poor, and a vast disproportionate majority of them are people of color. There is an economic and racial draft in this country that forces the most oppressed to join the ranks of an imperial military death machine and kill or be killed by the people the US is colonizing. Higher ups in the military have very little respect for their lives, and use them as cannon fodder in the US' imperial wars.

On the other hand, the soldiers on the ground are the ones pointing the guns at Iraqis. Even in death, their lives are treated as more valuable than the lives of Iraqis and Afghans who are murdered by the US empire. We know the exact number of US soldiers who have died in these two wars over the past decade. We know all of their names. We have only the scantest idea how many Iraqis and Afghans have been murdered. We know very few of their names. Even within the anti-war movement (back when there still was one to speak of), we see a focus on the suffering of soldiers, with slogans such as "bring the troops home!" What about "get the colonizers out!"?

Why is it that, within radical communites, we are willing to dehumanize cops (and rightfully so!) for the brutality they commit against our communities, but not soldiers! Why is there more sympathy for soldiers than cops? Part of this, I suspect, is because the economic circumstances that push people into becoming soldiers are different than those that push people into becoming cops. Cops are better paid, come from more privileged backgrounds, etc. There is a major class difference between cops and soldiers. But I don't think that is the whole reason for the discrepancy.

Part of it, I suspect, is because cops are RIGHT HERE, committing brutality RIGHT HERE. Those of us who have the privilege of living within the borders of the US state, are subjected to police violence— predominantly aginst poor people, queer people, people of color, homeless people, people who are read as immigrants. Most of us within radical or revolutionary communities, however, have not dealt first hand with living under military occupation. Because the violence committed by soldiers is out of sight, out of mind, while the violence of police and the prison industrial complex hits close to home for many of us, we are more willing to forgive soldiers, view them as complex human beings who have been through shit and been forced to make some bad choices. But we have no such sympathy for cops— nor should we.

In other words, there is a certain ethnocentrism to it. There is a certain privileging of experiences of brutality by those who have the privilege of living within or having made it to live within US borders.

Let's suppose I take into consideration the fucked up racist and classist forms of violence and disenfranchisement that have forced people into becoming US soldiers. Let's say I forgive those who have made that mistake, and remind myself of my shared humanity with them. What about my moral obligation towards those who are colonized by the US military? The privileged must always hold themselves accountable towards the oppressed. I should attempt as best I can to hold space for the voices of the voiceless. In the US, the most voiceless are clearly the Iraqi and Afghan people whose homes are being blown up and families and loved ones are being killed thousands of miles away. Our actions here effect them in the most powerful ways. If I tell a former solider that "it's okay, I forgive you," am I betraying my solidarity towards the oppressed? In other words, it is not my place to forgive. I do not have that agency in this situation. To move beyond that is to betray the trust of solidarity and accountability towards the oppressed.

I had an intense moment several months back with a friend of mine, talking about this exact thing. He told me about his friend who was in the military and has since become a revolutionary, hates the military, hates the war, and hates himself for what he did in Iraq. My friend told me that he cries himself to sleep every night— he was saying that as a way of deflecting the criticism that I had. The fact that my friend's friend cries himself to sleep every night, is an emotional wreck, and hates himself— that obviously doesn't make me happy. That's obviously very tragic. But it's not my place to forgive and forget. Only Iraqis and Afghans can make that decision.

But recognizing the struggles of people who join the military needs to be part of a larger anti-racist, anti-classist revolutionary politics. The work of people such as Iraq Vets Against the War is crucial. Furthermore, the work of communities of color and poor and working class communities in the US as part of the anti-imperialist movement is extremely important, and incorporating an analysis of racist military recruitment and the economic draft is an important part of building those connections. However, at the same time, I am wary of the privileging of military voices in this movement— thereby recreating the same hierarchies that are part of the military industrial complex: hierarchies based upon physical violence. We need to play whatever support role we can to privilege the voices of Iraqis and Afghans in this movement. They are the ones suffering most. Their suffering is unfathomably worse than the suffering of any Americans.

