Middle East
A Narrowed Discourse
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing military onslaught on Gaza, discussion and debate on the conflict have been shut down like never before. With the war playing out on social media, the discourse has polarized and flattened, as mutually exclusive narratives breed distrust and denialism.
Starting Over in Egypt
Palestinians from Gaza who manage to raise the money for the crossing fees are arriving in Cairo traumatized, jobless and often completely dispossessed. With neither government nor U.N. aid available, grassroots initiatives are filling in to offer financial aid and emotional support.
A Yale Hunger Striker Speaks Out
The university administration had ignored all the “proper” avenues students had used up to that point to address Yale’s complicity in the violence, and I had lost my ability to imagine any other way to get the university to hear us. My imagination was crushed. I had no new ideas.
Gaza in a Million Pieces
I walk past beds of children in bandages, children with metal rods poking out of tiny legs and arms, children with burns, children with necrotic tissue. Like many others, I watched Gaza’s horror unfold on TV and social media and lacked the words to express it. I am here; I am seeing it for myself. I understand so much more, and yet I find myself even more incapable of articulating the extent of what I am witnessing.
DJ Khaled’s Disappearing Act
The silence of the prominent Palestinian-American artist DJ Khaled on the war in Gaza is a reminder of the pitfalls of celebrity solidarity. The question shouldn’t be “Where is DJ Khaled?” but rather: “Do Palestinians really need him?”
The Interlocking Political Fates of Biden and Netanyahu
What if Netanyahu is hoping to damage Biden by promoting the perception that he has abandoned Israel, thus tilting the scales toward Donald Trump in November? This would hardly be his first rodeo. In 2012, the Israeli leader controversially intervened in U.S. electoral politics by openly supporting Mitt Romney over Obama.
From the Dodgy Dossier to the Cambridge Controversies, Not All Plagiarism Is Alike
In 2003, the British government copied parts of my thesis to justify the invasion of Iraq. While accusations leveled at Claudine Gay and Neri Oxman have put plagiarism back in the news, we need to acknowledge that not all cases are the same.