For whatever it’s worth to Zach or other students, I’ve sat on Rhodes Scholarship committees & reviewed many elite apps.

This essay: (1) lapsed into hubris by the end of para #1, & (2) didn’t explain *why* Zach wants to learn from other humans, let alone at a particular uni.🧵

https://twitter.com/zach_yadegari/status/1906888487292559531

No matter how impressive the application, painting oneself as a preternaturally gifted wunderkind who’s doing x or y elite university a favour by applying can turn off reviewers.

Communicate confidence, curiosity & commitment to learning from/contributing to your new community.

Imagine getting deported from a country where you’re a legal resident. A country that calls itself a democracy. A country whose most prestigious government scholarship, the Fulbright, you won.

All because you coauthored this nuanced & articulate op-ed in the student newspaper ⬇️

Here’s the link.

This is, of course, the op-ed that the young Turkish scholar Rumeysa Ozturk coauthored for the student newspaper at Tufts University, where she was pursuing a PhD in childhood development.

tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/0…

Before I started following its specific positions, I’d assumed that the BDS org—@PACBI—was a logical, non-racist actor.

After its boycott of Standing Together, & esp after its statement today declaring Oscar-winning film No Other Land violates BDS, I no longer feel that way. 🧵 I encourage everyone to read the following two statements in chronological order:

1) First, the joint statement from No Other Land’s directors:
nootherland.com/directors-stat…

2) Second, the BDS org (@PACBI) statement denouncing it as “normalising”
bdsmovement.net/no-other-land

The left accelerationist case for Trump paints him as a vile vessel who will, nevertheless, achieve important goals: (1) make the US less militaristic & (2) empower the Global South.

It makes intuitive sense bc Trump is weakening USG & Western alliances. But it’s deeply naive 🧵 I see at least 6 reasons why:

1) Rising US expansionism
2) More frontal assault on international law & multilateral institutions
3) Disinvestment in soft power
4) Hypocritical reliance on hard power
5) Emboldened bad actors in the “imperialist international”
6) Nuclear reliance

Musk is an ideologically warped wrecking ball.

He’s mixing (1) extreme leftist impulses, like Maoist iconoclasm, with (2) rightist elements, like neoliberal privatisation.

But that’s not all. A third, underestimated element is afoot: (3) Earth-eschewing techno authoritarianism.

https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1891269088019652681

The mixing of extreme rightist & leftist elements in Elon’s power grab is under-explored.

Another example: fetishisation of permanent revolution via an authoritarian vanguard that’s committed to freeing the people from corrupt elites shows up in a lot of Marxist movements.

Just watched a mind-bending @60Minutes interview. It’s the stuff of a great American novel: the story of Senator Mitch McConnell’s life.

@LesleyRStahl interviews McConnell & @tackettdc, whose biography just came out.

The arc of his career is... whew. Triumph & tragedy 🧵 @SenMcConnell is an institution in my home state, Kentucky. One of the most consequential politicians in the past century, and one of the savviest Senators in history.

So savvy, in fact, that he ended up beating himself—and the US—at his own game.

What’s collapsing: liberal imperialism or liberal internationalism?

The first seems oxymoronic & off base, since liberal ideals masked, more than motivated, US interventions.

I fear the second—institutions of post-WWII human rights & multilateralism—might be more threatened 🧵

https://twitter.com/mazmhussain/status/1888068599098859548

Diagnosing what’s most at risk matters. It’s entirely possible that we’re nixing liberalism, but not imperialism. And that, by assaulting liberal ideals & institutions, we’re unleashing more naked forms of expansionism.

Trump’s comments on Greenland, Panama & Gaza augur thus.

You might be wondering where to look rn. I’m going to say this despite specialising in the MENA region & foreign policy:

Focus squarely on DC & how DOGE in particular is (1) gutting American power & safety & (2) eroding the checks & balances fundamental to American democracy. For the US to make good, representative policy on any issue, foreign or domestic, it must remain a liberal democracy with robust checks & balances.

Instead, America is Orbanizing via a presidentially appointed body that’s ripping constitutionally granted powers from Congress.

Assad used secularism “to gain legitimacy among international actors, while rejecting its implementation.”

True for Syria & most MENA authoritarian states. When you hear an Arab ruler described as “secular,” or pitching themselves as such to Westerners, think very critically.

https://twitter.com/josephdaher19/status/1868360714613629011

We should resist repeating the fiction that any MENA authoritarian, from the relatively forward-thinking (eg: Ataturk) to the sadistically depraved (eg: Assad) embraced “secularism” according to any commonly accepted definition of that term.

Doing so creates 3 serious problems:

My god. It’s happening. A post-Bashar Syria.

The transition starts now. Make no mistake: it will be incredibly rocky.

But today, take a beat to hear the soft, human joy of many Syrians as they cry, embrace, learn if wrongly jailed loved ones survived & vow “now we can go home.”

https://twitter.com/jongambrellap/status/1865606902811373827

Growing up as a young researcher in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, losing dear ones to counterrevolutionaries’ prisons, seeing how swiftly atrocities breed vengeful atrocities & studying extremists have made me reflexively caveat hope with realism, celebration with concern.

In 1986, Netanyahu lambasted Apartheid at the UN, where he was Israel’s Permanent Representative from 1984-88.

He condemned Arab countries for selling oil to South Africa, and called Apartheid the “ultimate abomination."