I had a moment today, walking down the street, when I saw someone in full military uniform, walking down the street. Who are the people he has killed? What were their names? How many children's faces has he held a gun into? Has he raided anybody's home in the middle of the night, waving a gun in their faces and forcing them onto the ground? Has he pulled men and boys from their homes, with mothers and sisters crying and screaming, wondering if they will ever see their loved ones again? What does it mean for me to just walk down the street next to this person? How can I live in the same society as this person? Coming from a war refugee background, I can never forgive and I can never forget, so long as millions are still suffering from these wars and will continue to suffer from their aftermath.

untitled

2011-09-01T01:30:00.000-07:00

i've never felt like other greek-americans. greek-american culture is so fucking conservative. it is focused around the church. my family is atheist so we never went to church. i always felt a sense of bitterness towards the greek church in the US for that. why are they the only space where greeks can meet other greeks in this country?

besides, i'm too fucking queer to be a part of their community.

most greeks in greece can't understand my alienation from greece. i'm guilty of that romanticization that happens in so many diaspora communities, where the home country becomes something of a spiritual motherland-- devoid of real people who really live there with real present-day problems. greece to me became something of a spiritual playground for my fantasies.

as a child i felt too greek to feel at home in the US. when we'd visit greece, however, i was too american to be greek, either.

besides, we're not really greek... we're greek egyptians.

my mother told me the other day that several generations back, one of her ancestors changed his name to a greek name and got a greek passport-- i think they were in egypt when they did this. what does it even mean to be greek? so many people in the ottoman empire got citizenship in european countries during the 19th century because it was a way to protect yourself from the increasingly brutal ottoman regime.

we could have been turkish. we could have been egyptian. we could have been french.

i've wanted so badly to find someone i could share all of myself with-- my transness, my queerness, my greekness, my egyptianness, my cosmopolitanness, my second generation immigrant multicultural confusion-ness...

my mother always tells me that we greek-egyptians are not like other greeks...

what does it mean to be a queer, trans, anarchist, greek from egypt, born in the US, who's never been to egypt?

speaking about the tragic ways i romanticize greece, i'm guilty of this with egypt a million times worse. when i think of egypt i often think i am dreaming. egypt, to me, has never been a real place where real people really live. it is a photograph of a bombing-- 1956-- frozen in time, distorted through the lens of generations of nostalgia. it is a single muslim woman carrying what little is left of her blown-up home in the street. it is a truck full of dead bodies. it is a proud and defiant nasser, and the whole third world movement. it is colonial cotton from india, in a barge, in a canal. it is a french school. it is muslims, christans and jews living peacefully and joyfully together. it is the last vestiges of the best of the ottoman empire...
... many of these things never really existed.

egypt is a piece of the puzzle of who i am-- but where that piece fits in i will probably never know.

everywhere i turn, more alienation greets me. i'm excited to meet other queers, but they can never understand my cultural confusion. i'm excited to meet other greeks, but they can never understand my queerness. i walk between so many circles, in vein, hoping some day to find a home.

Bibi Shake Shake/ Ghaddafi Zenga Zenga

2011-08-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

I've been watching these two videos all day. Still can't get over them. Lulz.

trans stuff

2011-08-17T22:11:00.000-07:00

i've found that i dont really talk as much about trans and queer stuff as other radical queers and i'm not really sure why... lately, i have been avoiding talking about it. i'm supposed to write an essay about queer stuff soon and i've just found that i can't get past the writer's block.

maybe i've felt that talking about queer liberation and queerphobia hits too close to home. i don't know...

i'm feeling really frustrated, though... that doing basic things in life is so complicated by being trans. shit just fucking pisses me off. i wish people would fucking get it.

oh well...

Egypt

2011-08-17T21:16:00.000-07:00

Egypt is in my heart. Although I've never been there, that's where my mother grew up. She was a refugee in 1956, from the Suez Crisis. I have always wanted to visit.

During the Egyptian revolution (it still continues...) I was glued to the screen watching Al Jazeera. Tears pouring down my cheek I watched the scenes of Tahrir square. I wished I could do more than just watch.

I went to two solidarity rallies. One of them, organized by Egyptians in Denver, we stood at the steps of the capitol. "Let Obama know, Mubarak needs to go!" I cried. There really weren't words to express what this meant to me.

The weirdest feeling was after the rally was over. "Thank you for coming" somebody said to me.

"Thank you for coming"

Thank you for coming is something you say to an ally, an outsider... Like something you say to someone you read as a man at a feminist rally.

I am white. My family is not Arab. We are Greeks from Egypt. A very unique breed of Greeks. (We eat hummus and falafel, lol.) I cannot claim "Egyptianess." But I am not a total outsider.

It's complicated...

I couldn't find the words to express my feelings. "Thank you for coming." What do you even say to that, "you're welcome"??

"Thank you for coming" means "you are an outsider. Thanks for showing support for something we wouldn't expect you to care about."

So I just smiled and nodded, "thank you."

"Let Obama Know, Mubarak needs to go!"

I want to go to Egypt. But I have not left the country since I came out as transgender. I haven't gone back to Greece. I haven't gone a lot of places I would love to go.

How the fuck do you travel thousands of miles around the world when you don't even feel safe leaving your house?

