Esraa Abo Qamar Twelve-year-old Ahmad Zeidan’s mother was shot and killed in front of him as she tried to secure food for her starving family at one of Gaza’s new US-backed distribution points. He lay beside her body for hours, afraid to stand up and run because any movement might cause his death. His mother’s death was… Read More Starving, then shot. There is no longer hope for us Palestinians
Ellen Wayland-Smith admires how Is a River Alive? places the reader in immersive contact with the nature we regard as mere backdrop to human activity. Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane. 2025 IN RELIGIOUS COSMOGONIES, anthropologist Mircea Eliade argues in his 1957 book The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, the natural world… Read More What Would It Take to Re-Sacralize Nature?
First posted March 2013 But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence… illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the… Read More Hans Magnus Enzensberger: The Industrialization of the Mind
Whether inept, driven by survival or corrupt, they are unfit to lead their countries, let alone make decisions that imperil the whole world Simon Tisdall This was not inevitable. This is a war Israel chose. It could have been prevented. Diplomatic talks were ongoing when the bombers took off for Iran. Israel’s continuing, illegal, unjustified… Read More Trump, Netanyahu and Khamenei – three angry old men who could get us all killed
We have previously written about the debates over the political relevance of the Enlightenment today, drawing on Antoine Lilti’s critical review of the histories of Jonathan Israel. We present the English translation of his essay, which has import far beyond any disciplinary boundaries: Viewpoint Magazine David A. Bell: The Uses and Abuses of Enlightenment: AV lecture; January 2025 ***… Read More How Do We Write the Intellectual History of the Enlightenment? Spinozism, Radicalism, and Philosophy
Israel’s prime minister sees himself not only as the protector of Israel, but the saviour of the West. This, he believes, is how he should go down in history, writes former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas. Mr Netanyahu can brag all he wants about how he has changed the course of history and how he has saved… Read More Israel’s attack on Iran proves Netanyahu is an unhinged messiah
Kieran Setiya reviews Christoph Schuringa’s A Social History of Analytic Philosophy IS THE FORM of philosophy dominant in English-speaking universities covertly resistant to radical thought? Does it present as the work of pure reason what is in fact the function of an ideology complicit in oppression? In A Social History of Analytic Philosophy (2025), the philosopher Christoph… Read More The Politics of Apoliticism
Tom Segev, one of Israel’s most renowned historians, has broken a decades-long silence. On his 80th birthday, he declared that Zionism—Israel’s founding ideology—was a mistake. In a deeply personal interview with Haaretz, Segev said, “Zionism is not such a great success story. It also doesn’t provide security to Jews. It’s safer for Jews to live… Read More Israeli Historian Tom Segev at 80: “Zionism Was a Mistake from the Start”
DOCUMENTS: BOOKS: IMAGE & SOUND Editor’s Picks:
It is necessary to see how news media has responded to the opposition leader’s article and how soon. Prem Shankar Jha It has taken the Election Commission four months to respond to opposition leader Rahul Gandhi’s first disturbing accusation at a press conference in February – that the Commission had somehow managed not to notice that there were… Read More Why the Response to Rahul Gandhi’s Accusation of a Stolen Election Is Less Than Convincing
After the truth-shower 