I respect @petersavodnik too, and I think these are questions worth addressing. I will answer them in detail here.

1. Yes, Israel has a moral duty to ensure Hamas can never repeat Oct. 7 As I’ve said repeatedly, Israel has a right to defend itself. But even a war whose cause is just does not, and cannot, justify doing anything and everything in the name of that war, i.e. effectively destroying an entire territory, making it uninhabitable, and killing tens of thousands of civilians. Basically, Hamas argues that everything that Israel did before 10/7 justifies 10/7. Israel then argues that because of what happened on 10/7, everything it does afterwards is justified. They’re not exactly the same, but they rely on a similar, maximalist logic—that the laws of war are suspended when you’re dealing with a uniquely barbaric enemy.

Boiled down to its essence, this is Hamas’ argument. Hamas’ leaders don’t actually rely on theological arguments or defer to the rules of combat in the Islamic just war tradition. They don't even pretend to care. Hamas uses an almost entirely secular, nationalistic logic, a version of 'desperate times call for desperate measures.'

It's odd and unsettling to me that the irony is lost on Israel's most vociferous defenders that they're mirroring Hamas' arguments. As various Israeli officials and ministers have themselves suggested and even at times explicitly state, all Palestinians are fair game now that Hamas has declared war. Which was Hamas' argument on 10/7: that all Israelis were fair game because Israel had declared war on the Palestinians.

It's an utter embarrassment that the US has to airdrop aid to Gaza because it refuses for reasons that have never actually been made clear to put actual pressure on Israel—a state that, itself, depends on US aid—to let aid in. Shameful and absurd. The Biden administration's refusal to use our tremendous leverage with Israel to pressure it to treat Gazans like humans is one of the real policy puzzles of our time.

8 years into the Trump era, there is still a widespread resistance to acknowledging that he might have appealing qualities. Which is odd. He *must* have some appealing qualities to have won 74 million votes. It's worth asking what they are and what they mean. 🧵 In my new @washingtonpost column, I try to make sense of the Trump paradox. He manages to be extreme without being dogmatic. His ideological nimbleness could even be mistaken for moderation—or, more precisely, "unhinged moderation."

wapo.st/3SxCnAh

Yes, I do think this is the intellectual undercurrent behind much of the aggressively pro-Israel sentiment I see. Palestinians (and Arabs) lost. They must accept defeat. The fact that they haven't is, for whatever reason, something that deeply offends.

https://twitter.com/Koefnielsen/status/1739589240155930895

This is where pro-Israel attitudes overlap with anti-wokeness. Anti-wokeness (if one isn't careful) can easily devolve into a disdain for the weak and marginalized—that if they are weak, then the fault in some sense is ultimately with them and not with those who oppress them.

Harvard President Claudine Gay's response to Elise Stefanik was embarrassing but not for the reasons people claim. It was embarrassing because she accepted Stefanik's premise that saying "intifada" is equivalent to a call for genocide, which is ridiculous.
The problem with these college presidents is that they're spineless technocrats who don't have the courage of their convictions. GOP officials are popularizing the idea that pro-Palestine sentiment = pro-Hamas sentiment. This should be rejected out of hand.

I finally got to reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Why I am now a Christian." Is it really possible to convert to Christianity and not mention Christ even once? Apparently it is. There's not the slightest sign of sincere belief. It's completely instrumental.

unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-… As Ayaan herself explains it, her main reason for being Christian isn't belief in Christianity. It's because of what she thinks Christianity means politically. She believes Christianity is the best available tool against the unholy trinity of China, Islam, and wokeness.

I do want to say a few words about @NoahPollak's smear of me as a "supporter of terrorism" because I think it's indicative of where the public conversation is going unfortunately. 1/

https://twitter.com/NoahPollak/status/1722338098548547711

It's open season on Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans in public life. It reminds me very much of the post-9/11 climate, which was stifling and constrained in a way that I think is really hard to capture for people who weren't around. This was the original "cancel culture." 2/

1. Finally read @Yair_Rosenberg's piece on 'What Hamas Wants.' Worth a read for a very different perspective than the one @dmarusic offered recently and which I much prefer:

I respect Yair a lot but take issue with a few things 🧵 wisdomofcrowds.live/p/the-revoluti…
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… 2. My biggest critique is the assumption in @Yair_Rosenberg's piece that evil acts are inherently "irrational" and therefore Hamas is best understood as an irrational actor. There's no room for contingency, agency, or individuals in this account.

1. It should be possible to do things simultaneously. We can condemn Hamas' assault and its heinous acts against Israeli civilians while also not forgetting Israel has been a perpetrator of an often brutal occupation against the Palestinian people. 2. Yes, it's fair to describe what happened in Israel as its 9/11. But what that analogy tells us is that Israel should *not* replicate the mistakes, the zeal for war, the civil rights abuses, and utter destruction that the US exacted in the Middle East in its response.

Oriana Fallaci's 1979 interview with Khomeini is absolute chaos. And darkly funny.