How the fuck do you travel to another country when it's hard enough in your own country and your own language to explain to people that there are more than two genders?

I hope to go to Egypt someday-- a country that is definitely not my home but is still so much a part of me. I hope to go to Greece someday, but how the fuck will I ever explain to people who I am?

I am tired of explaining.

I am tired of assumptions.

I just want to fucking be.

Iran

2011-08-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

Real quickly, I just wanted to share the BEST piece on Iran and the problems of international solidarity, that I have ever read.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/683/solidarity-and-its-discontents

Please read this and share with others.

Goodbye Colorado/ Hello New York

2011-08-12T16:28:00.000-07:00

I had hoped I would get a chance to write this before I left, but... you know how life goes. I feel like I left in a hurry, and there's never enough time to say and do all the things you would like before life moves on— with or without you. So I wanted to take some time and say goodbye to all the people, places, and things that I loved— and hated— in Colorado. I would also like to take a moment to say a big hello to a big city!

But first, my goodbyes...

Goodbye Colorado. Goodbye Denver. I will miss you very much— I already do. The time has come for me to leave, but please know that you will always have a special place in my heart. The things you have taught me, the strength you have given me, the challenges you presented to me... all of these are things I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Looking back, I only lived in Denver for about a year and a half— but that year and a half felt like a lifetime. You have taught me so many lessons.

It seems I left as I came— in a shitstorm. But that's okay. I know I pissed off a lot of people in my short stay in Denver: some for the right reasons, some for the wrong reasons, most for an uncomfortable combination of the two. I challenged people, I called people out, I yelled, I partied, I cried. Sometimes I felt like you were afraid of me... like I was too much for you. You have taught me to check myself, lower my voice sometimes, and I hope that maybe I have taught you something too.

I fucked up. I hurt people's feelings. I was called out... sometimes repeatedly. I want to thank everyone who took the time with me. I made a lot of mistakes and I hope that I at least learned from some of them.

But I also shared my love with the entire city. I have said it before and I will say it again, Denver was the most loving and welcoming place I have ever lived. First time I stayed in Denver, when I was traveling, I knew the second I arrived that I was home. Denver welcomed me with open arms... in so many ways. I love you, Denver. I love you from the bottom of my heart.

I will always have a place in my heart for Denver, and I know I will return someday soon. Thank you for sharing space with me.

Goodbye Denver. Goodbye Damn Gurl! Goodbye Denver BDS. Goodbye COLOR. Goodbye 16th street mall— you were always secretly my favorite place that I loved to hate. Goodbye Cherry Creek bike path. Goodbye canvassing in the suburbs. Goodbye IYSP. Goodbye VVK, T-haus, FNB, Derailer, Free School. Goodbye 27 Social Center. Ugh, and goodbye Charlies— you were also secretly my favorite place that I loved to hate. And goodbye pancakes at 3 in the morning (you know what I mean ;) .)

Finally, I want to say goodbye to all the people who were a part of my radical queer community. There were too many of you to say goodbye to individually, and that makes me sad. Those of you who were close to me, I feel like I at least got a chance to say goodbye to some of you in person. But for the rest, this statement will have to do. Know that I love you and miss you. You have all been an amazing part of my life. Goodbye, friend.

But I also want to say goodbye to all the people who I DIDN'T get a chance to know... Even though I never got a chance to really get to know you, I still saw you around. I saw you at all those parties, events, protests, fundraisers, shows. Maybe we got to exchange names. Maybe we even exchanged numbers. Maybe we danced together a couple times. But even though we never went on long bikerides, played monster cards, cooked FNB together, or made tea together, I want you to know that I felt your presence in my life. You, all of you, were and remain a part of me. I love you very much. Goodbye, friend.

But a goodbye is never really a goodbye... more like a "see you down the road."

Soo... see you down the road, Denver. I will always love you.

Now for the hellos:

Hello New York City! Hello Brooklyn! I have absolutely no idea WTF to expect from you. I won't lie... I'm kinda terrified of you. It's nothing personal, it's just that... I've never lived in a city so big before. I know you will challenge me in all the right ways, and probably many of the wrong ways, too. I'm not expecting you to be patient with me. It's up to me to find my own peace in order to navigate you.

But yeah... I'm kinda fucking terrified and also really fucking excited at the same time. I am very excited to experience you. Like I said, I don't know what to expect. So, here's to the future.

So much love,
~Saffo

5,000 Views!

2011-07-24T20:10:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, just thought I'd annouce that I have just reached 5,000 views on my blog! For the years I had this blog, it wasn't until recently that I realized I could see my stats. I reached 5,000 views TODAY!

