BONUS: Beyond the Axis of Resistance w/ Arya Zahedi, Malek Rasmany, Aziz Alhamza

The Antifada

Sean KB and AP Andy

Music, Arts

4.2 • 970 Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2025

⏱️ 138 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Audio from a talk held by Woodbine's December 22nd Research Group facilitated by Malek Rasamny and Arya Zahedi.

What are the horizons, opportunities and challenges amidst the collapse of the Iranian-led order? Over the past few months Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza has more fully expanded into a regional conflict with what has been referred to as the “axis of resistance”, led by Iran. Its fall has been decisive, with the destruction of much of the senior leadership of Hezbollah, including the assassination of secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah on September 27th; and the collapse of the Assad regime on December 7th, after a lightning fast four-day offensive led by rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

BIOS:

Malek Rasamny is the co-director of the research project The Native and Refugee, and the documentary film Spaces of Exception. Both seek to juxtapose and parallel the communities, spaces and struggles of American Indian reservations and Palestinian refugee camps. He is currently completing his doctoral research project on the relationship between reincarnation and the communal memory of the Lebanese Civil War amongst the Druze community.

Arya Zahedi is a teacher and writer who lives in Baltimore, MD. He is a PhD candidate in Politics at the New School for Social Research, and has written a number of works on the class struggle and revolutionary movement in Iran.

Aziz Alhamza is a Syrian journalist, human rights activist, and founder of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS)

Referenced readings:

-Understanding the rebellion in Syria

- Joseph Daher, 2024: https://tempestmag.org/2024/12/understanding-the-rebellion-in-syria/

-Class Struggle, Autonomy, and the State in Iran - Arya Zahedi, 2024: https://illwill.com/iran

-Building Alternative Futures in the Present: the Case of Syria’s Communes - Leila Al-Shami, 2021: https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/the-paris-commune-and-the-world/building-alternative-futures-in-the-present-the-case-of-syrias-communes

-The Revolution Post-Explosion - Malek Rasamny, 2020: https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/the-revolution-post-explosion/

Song: Syrian Revolutionary Dabke

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks everyone for coming. What about will be buying. So this is kind of a discussion we've been having
0:07.9	over many years. And I was looking recently, we had an event in February 2020 about kind of the
0:14.8	popular protests and uprisings in Iran and Lebanon at that time. And sort of right before COVID,
0:20.7	we kind of shut the space down a few weeks later.
0:23.6	But we've been kind of tracking these resistances and kind of movements and things.
0:30.4	And, you know, over the last year, we've got a number of different screenings and events and talks
0:34.2	and panels around Palestine, obviously.
0:37.1	And thanks everyone for coming on what is now
0:39.5	the coldest day of the year a few days before Christmas I know you guys are very serious because
0:45.3	you came out so it's a ritual today um yeah just because of what's been going on as the as the conflict
0:51.7	of last year has expanded you you know, regionally.
0:58.2	We wanted to have a kind of discussion and now, like an Arian,
1:03.1	we're gracious enough to help kind of facilitate and we have a T's here as well and maybe other people in the room will want to talk and participate.
1:06.3	But, yeah, I'm just looking forward to having this discussion and thinking together so please join me
1:13.3	welcoming our gaps thank you thank you um yeah thank you um yeah thank you know I really
1:24.2	envision this I'm not an expert myself you know I'm just going to try to share a bit of my way of positioning myself through the years as someone has been concerned with these events. And I'm very interested in what Abdulaziz and Aria have to say. And then hopefully we can have some kind of a group discussion so that we can have a better sense as we try to learn and understand what's going on together. And I'll introduce
1:45.2	our and Abbasis before you shouldn't speak. On my point, you know, I'll just say that I think
1:50.8	two important points in my life were the Palestinian issue, I think, was something very important
1:56.7	to me. I'm Lebanese, just to put this into context. I'm not Syrian, but I am Lebanese, and I was
2:02.1	born in the United States. I grew up mainly in the United States, but also spent a good
2:06.8	portion of my life throwing up in Lebanon. And I would say that, you know, a big part of my
2:12.9	politicization as a, and when I was a teenager, was the Palestinian issue, which really revealed to me a lot of
	...

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