One point many miss about my critique of anti-Israel politics is that REGARDLESS of what you think of Israel, this politics plays an objectively terrible and reactionary role for political cultures of a) Western/Global Left; b) Arab/MidEast. Mona ElTahawy (no friend of Israel) called it out long ago, calling Israel an ""the opium of the Arabs".

There are five clusters of democracy in the world — with two important clusters of semi-democracy in Asia and Africa (the institutions are pretty strong in much of the latter and can hopefully turn green in time) The Global Left, and Left anywhere, needs to decide what exactly it feels about this map? Does it believe in democracy as a goal? Does it believe it’s a con? Does it believe it’s a priority or not? It needs a systematic answer.

Zionism is a national movement, remarkably similar to other national movements despite its peculiarities. Like the other ones, it has harbored both good and evil, both crimes and virtue, both wars and culture, both negation of life and affirmation of it. The attempt to portray it as some sort of a uniquely evil or fascistic ideology are unconvincing to me for the simple reason that I am a historian of political movements. Name me with one political movement in 20th century whose collective track-record doesn't include crimes!

One of the most damning intellectual features of our era, well encapsulated by Ta-Nehisi Coates's approach, is the inability to differentiate moral exigency from materialist analysis & strategic thinking

Look at this bizarre exchange! Btw, Coates uses the phrase "I just can't accept that" a total of eight times in this interview

As a life-long fan of Arundathi Roy's writing, it's truly heart-breaking for me to see her condoning of Hamas, Hezbollah and killing of civilians.

It doesn't make her brave or somehow principled.

It makes her a proponent of the most mundane version of the shallow, thoughtless and ethically troubling idea of 'the oppressed can do not wrong'

Left needs its brains and principles back People like Roy make clear that their problem isn't with killing civilians. They don't object to Israel's killing of Palestinian men, women and children because they think it's wrong to kill civilians. They only do so because they believe Israel is doing it for the wrong cause.

Very proud to see my mentor and friend Lior Sternfeld meet Iran's President Pezeshkian. This is one of the first-ever open meetings between an Iranian president and an Israeli citizen.

I've known Lior for years and he has long been one of my role models in life. I am touched forever by his love and dedication to his people in Israel, to ending the occupation, to peace with Palestiniansand also to Iran, the country he studies and is an expert of.

Like many, I was heartened by the amazing work of the Palestinian-led Uncommitted movement at DNC

Democrats' refusal to platform a Palestinian speaker was disappointing - but the Chicago approach shows how you can get a broad coalition.

I wrote about it

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… The Chicago approach brought an impressive coalition together inside the Democratic tent

Let me give it to you straight: Kamala Harris & Democrats are complicit in much of the terrible Israel has done in recent history, including its brutal and murderous war in Gaza. Nothing they do from now to November will change that.

But here is why you should vote for her: A Harris administration will be much more amenable to pressure from the Left on Israel and other issues. It's not even comparable with Trump who will be authoritarian toward movements at home and whose instincts on Middle East will have him deal with strong powers which doesn't +

It’s the historian in me but I am so sick of this canard — this letter keeps getting shared as if it signals anti-Israel or anti-Zionist attitudes on part of Einstein, Arendt, etc.

It does NOT. Most of its writers (definitely Einstein) were Zionists. +

https://twitter.com/kthalps/status/1732170805465727414

The letter is not rejecting Zionism or Israel. It’s criticizing the right-wing Israeli party that was in the opposition at the time (and would be till 1977). The letter’s tone is actually very similar to how Israel’s ruling center-left party would have attacked this party

Posts like this are really fascinating because they really show what a bizarre relation anti-Zionist American Jews have to Israel & how politically rotten it is.

So Israel needs to be defined by the absolute worst crimes committees by its soldiers? Which other state +

https://twitter.com/CoreyRobin/status/1717307354595623274

in the world will survive this test?Which state in the world doesn't have egregious crimes done by its soldiers? Why does Corey Robin not think of all the heroic or stellar work done by Israel's artists, doctors, activists? or quotidian proletarian life of its workers & teachers?

You want to know how I feel about all this ink I have to spill about the Middle East & its conflicts?