"I'm sorry to hear that"

nytimes.com/1979/10/07/arc… This is probably the 5th time I've read the Khomeini interview and it never gets old. There are so many howlers. You almost get a Trumpian vibe from Khomeini in these moments, a kind of post-modern playfulness and looseness with observed reality.

The U.S. can stop Tunisia's descent into full-blown dictatorship. Here's how. The practical steps I lay out in this @ForeignAffairs article are actually things the Biden administration can do. But it has to do them now.

foreignaffairs.com/tunisia/dont-b… Often people mention Tunisia's still-pending IMF bailout in passing, but no one has really laid out in detail how using the loan as leverage might actually work. There are risks, which I acknowledge in the piece. But on balance this is the best (and likely last) option available.

In some ways, cancel culture was worse after 9/11. And the implications for U.S. policy were nothing short of disastrous. Be careful what you wish for. The post-Trump era, as bad and polarized as it might seem, is far preferable to recent alternatives. shadihamid.substack.com/p/reading-sayy… People complain about the "youth" a lot, including me. And on certain things the trend lines are pretty discouraging. On the other hand, when it comes to topics like the legacy of Sayyid Qutb, they feel empowered to write in a much more nuanced way.

DeSantis Derangement Syndrome is a reminder that liberals' obsession with calling the GOP "fascist" makes America collectively dumber.

My latest: shadihamid.substack.com/p/desantis-der… I had forgotten there was a large number of liberals obsessed with using the word “fascist” as a catch-all epithet. I wasn’t online as much, and I generally try to avoid following the news, for reasons @SarahTheHaider helpfully explains here:
sarahhaider.substack.com/p/the-news-is-…

"Religion" is a modern Western invention. By extension, the separation of religion and politics is also a modern Western invention. A thread 🧵

shadihamid.substack.com/p/the-modern-i… The category of religion was created and weaponized for particular purposes. Like all belief systems, liberalism and nationalism require their own foundational myths.

Thrilled to join first ever @TheFP roundtable with @bariweiss, @EliLake & @SnoozyWeiss.

This was a lot of fun. We discussed Biden's classified docs, the professor fired over an image of Prophet Mohamed, Andrew Tate's conversion to Islam, and raw milk 👇🏽
open.spotify.com/episode/480YRG… As I discuss here, the painting of the Prophet the professor got fired for depicts the beginning of the Islamic revelation when the Angel Gabriel says to Mohamed, ‘recite.’ It’s a powerful moment in the Islamic tradition. So how could it be Islamophobic?

In this clip, I try to sum up the failures of US policy in the Middle East. It's a structural problem. And to solve it, US policymakers will need to commit to an entirely different way of looking at the region.

Full conversation 👉🏽
I also talk to @feyzasays about the myth of authoritarian stability: autocratic regimes seem stable until they're not—and then it's too late. Moreover, "pro-American" Arab autocrats aren't even reliable. Case in point Saudi Arabia.

Update: @jonathanchait and @nymag issued a "correction" but it's not actually a correction. The piece still identifies me as "center-right." The error remains. The note at the end coyly suggests that my own self-identification as a Democrat is inaccurate.

https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/1610817082429689857?s=20&t=pbMQAAMaVzuyhC-P-Hqlpw

I'm being told that @jonathanchait has done this before. He makes factual errors in his column and then responds with snark (and gaslighting) and refuses to issue a correction. If true, it sounds like there's a bigger issue here, particularly for a self-identified journalist.

I hesitate to share this publicly. We brown folk have to be a bit careful when discussing the "brown rebellion" within the Democratic Party lest white liberals turn against us even more than they're bound to. Recently I talked to @razibkhan about the Islamic view of Christmas and how the Arab Spring offered a dark preview of what a "forever culture war" might look like in Western democracies.

razib.substack.com/p/shadi-hamid-…

For the morning crowd, a long thread. If you read it, please read to the end 🧵

https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/1610817082429689857?s=20&t=VUsNgdcYNeCb4sU-OJknSA

How important is this? @jonathanchait identified me as "center-right." So what? Well, in a way, it's sort of like saying Obama's Muslim not Christian. It would be perfectly fine if Obama was Muslim. Many of us would be excited by the prospect! But it's not accurate 😎

God bless @jonathanchait. I actually agree with a good chunk of his latest piece. But there's a pretty basic factual error. Chait claims that I'm "center-right." This is simply untrue. I hope he corrects this or at least corrects it for future columns. 1/

nymag.com/intelligencer/… Perhaps @jonathanchait's error is an honest mistake. Maybe he just found out about me today and had to file his piece quickly. But this isn't the case. I've appeared in previous Chait columns going back some time. 2/

This is a thoughtful, good-faith objection from @DamonLinker regarding what he calls my "democratic complacency." That said, I think it gets a couple things wrong. I look forward to responding in greater depth soon. Until then, a couple quick thoughts 🧵

https://twitter.com/DamonLinker/status/1609920394244362240?s=20&t=JCvVEOg2pYOlwCrhMb31DQ

I don't think it's right to say I've "mocked" those who are worried about the soundness of American democracy. I count myself in that group of concerned citizens. What I take issue with is catastrophism that's used to demonize opponents. 1/