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20 May, 4 tweets, 2 min read
By popular demand, we've decided to un-paywall my piece "I'm Angry About Palestine. Should You Be?" for a day. I didn't really write it for the public, but what the heck.

Sign up for free to get it in your inbox tomorrow morning: wisdomofcrowds.live/signup/
This is a more personal essay on what I was thinking and feeling last week as I was trying to making sense of the news in Gaza. It's as honest a piece as I could have written. I look forward to sharing it with more of you.

wisdomofcrowds.live/im-angry-about…
My piece was inspired in part by two old, estranged friends: Christopher Hitchens and Edward Said. Here, Hitchens' moral clarity cuts through. It's a beautiful passage.

wisdomofcrowds.live/im-angry-about…
Okay. My essay is now un-paywalled for the next 24 hours. Give it a read.

Hope it resonates with you in some way.

wisdomofcrowds.live/im-angry-about…

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More from @shadihamid

Shadi Hamid Profile picture
18 May
If you missed it, my new @BrookingsFP piece on how Arab regimes mastered the art of not caring about the Palestinians while pretending to care about them. But this isn't new. Decades ago, Anwar el-Sadat was the pioneer of a separate peace

[Thread]

brookings.edu/blog/order-fro…
The Trump administration was right that Arab nations could be peeled off the Palestinians one by one, but it was building on an old idea with a storied history. Camp David is almost unanimously seen as Carter's great achievement, but there was a dark side.
For the best account on how Camp David was the first, original step in sidelining the Palestinians, see @SethAnziska's brilliant book based on original archival research—'Preventing Palestine': amazon.com/Preventing-Pal…
Read 6 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
17 May
If you missed it, here's my latest in @TheAtlantic. This is my attempt to carefully outline my position on Gaza and lay out the broader context that brought us here. There are two conflicting narratives. I try to make sense of where they diverge.

[Thread]
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
If you look at the Gaza crisis in a vacuum—as if there is no history and as if context is irrelevant, you'll come to certain conclusions, but they will be based on misleading premises. The question has to be: why now? And what are the "sources" of the conflict?
There is a danger in talking about "root causes." People will accuse you of justifying Hamas' actions. But it should be possible to do two things—to believe Hamas is committing war crimes, while also recognizing that the current crisis didn't appear from the sky unannounced.
Read 11 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
14 May
In Gaza, the death toll is up to 119, including 31 children. All just in the matter of a few days. This is the "proportional" response we keep hearing about.
In the last Gaza war, which lasted 7 weeks, around 100 of the over 700 Palestinians killed were children. So this is not new. If anything, it could become worse.
Yet Palestinians face indignity not just in life but in death. It's not Israel's fault, according to this particular narrative. Palestinians brought this upon themselves. They are being blamed for being killed.
Read 5 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
13 May
Israel's "generous offer" to Palestinians is the myth that will never die. I've never met a single Palestinian who thinks the offer was "generous." Presumably what they think matters. Unless one thinks that there's something fundamentally irrational about Palestinians as a people
Israel's "generous offer" was not generous. But once the propaganda started (spread by Bill Clinton to deflect responsibility), it never stopped. I discuss the myth of the generous offer in this essay: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
I'm glad folks are starting to say the quiet part out loud. It basically comes down to this: Palestinians don't know what's good for them. They're irrational and self-destructive. It's just a couple short steps from that to say that they deserve it. The dehumanization of a people
Read 11 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
12 May
Israel is not aiming for "proportionality" or trying its best to minimize civilian casualties. The goal is to inflict overwhelming pain on the Palestinians so that they learn their lesson. This isn't new. That's always been at the heart of Israel's deterrence strategy in Gaza 1/x
This from @dbyman is probably the best thing to read on how Israel approaches deterrence. Basically it's an "eye for a tooth." And it may even be understandable from an Israeli perspective. But let's not pretend Israel is trying to protect Palestinians 2/x foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/24/an-…
This part is key:

"Disproportional military operations...are at the core of deterrence, which demands disproportionate 'eye for a tooth' operations to succeed"

brookings.edu/opinions/an-ey…

3/x
Read 8 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
1 May
I have a new essay that delves deeper into one of my preoccupations—whether "unity" or "consensus" are good things, or whether they are best avoided in democracy. Here's my case against consensus. 1/x

wisdomofcrowds.live/against-consen…
In his address to Congress, Biden said something that stood out to me, because it seemed to misunderstand at a rather fundamental level why democracies are better than autocracies. 2/x
The framing of the problem betrays a technocratic bias—that regime types should be judged based on whether they work. "What works-ism" provides us with a purely instrumental argument, and one that wades into the democracy vs. autocracy contest on autocrats' terms. 3/x
Read 5 tweets

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