Here's some info. As of right now:

My most popular posts:

Blue Eyes

Mar 24, 2009

618 Pageviews

A Parthenon in Denver

May 13, 2011, 39 comments

598 Pageviews

don't ask, don't tell, don't care who you're murde...

Sep 24, 2010, 10 comments

346 Pageviews

Srebrenica

Jul 11, 2011, 4 comments

127 Pageviews

Police in Syntagma, and some of my thoughts

Jul 20, 2011, 5 comments

103 Pageviews

Countries where people have been reading my blog:

United States

2,673

Germany

244

France

182

United Kingdom

158

Canada

148

Netherlands

143

Greece

Russia

Iran

Latvia

And here's the overview of how many blog views I've been getting for all time:

In other words, people are checking out what I have to say!

So, what I want to say is, thanks so much everyone for reading my blog! Seeing that people care and are interested in what I have to say inspires me to write more. So, if you like what I have to say, or would like to see me write more, please leave a comment. The more I know people are listening the more inspired I feel to keep writing.

So this post is dedicated to you, my readers. I want to put out a special challenge. I want to know what YOU would like to see me write about. Please, leave some comments, let me know what you think, offer some suggestions, and I will write a new blog post based on whatever issues people feel are relevant and they would like to hear my thoughts about.

So... leave me your suggestions!

Thanks again for helping me reach 5,000 pageviews!

Much Love,

~Saffo

Police in Syntagma, and some of my thoughts

2011-07-20T14:10:00.000-07:00

Greek journalist: police in Syntagma “flirted with death”

Above is a link to an article by a Greek journalist who has reported all over the world in various conflict zones— from Iraq to Oaxaca. Please read this article, it is really good. But below are the comments I left (which, as of this posting, are still "awating moderation" Ugh. I hate when people do that. It's really annoying.)

Hope to spur more of a conversation here, but anyway, here's the comment I left:

Thank you for your amazing report of the barberity of the Greek police. As a second-generation Greek expat, it means a lot to me to have reporting such as this about the situation on the ground in Syntagma. It is beyond horrifying what the Greek police have done. On perhaps a somewhat morbid note, this may be good news in disguise-- this kind of outrage my be just what Greece needs in order to provoke the kind of revolution the country needs badly right now.

I do have to comment, though, about your disparaging remarks about the "hood wearers." How many atrocities does the state need to comitt before the people are willing to rise up? Those "hood wearers" are exactly the ones who almost brought about a revolution in Greece when the pigs murdered Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Those "hood wearers" are the ones who have been fighting against police brutality while the rest of the world sits by, complacently going about their day-to-day business, accepting the fascist police thugs as just a part of reality. Those "hood wearers" are also the people.

We cannot dream small. Greece is in the grips of a neoliberal death machine, and the police are only the front line. You, as a reporter in many conflict zones, should know this by now. Greece is being attacked by privitization the same way that Latin America has been. What is happening in Greece is what happened in Argentina over a decade ago. Greece's white privilege (EU membership) cannot save it now from the neoliberal machine. Should Greek peoples' whiteness save them from the horrors that Boliva went through during the water wars? Neoliberalism is the latest form of colonialism. This time, Greece is the colonized.

The time to return to business as usual has long passed. The solution is an END to neoliberal debt slavery. The solution is an END to privitization. The solution is for oppressed people to take their lives back. Those "hood wearers" have been saying this for years. But the people who think that we can just end this struggle and go back to the way things were before don't want to hear that. But there is nothing surprising about this attack in Syntagma. This is something that has been a long time brewing, but most people didn't want to look it in the face for how horrible it is.

Indigenous Youth Sovereignty Project (IYSP)!

2011-07-16T01:49:00.000-07:00

hey everyone, the Indigenous Youth Sovereignty Porject (IYSP), a totally badass radical group of indigenous youth, based out of denver, colorado, has a blog! as of my writing this, they don't have any posts up yet, but keep their page bookmarked and spread the word!

http://iysp.blogspot.com/

<3
~s

Some thoughts on Antarctica and Mars...

2011-07-13T18:09:00.001-07:00

Just a few thoughts that I've been thinking about lately... in more or less stream of consciousness format...

Colonialism has often masked itself in the language of "exploration." Columbus "discovered" America. European "navigators" "explored" and "discovered" other lands— brought "dark" continents into the "light" of science. There is also the notion of emptiness— that native people are discursively erased, and only europeans/colonists are human. Think of the Zionist refrain "a land without a people for a people without a land." The Americas were/are referred to as "virgin soils." (Not only are Native people erased but the land itself is sexualized as a "virgin".)

