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Quote by Andrew Balaam

“To pass yourself off as a terrorist was no easy task. The pressure was continuous, day and night, twenty-four hours a day. You were operating in a world where a slip of the tongue, a wrong item of clothing could cost you and your team their lives.”

Quote by Andrew Balaam

Book:Skuzapo: The untold story
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Skuzapo: The untold story

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Andrew Balaam

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“for Falasteen the boy i adored at sixteen gifted me his keffiyeh feeling guilty for living when others were killed simply for existing i haven’t seen him in sixteen years but think of him often these days his grandmother’s purse still carrying keys to their home believing they’d return in weeks can it even be called a key if what it unlocked is no longer there? we’d sneak onto mall rooftops & pretend shooting only happened with stars! 'we have a duty of memory,' he said, 'so they’ll kill us all until only the soil is witness' how could i reply? i sat in my liquid silence today there are nurseries of martyrs they bomb babies for they fear enemies hiding between pacifiers & tiny wrists bomb hospitals because enemies hide in ICU bedpans bomb schools because enemies hide in children’s bags bomb the oldest mosques & churches because enemies hide in rosary beads & votive candles they bomb journalists because enemies are hiding under their PRESS vests & helmets bomb poets because enemies hide in pages of peace poems the elderly are bombed because enemies hide under their canes the disabled are bombed because they harbour enemies in their artificial limbs they raze & burn all the ancient trees because enemies make bombs from olives they bomb water treatment plants because enemies are now water & so it goes: justification provided exoneration granted business as usual & the boy I adored has green-grey eyes the colour of fig leaves we don’t speak but i wish to tell him 'i’m sorry the world is a blade i’m sorry home is blood & bones i’m sorry music is sirens & wails i’m sorry night is infinite' but the boy I adored has grey-green eyes the colour of forgotten ash”

WarOppressionWitnessGenocidePalestineApartheidGazaDisplacementCeasefireKeffiyeh
Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“Про повернення євреїв на Схід ніколи не було й мови: ніхто в Радянському Союзі, Польщі чи деінде не виявляв бодай найменшого інтересу до цього. На Заході на них теж ніхто особливо не чекав, надто якщо вони мали освіту та інтелектуальний фах. Тож, за іронією долі, вони залишилися в Німеччині.”

WarEducationIntelligenceIronyJews
Book:Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
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“У Франції нацистам вистачило півтори тисячі своїх людей. Вони були такі впевнені в надійності французької поліції та військових підрозділів, що, окрім адміністративного штату, призначили лишень 6 тисяч осіб німецької цивільної та військової поліції, щоб забезпечувати покору 35-мільйонної країни.”

WarFranceOccupationCollaborationNazis
Book:Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
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“Lurking beneath the surface of every society, including ours, is the passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver. It reduces and at times erases the anxiety of individual consciousness. We abandon individual responsibility for a shared, unquestioned communal enterprise, however morally dubious.”

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Book:War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning
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“War is necrophilia. And this necrophilia is central to soldiering, just as it is central to the makeup of suicide bombers and terrorists. The necrophilia is hidden under platitudes about duty or comradeship. It awaits, especially in moments when we seem to have little to live for and no hope, or in moments when the intoxication of war is at its pitch, to be unleashed. When we spend long enough in war it comes to us as a kind of release, a fatal and seductive embrace that can consummate the long flirtation in war with our own destruction. The ancient Greeks had a word for such a drive. They called it ekpyrosis - to be consumed by a ball of fire. They used the word to describe heroes.”

WarSelf DestructionEkpyrosis
Book:War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning
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