I wish I didn't have to do any of it. I wish I could be in Tehran, Beirut, Tel Aviv or Gaza, writing about poetry, cinema and wine, just as I did when I was a teen in Tehran I wish I never had to know what are different types of drones and missiles, who is Hezbollah and who is Hamas and what murderous impulses motivates Khamenei or Netanyahu or Haniyeh.

I wish I didn't have to imagine the pain of children in Gaza or families of hostages in Ashkelon

Edward Said's condemnation of Hamas in 1994 When Hamas and Islamic Jihad conducted terrorist attacks in 2002, what did Edward Said have to say?

I'll post this below.

Compare it to academics today who claim to support Said and who have been praising 'decolonization' by Hamas since Saturday

Remarks by @PahlaviReza in the Italian parliament today had many positive points. Most importantly he affirmed the need for 'national reconciliation' and offering an "exit strategy" to regime forces. He insisted that majority of IRGC forces are salaried people not implicated in crimes. He warned that Iraqi-style De-Baathification led to the rise of ISIS and wont be useful for Iran. He also warned against turn to violence.

آقای رضا پهلوی در صحبت‌های امروز خود در رم نکات مثبت متعددی را مطرح کردند که به نظرم باید مورد تایید تمام نیروهای دموکراسی‌خواه باشد. مهم‌تر از همه تاکید او بر «آشتی ملی» و لزوم ارائه «راهبرد خروج» به نیروهای سپاه و سایر نیروهای ج.ا بود ایشان مثلا گفت: «روند تغییر در ایران، باید شامل آشتی ملی و راهبرد خروج هم باشد. به باور من، اکثر اعضای سپاه حقوق‌بگیرهایی هستند که نقشی در رفتار جنایی و سرکوب نداشته‌اند و نباید فکر کنند که امیدی برای بقا ندارند. ما نباید کاری کنیم که در عراق در فرایند بعثی‌زدایی انجام شد»

I still can't believe this happened in the United States of 2023.

A scholar shows a respectful medieval depiction of Prophet Mohammad and she loses her job AND is labeled Islamophobic by the university's shameful administration.

nytimes.com/2023/01/08/us/… Even after the fact, when faculty tried to stand up to this nonsense, they were told to shut up.

Decades of failed experiments show there are no magical substitutes for political parties and civic mass organizations.

If you want to change things, you have to get into politics. And if you want to do politics, you are going to need organizations.

The rest is BS. In our region, Iraq, Lebanon and Algeria are three places where despite relative freedom of association, proponents of change and so-called 'revolution' have failed to build durable, serious and mass political organizations.

There is much to sympathize with in this essay by Ukrainian sociologist @Volod_Ishchenko; chiefly his attempt to challenge a version of Ukrainian nationalism built on ethnic particularism, disavowing all historical entanglements with Russian culture +

newleftreview.org/issues/ii138/a… and denying the universalistic aspects of Ukrainian Soviet history. He is indeed right that this identity politics of culturalist 'decolonization' is one that the Left needs to oppose.

But where Ischenko fails is that he seems to shockingly skirt the pressing issue of the moment

Road Dahl was, in Persian translation, key to my literary upbringing in Iran of early 2000s. Children and teens of my generations devoured his work like many around the world.

Sadly he also held disgusting antisemitic views

wegotthiscovered.com/celebrities/wa… A new biography explains more: washingtonpost.com/books/2022/12/…

Did Iran say it will shut the Guidance Patrol (Hijab police)?

No. Here is what happened:

In a press conference, someone asked top prosecutor, Jafar Montazeri, why was the Guidance Patrol not around anymore.
+ Montazeri said the patrol wasn't the business of the judiciary but of the police so "they launched it and they shut it themselves." He quickly added that the Judiciary would still monitor "behavior in society"

I think my students liked me until today... when I attacked horoscopes as a form of irrational pseudoscience... And I actually do believe it's so, so, so fundamentally sad that there is so much support for pseudoscience in the world today and that Reason is under such assault

“Based on our concern for consolidating peaceful, democratic political action, we call for the organisation of fair and honest early elections that express the true will of the Iraqis, to be organised by a truly independent interim government that enjoys national acceptance." Iraqi Communist Party, which boycotted the elections last year (erroneously, IMHO) has now called for fresh elections and an end to the ethno-sectarian sharing of government.