So I think it would be interesting to look at the history of human travels to Antarctica. For the most part, Antarctica has never been inhabited by humans. So what do we make of the fact that the "discovery" of Antarctica was actually a discovery of an uninhabited land? It was also part of the same european colonial "age of exploration." Can we also call the discovery of Antarctica colonial?

The kind of utopian fantasies that Antarctic explorers had— that people arriving on Antarctica would bring about world peace, a universal brothership of mankind, etc., etc.— very closely parallels the utopian discourse that we hear about the colonization of the Americas.

Now let's look at outer space exploration. Perhaps there is no life on Mars. (How do we define "life" anyway? Do we accept a scientific definition? What about a spiritual one? Are scientists' definitions of what is and what is not "life", in the search for extraterrestrial life, a projection of our own limited imagination of what life can possibly look like, or are they somehow objective?)

Would it be less colonial for humans to colonize Mars if there are no extraterrestrial inhabitants?

Back down here on earth, most of our conversations about multiculturalism and anticolonialism are based around hindsight. There are increasingly fewer and fewer indigenous tribes in the world who have had no interaction with western capitalist hegemony. It is easier for people to recognize past wrongs now that history has been written. (I'm not taking this in any way to say that the struggle is over, but that it is easier to recognize past and present wrongs from a point in time where there has been interaction between colonizers and natives.) I'm afraid I'm not communicating this thought very well...

The question is, will these lessons about "multiculturalism" and anticolonialism carry over when humans and aliens interact? Is that the same old story or is it something entirely different?

"Space: The Final Frontier." The narrative of colonialism couldn't be any clearer than in these famous words from Star Trek. The implication is this: "man" (an implicitly white male subjectivity) has explored, discovered, and mapped all there is on earth. The last direction to go now, in this never-ending question for "knowledge" (an implicitly sexualized, orientalist kind of knowledge) is upwards.

But perhaps I'm being terrocentric now... should we project our understandings of an earth-based history into how we could/should/will go about interacting with aliens? Is it simply an act of projection to view humans possibly arriving on Mars through the lens of Columbus' "contact" with the Americas?

Still, we hear the same utopian narrative-- that us going to Mars will somehow fix all the shit we've fucked up back down here on Earth. Whether or not Mars has "life" on it (again, the question of defining what does or doesn't count as "life"), we hear the same story about Mars as we once heard about Antarctica, or as was once said about the Americas.

Strange, indeed...

Srebrenica

2011-07-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

(please note, you can click on any of the images to expand them.)

Yugoslavia has been on my mind a lot lately. It might be a bit morbid, but I guess it's fitting, then, that this week is the 16th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. In July 1995, the army of the Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serb army) entered the town of Srebrenica and systematically killed 8000 men and boys, and systematically raped the women and girls. (This is a case of what has been termed gendercide.) This is the largest mass-slaughter in Europe since World War II.

Before I go on on a stream of consciousness journey about what Yugoslavia has meant to me, I want to take a moment to pray for the people of Srebrenica. As an anti-imperialist radical it is important for me to remind myself what are the reasons we fight for. Genocide and other crimes like this— no matter who commits it, for what reason, and with whose blessings— is a kind of crime that tears at all of us. As much as I despise international law, this is why it is called a "crime against humanity."

8000 people were killed in Srebrenica in July 1995. Countless many more were raped and tortured.

Today I pray for the Bosnian Muslim women who are burying their recently uncovered relatives in Srebrenica. Today I am praying for all victims of genocide everywhere. Today I am remembering why I fight— because of a fundamental love for all of our human family. No matter what.

I want to talk now, about Yugoslavia. I want to apologize that my post isn't going to focus that much on Srebrenica itself, as I don't feel like I have that much more to offer besides my prayers. But I feel I have a lot of conflicted feelings about Yugoslavia that I need to work out. Please accept my prayers for humanity across all borders and all divisions of nationality, religion, ethnicity or race.

Yugoslavia

you wanted to buy me
for a hundred euro
you said you'd take me
to your little car
your friend lived near by
he had a house and all
where was i from you said
you guessed yugoslavia
but it's not yugoslavia
it's not yugoslavia at all
lyla

- cocorosie

Yugoslavia has been on my mind for a lot of reasons. It's a country/region whose history is very important to me, and yet I still feel that I know very little about. My first real political awakening as a child happened when Bill Clinton began bombing Serbia in 1999. I was in 8th grade. My family, being Greek, was extremely opposed to the bombing. That was when I learned what NATO was. That was when I learned what imperialism was.

