How many times have we been lectured about so-called western values? I am a person born and raised in the west. I am a westerner, and yet those so-called values are sounding very much like Gazans, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims are utterly disposable. We hear Israel present the situation as if it has no choice… Read More Standing up for Palestine is also standing up to save the west from the worst of itself
There is now widespread awareness among those who voted to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum that Messrs Farage, Johnson, Gove, Rees-Mogg have sold them a glittering package containing nothing but massive, outright lies. The image that comes to mind is that of a warship firing off a torpedo that circles around and… Read More Ruchir Joshi on the self goals of British conservatism
The Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, stipulated that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank should constitute “a single territorial unit”. And yet almost immediately after signing the agreement, Israel pursued a policy of severing ties between the West Bank and Gaza, and each from Israel, by making travel to and from the Gaza Strip increasingly difficult for… Read More I remember the times when Palestinians dared to hope for peace. How did it come to this?
Ideology is the most devilish variation of the lie: Hannah Arendt, Approaches to the “German Problem”; in Essays in Understanding, 1994 NB: The American establishment, its allies and a vast section of its media use the word evil with Nelsonian vision. As someone who has observed evil with both eyes and no national, religious, or… Read More Evil, with one eye
By Deepanshu Mohan There is a solar flare of deep inter-state conflict, conquest, and siege erupting all over the globe. Russia and Ukraine have been embroiled in a long drawn, painful war for over a year and a half. After a 10-month blockade, Azerbaijan launched an attack on Sept. 19, claiming the enclave in a day and causing nearly the entire… Read More On Justice and Sovereignty: The Limits of International Justice Architecture in a World Marred by Conflict and Conquest
To be considered a political being you must at the very least be considered a human being. Who gets to count as human? “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,”… Read More The double standard with Israel and Palestine leaves us in moral darkness
The driving out of peoples was ‘a thoroughly bad and vicious solution, for which the world will pay a heavy penalty for a hundred years to come’: Lord Curzon, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, commenting on the exchanges between Greece and Turkey in 1923. Cited in R. M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans… Read More The Agony of Palestine
Bernard Haykel There are two immediate reasons why these attacks took place. First, Hamas has been vying with the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the leadership of the Palestinian cause and the success of these attacks is one way to achieve this. The PA is the official government of the Palestinians that signed the Oslo Peace… Read More Why Hamas attacked now – and how it weakens both Israel and hopes for peace
At the time I was reimagining this scene, I spent much of my day on Twitter. It was early 2021, and everyone there was chronically angry. People communicated by jeering, trading insults, hectoring, flinging accusations… It was like being in an abusive relationship with everyone in the world. Sandra Newman A few years ago, I… Read More Orwellian nightmares: What I learned about today’s rage culture from rewriting 1984
By Dilip Simeon NB: This is an extended reminiscence of a conversation about Ranajit Guha and the Naxalite movement. The conversation was arranged at the request of the Bangla journal Anustup; and took place between me and a History honours student at the University of Delhi. (I am obliged to Anustup for having prompted this… Read More A Political Man: Memories of Ranajit Guha
