Incé Husain

“Ongoing return”: A living archive of Palestine

To cast my net I found the waves Some laughing, some crying The wave asked me ‘what’s the matter?’ I said ‘I’ve lost my beloved’ Truly, I’ve lost my beloved Partition, a film directed by McGill anthropology professor Diana Allan, begins with an Arabic song confessing to the sea. The lyrics ring against granulated black and white footage of the sloping hills and winding roads of Gaza, 1917. The scenes shift to British soldiers marching in synchrony and to explosions – grainy, soundless, and distorted.  Sleep, my son, sleep The slumber of gazelles in the wilderness  Oh Lord, may my…

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“There’s no Pride without Palestine”: Perspectives on pinkwashing 

On Tuesday, March 18th, two Israeli youth spoke to a Queer Theory class at Western University about queer feminist critique of Israeli militarism and pinkwashing.  “Pinkwashing” refers to the portrayal of Israel as “more humane, modern, and accepting” than the Arab world when it comes to embracing the queer community, and using this portrayal currently to morally justify the ongoing genocide in Gaza.  Einat Gerlitz, twenty-one years old, and Tal Mitnick, nineteen years old, refused to enlist in the Israeli military on grounds of pacifism. Both were imprisoned by the Israeli military and faced a slew of death threats and…

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Young Israeli dissidents: “Do anything you can to stop the genocide”

On Tuesday, March 18th, an Al Jazeera article by Maram Humaid from Gaza begins:  “It wasn’t a nightmare, it was real. The war had returned just like that, without warning. The clock read 2:10am when we woke up in terror to the deafening sound of air strikes. A violent noise shook everything around us. My daughter, Banias, woke up screaming in fear: “Baba! Mama! What’s happening?” For the last four days, Al Jazeera notifications stormed phone screens.  At least eight Palestinians killed, including children, as Israel carries out “extensive” air attacks on the Gaza Strip – follow live Dozens of…

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“Come with me inside a black hole”: A talk by physicist Carlo Rovelli

“They’re remarkable objects… I hope I can tell you something more about their strangeness and their beauty,” says physicist Carlo Rovelli of black holes on January 30th at Western University’s Conron Hall, for the 2025 Duncanson Lecture. Behind him beams a photo of Sagittarius A* — a black hole 26 million kilometers wide in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, 26,000 light years from Earth (1 light year is about 9.4 x 1012  kilometers). The photo — the average of thousands of photos taken from a telescope — shows a hazy orange-yellow ring of fluctuating brightness circling a dark…

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“A small window into dehumanization”: Palestinian-Canadian doctor on the destruction of healthcare in Gaza

“Do you know how hard a kid fights when you bring a needle to their face and start cutting into it? Do you know how much strength they suddenly have? You can’t believe where it even comes from? Can you believe the screams that they deliver, when you try to suture them up? It’s crazy, it’s haunting. Truly, truly haunting,” says Palestinian-Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani. “The Israelis were always selective about painkillers. They’d never let painkillers through.” Loubani remembers suture rooms in Gaza full of wailing children. Half of Gaza’s population are children; they are the majority of those injured…

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“Where Olive Trees Weep”: Roots of injustice and resilience in the West Bank  

“I felt anger towards what the people on the screen were going through. Anger that this injustice – all of this – is still happening. Anger that all of this exists,” says Western University student Kamil Zerdoumi after viewing a film screening of Where Olive Trees Weep at King’s University College on November 29th, 2024. “It made me more aware of this huge, huge imbalance between [the] rights that Israelis and Palestinians have, and made me more fervent in Palestinians getting more rights and equal treatment and more justice, and less forgiving in any attempts to try and be a…

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“We’re all related”: Remembering Elder Dan Smoke

Elder Dan commemorated the Kanehsatake resistance by supporting the planting of a white pine — a traditional symbol of union and healing — in Victoria Park, London, in 1971. The red, white, black and yellow coloured bands on the tree represent the Colours of Man; the blue represents Father Sky; the green represents Mother Earth; and the purple represents the Creator. Photo by Rebecca Bartkiw.

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“The world is a relative”: How language can heal the Earth 

On Thursday, October 17th, Potawatomi botanist Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer gave a talk at Centennial Hall on how Indigenous teachings encompass protection and love of the Earth. Indigenous languages hold a worldview where the land and all beings are relatives; this inherently disallows destruction of the Earth.  “If the world is a relative, there are boundaries on what can be taken,” says Kimmerer. “There are guidelines on what we consume… Use everything you take. Take only what is given. Understand them as gifts, not commodities. Corporate messages confuse us about what we need and what we want.”  Her voice was…

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Abortion Rights in Canada: Here to stay? 

On Thursday, October 24, an abortion rights protest clustered at the intersection of Southdale Road West and Notre Dame Drive. Five protesters stood in a line. Three raised familiar abortion rights signs that read “Honk for pro-choice”, “Safe and legal abortion is pro-life”, and “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries”.  The remaining two held more specific signs.  “Go home, Abby” read one. “Hellenic centre hosts RACIST,” read the other.  The abortion rights advocates were protesting the Hellenic Community Centre’s decision to serve as a venue for a fundraiser featuring American anti-abortion spokesperson Abby Johnson. The fundraiser was organized by 4LifeLondon…

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“From the river to the sea, from the cedar to the olive tree”: Stories of Lebanon and Palestine

“There is nothing that will compare to that childhood,” says Lebanese-Canadian PhD student Amer El-Samman, who grew up in the port city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon. He remembers the city as huge, bright, and authentic. It boomed with up-and-coming Internet cafés while remaining lush with old towns infused with unique, intergenerationally-preserved customs. The people were tolerant. Ways of life were passed down with “care, affection, and stability”. All religions lived side by side; El-Samman remembers sects of Muslims and Christians, and a Jewish family in his grandmother’s town who were a “remnant of a once sizable population before the…

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