Why did the US want to bomb Serbia/Yugoslavia? The reason given to me was that Yugoslavia was a socialist country— one of the few left in the world. It was a powerful non-NATO member in Europe. The US wanted to destroy Yugoslavia. This is an image of a blown up building in Belgrade. The city is full of painful reminders of the Clinton-era bombings.

But those bombings were supposedly over the genocide that was happening in Kosovo. (Pardon me, we aren't supposed to call it genocide. Apparently there's a difference between "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing." My bad.) When Greeks and anti-imperialists alike were calling for an end to the bombing, did that mean we were supporting Milošević, the bloody murderer?

Kotor

Several years ago, I traveled through the former Yugoslavia after taking a train north from Greece. I arrived in Belgrade, Serbia. I saw the bombed buildings, still standing there many years after the war. I stayed with a family friend of mine— let's call him Z— who had lived in Belgrade during the bombings. From there I took a train to Bar, Montengro— which had only recently become an independent country. The train ride through the mountains was perhaps the most beautiful thing I have seen in my entire life.

When I arrived in Bar, somebody asked me if I was Slovenian. I never quite figured out what exactly they might have meant by that. In Greece, I was used to people asking me if I was German, or Swedish, or Dutch. (There aren't a lot of Greeks with blond hair and blue eyes.) I had never had someone ask if I was Slovenian before. In the former Yugoslavia, I was never sure if I should play up my Greekness or my Americanness. You never knew where somebody's nationalist loyalties may lie— if they hate Greeks and love Americans, hate Americans and love Greeks, hate Greeks and Americans, or love Greeks and love Americans. (Later, when I took a boat from Croatia to Italy, the woman in passport control looked at my American passport and asked if I was Greek, and smiled when I said yes.) My friend later told me that, whatever that meant, it was not a politically neutral question.

I would eventually land in Kotor, at the base of the largest fjord in Europe outside of Scandinavia. The town was beautiful. But I didn't know where I was sleeping that night. I wandered around the old town looking for the cheapest place to rent. I eventually found myself being beckoned by an old man to visit his shop. "Oh great," I thought, "he's going to try to hustle me." But the man was very nice to me. I realized that he didn't have an ulterior motives. He genuinely wanted to help. He tried to help me rent a place from his friend, but it wouldn't work out.

Eventually, it came out why he was so friendly to me. "My family is Kosovar Albanian, and you are American. You Americans helped us. I want to help you." And I bit my tongue so hard. Of course he read me as an American since I was a tourist. But he had no idea that I was also Greek. Greeks were universally opposed to the US intervention in Kosovo. During the war, the Greek soccer team and the Serbian soccer team played a game— and burnt American flags together during the halftime. (Left: an enormous bronze statue of Bill Clinton in Tirana, the capital of Albania. An expression Albanians' love for Americans.)

The man was so sweet. And his people had been through so much suffering. They had suffered a genocide that was stopped by US imperialist intervention. How could I find the words to be anti-imperialist and still preserve my love for humanity?

Point of clarification

Let's stop for a second and clarify a few things. One thing I've learned in my travels is that most people in the world know very little outside their own village or town. Most Americans know nothing about the world outside the US— and how tremendously complex everything is. I am lumping together a few different historical events and I want to offer some sort of clarity.

To the left is a map of the former Yugoslavia, and all the countries that now exist which were once all part of one country. (The map is a little out of date. Montenegro has since split off from Serbia.) To the right is a breakdown of— as of 1991— which different groups of people lived where. (Of course it's more complicated than that, since you could have people of different ethnicities living in the same village. Part of the horror of the Yugoslav wars was that people were sometimes killing their own neighbors.) Please note that these demographics have shifted since the wars. There were genocides committed over changing these demographics. But this graphic gives us a clue about what things looked like before the wars broke out.

The Yugoslav wars started in 1991. First Slovenia broke off, then Croatia. Croatian independence was the tipping point that started the fighting. Then there was the was the war in Bosnia which began in 1992. I don't know enough to really understand the wars. But what I can say is— look at the map on the right. How would you draw a border between different ethnic groups? People lived in mixed villages. Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks were neighbors to each other. One day, people were all Yugoslavs. The next day, they woke up, and people were Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks, and they were killing each other over it. This is the madness that was the Yugoslav wars. People killed their own neighbors. But this all happened when I was too young to understand.

Another thing— Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs are the same people. Nobody wants to admit it, but they are the same people. Historically, the only difference was religion. Serbs are Serbian Orthodox Christians. Croats are Catholic. Bosniaks are Muslim. But then here's where it gets complicated... Yugoslavia was a communist country. Religion wasn't violently suppressed as it was in other communist countries. But it was discouraged. The understanding I got from my Yugoslav friends when I visited is that the whole region was mostly secular/ atheist. Also, people were intermarried. And everyone was supposed to think of themselves as Yugoslav.

