{"id":1208,"date":"2026-01-14T12:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T12:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/?p=1208"},"modified":"2026-01-14T12:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T12:28:11","slug":"between-barrel-bombs-and-facebook-posts-my-body-is-my-battlefield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/between-barrel-bombs-and-facebook-posts-my-body-is-my-battlefield\/","title":{"rendered":"Between barrel bombs and Facebook posts, my body is my battlefield"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u201cWhy do you have to always be on the side of those losing?\u201d my mother asked me with a tone of soft blame as I started writing in support of those who used to be pro-regime after the fall of Bashar Al Assad, the Syrian dictator, in December 2024.<br \/>\nShe continues with a higher pitch this time: \u201cThey have been advocating for you to be<br \/>\nkilled, accusing you of being a terrorist and a Western agent for over a decade, and now<br \/>\nyou are defending them!\u201d<br \/>\nI realised at that moment how this group of people had shifted in my head from a threat into weaker individuals facing revenge and unjust violations on the day Assad fell. Hence, I automatically shifted to their side, while my mother couldn\u2019t see them as<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">anything but losers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This piece is written for\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/genderit.org\/Unyielding_Anthology\">Unyielding: Personal Essays from Women Human Rights Defenders\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Editor: Nadine Moawad<br \/>\nGenderIT Editor: Hija Kamran<br \/>\nIllustrator: Rawand Issa<br \/>\nLayout: Cathy Chen<br \/>\nProofreading and Copyediting: Lori Nordstrom<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhy do you have to always be on the side of those losing?\u201d my mother asked me with a tone of soft blame as I started writing in support of those who used to be pro-regime after the fall of Bashar Al Assad, the Syrian dictator, in December 2024. She continues with a higher pitch [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1209,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[101],"journalist":[27],"class_list":["post-1208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-by-our-journalists","tag-syria","journalist-zaina-erhaim","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1208"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1211,"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions\/1211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1208"},{"taxonomy":"journalist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenjournalists.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/journalist?post=1208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}