But his words were at odds with Israeli foreign policy 🧵
By the mid-1970s, Israel had shifted its South Africa policy to alignment w/ the Apartheid state. And throughout much of the 1980s, South Africa was actually Israel's second largest trading partner after the USA.

Sasha Polakow-Suransky explains why in his excellent book here:

The most shocking result of yesterday’s election, from my pov:

Despite centring her presidential bid on a promise to “stop Gaza’s genocide on Day 1” & selecting a Muslim running mate who campaigned on Palestine, the Green Party’s Jill Stein won fewer Michigan votes than in 2016. For comparison, here are the Michigan results from 2016.

In 2016, Jill Stein won 50,700 votes in Michigan (1.1% of the state’s total).

Yesterday, with 99% of Michigan’s precincts reporting, she won 44,642 (0.8% of the state’s total).

https://twitter.com/libyaliberty/status/1850037331501170695

Asking Palestinians, @LibyaLiberty says, is key- but what does that mean?

To my knowledge, we don’t have polling on what Palestinians who are actually living in Gaza & the West Bank think re: Harris vs. Trump.

But we do have reporting that’s interviewed them:

How to spread mutual humanisation in an atmosphere of reciprocal radicalisation has been one of my primary concerns as an educator this year.

Many professors are afraid to discuss Israel-Palestine. But facilitating humane & evidence-based discussion now is more vital than ever. I’ve heard stories that haunt me.

The film “Farha,” about the 1948 Nakba, was shown in one class. Some students were upset that Israeli soldiers in an execution scene did not kill the baby (after having killed its family), because they believed Israelis wouldn’t show any mercy.

This film hasn’t blown up yet, but it should.

It’s about an Italian medical student who takes the unheard-of step of studying abroad in Gaza in 2019, during the March of Return.

@java_films put it on YouTube 5 days ago:

Here are 3 reasons I loved it: 🧵


1. Sometimes the simplest stories are the hardest-hitting. That’s the case here.

This is not a film “about” politics or activism. It’s about the first Erasmus exchange student to ever study abroad in Gaza.

The student, Riccardo Corradini, is a 24 yr-old studying war medicine:

This platform is an extraordinary tool—I’ve met wonderful people through it & seen excellent work done with it.

But it’s also a festering pit of inhumane extremism.

The discourse on Noa Argamani dancing illustrates, yet again, how twisted bullying unites extreme right & left 🧵 For those who don’t know, Noa Argamani is an Israeli noncombatant taken hostage by Hamas from the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7. She was freed by an IDF military operation on June 8.

She had zero control over being taken hostage—a crime under international law—or being freed.

No American news program has done as much to broadcast the truth of what’s happening in 🇮🇱🇵🇸 since 10-7 as @amanpour.

Watch this riveting interview w/ Yulia Novak, director of @btselem—one of Israel’s premier human rights organisations—about Israeli prisons.

Some highlights: 🧵

https://twitter.com/amanpour/status/1823788436655923410

“Our prison system was always a tool for oppression of the Palestinian people," said Yulia. But since October 7, Israeli jails "became torture camps in practice."

The abuse is “systemic” & “organised.” The horrors revealed at Sde Teiman torture camp are “the tip of the iceberg.”

Most pro-Palestine activists I’ve met in the Arab world believe that, if Arab countries were democracies, they’d do more to help Palestinians.

But I’ve not heard anyone make that connection between more democracy & space for pro-Palestine advocacy in the USA.

I think we should: Public opinion polling in the United States shows more dissatisfaction with Israel’s behaviour than ever.

The shifts are generational in speed, and certainly not happening quickly enough to force the policy changes that Gaza so desperately needs.

But they’re happening.

As I’ve said before, and as this tweet from Kamala’s National Security Adviser reiterates, she won’t commit to an “arms embargo” on Israel.

Restrictions on some offensive arms to Israel could be on the table after Nov. w/ Kamala, but not w/ Trump.

There are 3 main reasons why:

https://twitter.com/philgordon46/status/1821539980017070229

3 main reasons why Kamala won’t commit to “arms embargo” & certainly not before Nov:

1. She’s VP so it’s awkward to defy Biden’s policy line

2. She needs to hold a coalition of supporters & donors together, which spans ardent Zionists & anti-Zionists, to win

I loathe sharing triggering content, but I am—in tears, tbh—making an exception here.

Why?

Bc these monstrosities are enabled by my country, the US, which excuses Israel’s crimes & arms it without conditions.

Bc rape is deplorable.

Bc Americans must know & work to stop this

https://twitter.com/ihabhassane/status/1821021260693770354

I have consistently deplored sexual violence against Israeli civilians on & since Oct 7. I have lost relationships w/ many friends & even colleagues because of that stance.

But it’s a hill I’m glad to die on. Rape is sick. Torture is sick. You’ll never catch me excusing either.

Kamala had to make this statement.

Yesterday's Hamasnik cosplayer protest in DC featured terrorism apologia, vandalism (illegal) & flag burning (legal but moronic PR).

It was a gift to Republicans, who are painting Harris & Biden as anti-🇮🇱 wingnuts cosy w Hamas supporters.

1/

https://twitter.com/vp/status/1816490945501708660

Here are some pictures from the protest.

It was an attention-grabbing distraction & a very useful gift to Netanyahu, who lapped this up to portray all pro-🇵🇸 protesters as un-American, pro-terrorism, antisemitic buffoons who are also useful idiots for Iranian agendas.

2/