Now, all of a sudden, people are supposed to remember if they are Serbian, Croat, or Bosniak. And they were killing each other over it. And over where they would draw the borders of different nation-states. This is the background, as I understand it, of the genocide in Srebrenica, a town in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Kosovo

Kosovo is somewhat of a different story. As you can see in those maps, Kosovo is predominantly Albanian. (Or, as the US media told us "ethnic Albanian." WTF does that mean? What kind of Albanians are they? The "ethnic" ones...) But Serbian nationalists wanted to hold on to Kosovo. Part of the problem here, as in most places in the world, is that the maps were drawn by outsiders who had their own interests. Albania wasn't placed where most Albanians live.

Milošević, already President of Serbia, began his rise to power in 1989 with a speech, on the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. Click here for more info on the 1389 battle itself. Briefly, the medieval battle was fought between Serbs and the invading Ottoman empire. As a result, Kosovo— and the mythologized Miloš Obilić who, legend has it, slayed the Ottoman Sultan Murad I— has occupied an important place in Serbian national memory.

The speech occurred against a backdrop of increasing ethnic conflict between (Orthodox Christian) Serbs and (Muslim) Albanians over Kosovo. As part of this conflict, like in most conflicts, there were competing visions of history. The debate expanded way back into the ancient past. Who was in Kosovo first— Serbs or Albanians? Serbian and Albanian nationalists fight over whether or not Albanians are descendant of the ancient Illyrians, who lived in Kosovo long before the Slavic invasion— believed to have occurred sometime in the 6th century AD. Of course, how do you establish cultural relationships like this across time, what does it mean, and why should it matter? There are many ways to argue that a certain modern group of people are related to an ancient group— common religion, common language, common physical appearance, biological relationship. All of these are tricky, arbitrary, and potentially racist. And the relationship between violent fighting in the present seems tenuous.

(Image: anarchist graffiti in Belgrade crossed out, replaced with nationalist graffiti, which is also crossed out. When I was in Belgrade, I saw 1389 spraypainted all over. The year itself is a nationalist, Islamophobic symbol.)

My friends have told me that, before the 90s or so, people never talked about these histories. They weren't relevant. It didn't matter who arrived where when. It may be that the CIA was, in one way or another, involved in inciting nationalist hatred amongst different groups in the Balkans, in order to destroy Yugoslavia. This is the conspiracy theory my mother told me. I have never seen conclusive evidence one way or another, but I know that the CIA is often involved in projects like these, so I wouldn't put it past them.

Incidentally, a friend of mine from Dubai once told me, that in 1989, her family had a flight layover in Belgrade (the capital of Serbia.) She told me that nobody in the city would sell her family food, because they were Arab and Muslim. This was a time of viscous, disgusting racism in the form of Serbian nationalism.

Anyway, the US intervention in Kosovo happened a few years after the Yugoslav wars. And this was the point of my political awakening.

And what about imperialism?

(Image: a murderous sack of shit called Milošević, who was also a victim of US/NATO imperialism.)

After the US/NATO began bombing in 1999, Milošević enjoyed increased popularity in Serbia. It's not remotely surprising that he would. Belgrade was being bombed. Greeks were 95% against the bombing as well. That's not surprising. There is a long-standing nationalist affinity between Greeks and Serbs because we are both Orthodox Christians. (Interesting sidenote: we often talk about secular Judaism vs. religious Judaism, as a cultural identity, but in the US it's not often that we talk about secular Christianities as cultural identities.)

I remember being filled with a rage I couldn't process or vent. I remember my family friend Z sending an email from Belgrade, as the bombs were dropping. He said that everyone was telling him to go to the basement, to seek shelter. But he had to send an email to his friends all over the world. He had to let them know what was happening in Belgrade. Who is this body called NATO? he asked. Who is this group that is elected by nobody, and has the authority to bomb other countries? I felt myself liking Milošević and wanting to ignore charges of genocide that were being committed in Kosovo. (Image right: A NATO bomb hits a Serbian hospital.)

It would be easy for Greeks not to care about genocide in Kosovo, as Albanians are especially hated in Greece. In fact, with all the nationalists infighting throughout the Balkans, one thing Greeks and everyone else in the former Yugoslavia could come together about was hating Albanians and Romani (better known by the racial slur "Gypsies.") Albanians are the undocumented migrant workers in Greece. Greeks hate them, blame all of Greek societies ills on them, and yet they do the work that nobody else wants to do. Much like Mexicans in the US. (In fact, I remember a Serbian nationalist, speaking about Albanians claims to Kosovo to asking Americans, how would you feel if Mexico claimed back part of the US... *sigh*...)

