One of the chief legacies of Orientalism today is the widespread idea that Palestinian lives have less moral worth for reasons you can only grasp if you are an expert on the mysterious dynamics of "the Middle East"
The best writing -- and most essential reading -- I've encountered this year. And it features unexpected insights about clowns ("Ali felt that it was unnatural to perform solo. 'Clowning is all about the collective,' he explained.")
.@Anand_gopal reports from a sprawling outdoor prison in Syria, where tens of thousands of women and children have been indefinitely detained since ISIS fell, in 2019. https://t.co/pmNZPNVVw7
Grateful to @kenyonreview for publishing my essay about misspent time, the impulse to identify easy-to-hate scapegoats for societal ills, and wayward Marxists in business attire.
I think about eternal recurrence daily because I like passing tests, and I like torturing myself. I play back my life in the screening room of my brain and try to make narrative sense of it, justify it as art, wish for it to be relived again and again. . .
https://t.co/ve2X8vIEEx
What a coincidence that in 2023 Netanyahu called the war "a battle of civilization against barbarism" and in 1896 Theodor Herzl said "Palestine is our...home...We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism."
Afghanistan (3/3)
and 10,378 security force deaths, impying that children are 11% of non-Taliban Afghan deaths and 7.5% of overall Afghan deaths
Pre-war population of 19,688,632 (https://t.co/lXF65OCbSw)
Have had multiple recent conversations with people who don't understand what makes Gaza different from other wars so I did some math for future reference. 80% civilian death isn't normal. 44% child death isn't normal. It's criminal, and it's intentional.
Afghanistan sources (2/3)
Between Jan 2019 and Dec 2020, 1,635 child deaths (https://t.co/de4qwJF4AA), 4,871 civilian deaths (https://t.co/GYDRy3fLLU; https://t.co/gqciBSF92F)