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Nasrallah’s Gallows Humor Comes Back to Haunt Lebanon
Hezbollah’s leader is a master of ceremonies and narrative. The head of arguably the world’s most powerful nonstate militant group is blessed with an auteur’s sense of theatrics and spectacle. He exemplified the tenaciousness of the Lebanese and their exceptionalism, capable of achieving what the world bet they could not. Someone I could be proud of, despite not agreeing with everything he did and stood for. But our heroes in the Arab world never last. Nasrallah is no exception.
COVID-19 and My Magic Kingdom
The lines were long; getting food was at times a nightmare. The children — who are yet to be vaccinated — need to wear a mask while indoors or on rides. But the magic of Disney is still there, and post-vaccine life is as good as it gets a year after we were hoarding toilet paper in the U.S.
Memory Wars
Peter Pomerantsev is the author of This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality. In this podcast, he explores modern memory wars, and how they are attempting to remake reality, from Ukraine to America.
The Wandering Alawite
Alawites have always been painfully aware of the fragility of sectarian coexistence. Many of us preferred one dictator, Bashar al-Assad, to a Syria broken into multiple sectarian dictatorships. So, we stuck by the regime.
How Israel’s Occupation Came Home
While the attacks carried out by Palestinian citizens of Israel were extensive and deadly, the overwhelming focus on that violence prevented the emergence of a much-needed debate within Israel about its growing problem of Jewish radicalization.
France’s Atomic Legacy in Algeria
To date, France hasn’t disclosed the real toll of contamination, nor has it revealed the location coordinates of all testing sites and nuclear waste, which it dispersed in different areas or merely buried a few feet underground.
As Iran’s Hard-liners Tighten Their Grip, Ordinary Iranians Resort to Humor
One man showed up dressed as the blue Genie from “Aladdin” and declared his presidential candidacy. Another one, donning a face mask made from the Iranian flag, created massive chaos in the registration hall, then promised the bemused bureaucrats that he was running to “save Iran from the current chaos.”