(Left: children killed by NATO bombing on the village of Koriša. Hundreds of people, mostly Albanians refugees that NATO was "liberating" were killed in this blast. This was not the only example of collateral damage during the war.)

I guess I feel a special affinity for hating Serbian nationalism as a reaction against the state I was in in 8th grade.

But the end result has unquestionably been in increase in an international, imperialist presence in the Balkans. Kosovo is still administered by the UN and other international powers. One thing that has amazed me in my travels is that, everyone can turn to somebody else and call them imperialists. Because the US/NATO/the West has, at one point or another, played one side or another. For example, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was considered a terrorist organization by the US until 1998. After that, they became the US' allies in their campaign against Yugoslavia. Soon after, I believe they were added back to the list of terrorist organizations.

I met a Croatian woman who said she had met Dick Cheney once when he visited Croatia. She said she had yelled at him. Of course I hate Dick Cheney too, but it kind of amazed me that a Croatian woman would. The US sided with Croatia the whole time. But she blamed the US for not doing more to stop the massacre in Sarajevo.

Mostar

I never went to Srebrenica in my travels. But when I went to Mostar, in Bosnia (err... Bosnia and Hercegovina), I felt Srebrenica in the air. In Srebrenica, it was Serbs (Orthodox) killing Bosniaks (Muslims). In the US, however, we never heard about Mostar. In Mostar, it was Croats (Catholics) killing Bosniaks. According to the US imperial narrative, the Croats and the Bosniaks were the good guys, and the Serbs were the bad guys. There was no need to talk about good guys killing other good guys.

(To the right: a blown up building still standing in the center of the city. There were many, many of these. However, the damage was not just in the blown up buildings. Literally, every single building in the entire town was riddled with holes from shells. Nobody was spared. See left, that's the house I stayed in.)

The town of Mostar is captivating in its beauty. And its so crazy to think how much pain could live in a place so beautiful. It is surrounded by captivating mountains— that you can't hike in because of all the landmines. There is a river that runs through the town. On the west side of the river is the Catholic side. On the east side is the Muslim side. The Catholics and the Muslims both competed over who could get closer to God, with Catholic church spires and Muslim minarets competing over who could build higher. The river is a beautiful bright green (I hope thats from algae or something.) There was a beautiful old marble bridge ("Stari Most" in Serbo-Croat, the name of the town itself "Mostar" is named after the bridge) that was built by the Ottomans.

The bridge was blown up during the war. (I was actually privileged enough to see the video. Horrifying. But you had to go to Mostar to go to the museum to see the screening of the video. I guess they actually have the video on youtube, though. Warning, that video is powerful.)

The town was littered with mass cemeteries of muslims who had been massacred by their Croat neighbors. In each cemetery, every tombstone would have the exact same date of death on them. This is an image of one of those graves that was in the center of town. It appeared to be a wealthier cemetery because the tombstones were fancier than at some of the other massive cemeteries. I remember a man walking up to me and pointing to one of the tombstones and saying something. I felt like shit for not speaking the language. He was pointing to one of the tombs and saying "partisan." I think it was a member of his family. (The partisans were the communist anti-fascist resistance during World War II. Many Croatian Catholics fought on the side of Mussolini during the war. This is one of the histories that was intentionally not talked about under Tito.)

Like I said, we in the US never heard much about Mostar because it didn't fit in to the official imperial narrative of the US— Bosniaks, Croats and Albanians were the good guys, and Serbs were the bad guys. The reality was a little more complicated. (Left, the Ottoman House which I visited. It is preserved as a museum.)

Reclaiming Humanitarianism

The United States has been engaging in a practice of "humanitarian imperialism" for over a century now. In 1898 the United States declared war on Spain in the name of Cuban liberation— and ended up colonizing Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. When I think about this critique of US foreign policy, though, I think of the Albanian man in Kotor. It is hard to find a politics that can express my rage at both the genocides against Bosniaks and Albanians and also against the US/NATO bombings. I will never again, however, make the mistake of heroifying dictators— no matter if they are friends or enemies of the imperialist powers.

As I take a moment of silence today in the memory of Srebrenica, as well as all victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing, I want to suggest that we need to find a way of reclaiming the concept of humanitarianism. We have to wrench the discourse of humanitarianism away from imperialist powers, and all governments, the UN, and NGOs. They are not the humanitarians. There is no such thing as a humanitarian army. It is only people who can really be humanitarian. To me that means finding the spot in your heart to celebrate our shared humanity.

In Peace, Love, and Liberation—
Saffo