Incé Husain

“Live for what they died for”: Srebrenica and Gaza genocide documentaries move London community

“I went to Bosnia not expecting to necessarily see Gaza, but everywhere I looked in Bosnia, there was Gaza. I think maybe some of the people that feel closest to Gaza in the world today are in Bosnia,” says Palestinian community member Nabil Sultan of his visit to Bosnia, sharing his reflections on the documentary Survivors of Srebrenica screened at London Public Library on the evening of August 29th. “You see it on the streets, in the graffiti, in the keffiyehs people wear. Even in Srebrenica they have the keffiyehs — the families of the victims who were going to…

Read More“Live for what they died for”: Srebrenica and Gaza genocide documentaries move London community

Keffiyehs, banners, cheers, and suppression: Four days of Western University’s graduation convocations

From June 10th to June 13th, Western University convocations were held at Canada Life Place. They were invigorated by protests for Palestine.  Numerous graduating students across disciplines and faculties faced the celebratory stage with Palestine flags, banners calling for justice, and regalia draped with keffiyehs. Outside, more protesters held banners and chanted human rights declarations to the downtown rush. They stationed themselves in areas where students arrived to pick up regalia and families waited before convocations began.   University administration, London police, and Canada Life Place staff attempted to quell the protests.  *** On the morning of June 10th —  the…

Read MoreKeffiyehs, banners, cheers, and suppression: Four days of Western University’s graduation convocations

“We carry your memory like fire in our veins”: 77th Nakba Day 

Whenever someone asked me my name, it was always followed by: “Are you a refugee or a citizen?” As a child, I would ask: “What is a refugee?” On this year’s Nakba Day — May 15, 2025 — an Al Jazeera article by Ruwaida Amer in Gaza describes the 1948 displacement of her grandparents from their razed village of Beir Daras to Khan Younis, where she was born in a refugee camp. Her grandfather was fifteen years old during the Nakba, married and with a baby son. The baby — Amer’s uncle — died as they fled. He was just…

Read More“We carry your memory like fire in our veins”: 77th Nakba Day 

“Portrait of Elliot”: Painting of brain cyst stars at neuroscience conference

At Museum London on February 20th, a painting of a glowing brain is displayed on an easel. The stylized MRI brain scan, from the back-of-the-head view, is aflame in yellows and reds that form a hazy halo around a starburst of highlighter-green brain fluid. Folds of pale coral-coloured grey matter coalesce into cranial nerves bordered by a streaming blue-violet neck. In the right hemisphere drifts a ghostly cyst.  The piece is called “Portrait of Elliot”, painted by artist Natasha Beaudoin. It is based on a real MRI scan of her boyfriend, Elliot Tomlinson, who was diagnosed with an arachnoid cyst. …

Read More“Portrait of Elliot”: Painting of brain cyst stars at neuroscience conference

“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…

Read More“Ongoing return”: A living archive of Palestine

“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…

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

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…

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

“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…

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

“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…

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

“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…

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