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Jan 3, 2024 | 
quillette.com | Armin Navabi |Benny Morris |Kara Jesella
Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran and Israel had developed strategic and economic ties, driven in part by Israel’s “periphery doctrine”—a policy of seeking alliances with non-Arab states. The relationship between the two countries was mutually beneficial; Iran was a major importer of Israeli arms, and, in return, provided Israel with oil. For the three decades preceding the revolution, these amicable relations persisted. Israel even had a diplomatic mission in Tehran.
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Dec 26, 2023 | 
quillette.com | Alex Byrne |Kara Jesella
The Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was founded in 1971 with a mission to fight poverty and racial discrimination. Its early litigation campaigns, which targeted the Ku Klux Klan and other overtly racist organizations, met with success, and the group soon came to be seen as an authoritative source in regard to right-wing extremism more generally.
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Dec 15, 2023 | 
quillette.com | Benny Morris |Kara Jesella |Zoe Booth
Where is the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza heading? The short—and dismal—answer: an open-ended, multi-front war of attrition, which will sap Israel’s energy and continue to destabilize the Middle East well into 2024 and the years beyond. In Gaza itself, the prospect is clear. In coming days, Israel will complete its occupation (and, in many areas, destruction) of the northern third of the Gaza Strip, which includes Gaza City, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahia.
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Dec 14, 2023 | 
quillette.com | Kara Jesella |Zoe Booth |Alex Nowrasteh
In my academic life, I was fortunate to have my rabbi teach my first Women’s Studies course and Angela Davis teach my second. At Vassar during the multiculti-and-identity-obsessed 1990s, I learned from Rabbi Shirley Idelson about intersectionality and black feminism, and I was taught that if I didn’t understand the Spanish in the now-canonical anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, I had to find someone who did to translate it for me.
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Dec 7, 2023 | 
quillette.com | Lachlan Peters |Kara Jesella |Alex Nowrasteh
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands,” wrote the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain in a 2001 memoir. That line was widely re-shared on social media amid jubilant reactions to Kissinger’s death on November 29th.
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Dec 1, 2023 | 
quillette.com | Michael Walzer |Benny Morris |Kara Jesella
In a time of war, everybody makes proportionality arguments. But proportionality is a fool’s game, more suited to propaganda than to reasoned judgement. Some number of people are killed in some military action: are the deaths proportional? How might we know? The numbers are always disputed, and so is the balance of fighters and civilians. And then comes the critical question: proportional to what? There are many answers to that question.
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Oct 20, 2023 | 
quillette.com | David Benatar |Benny Morris |Kara Jesella
Victim-blaming is generally agreed to be unacceptable. But when the crime is a pogrom and the victims are Israelis, many educated people seem to think otherwise. Following the shattering events of October 7th, when Hamas jihadists from Gaza swept into southern Israel and conducted a pitiless campaign of torture and mass murder, many rushed to place responsibility for the mayhem squarely on the shoulders of Israel.
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Oct 4, 2023 | 
quillette.com | Yascha Mounk |Kara Jesella |Alex Nowrasteh
A novel ideology is haunting America. Over a stunningly brief span of time, a new set of ideas about the role that identity does—and should—play in society has taken on astonishing power. These ideas have quickly become widespread in universities. They have transformed the animating ideas and the prevailing norms of left-leaning institutions, from activist spaces to nonprofit organizations.
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Sep 11, 2023 | 
quillette.com | Andrew M. Koppelman |Marco den Ouden |Kara Jesella |Alex Nowrasteh
A review of Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greedby Andrew Koppelman, 320 pages, Macmillan (Oct 2022)Andrew Koppelman “was not reading libertarian writers in a generous spirit” when he undertook to investigate libertarian thought, he writes in the Introductionto his eighth book, Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy was Corrupted by Greed and Delusion. “I was predisposed for a fight.
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Aug 19, 2023 | 
quillette.com | Jamie Palmer |Matt Johnson |Kara Jesella
On January 31st, 2020, Anthony Fauci, who was then director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Diseases, emailed the director of London’s Wellcome Trust with worrying news. Scripps Institute researcher Kristian G.
