April 13 is the anniversary of the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil war, which began in 1975. For The Public Source, I wrote about the twisted nostalgia many of us feel for those dark days:
thepublicsource.org/civil-war-le...
All of Trump’s statements about the agreement, Strait, nuclear enriching, Lebanon, etc… seem to be primarily aimed as manipulating markets — it is Friday
"In the 1950s and 1960s, long before the PLO guerrillas arrived in Lebanon, Israel attacked the country close to 200 times - including raids and shootings, stealing Lebanese cattle, burning crops in border villages and towns, destroying homes and property"
www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-...
My piece in @insidehighered.com drawing on the groundbreaking joint report by @mesa1966.bsky.social @aaup.org on "the weaponization of civil rights law” to silence Palestine solidarity campus speech, written by Daryll Li & Janan Shouhayib.
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...
Biden admin helped realize a two-decades-long campaign to reinterpret Title VI so that anti-discrimination laws could be used to deter and punish criticism of Israel on campuses.
Trump admin wielding that tool to advance a broader far-right agenda in higher education.
One week after “Black Wednesday,” eight people, including one child, remain missing. Their loved ones move between hospitals and morgues in search of answers, submitting DNA in the hope of identifying their relatives.
Dana Hourany & Amelia Hankins report ⬇️
If it was not clear: Ahmed Shihab-Eldin and all others imprisoned for making statements contrary to, critical of, or not in line with the official state narrative in GCC and other Arab countries (hello Jordan!) should be unconditionally and immediately released.
Kuwaiti regime has detained journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin + is reportedly prosecuting him for public statements about US-Israeli war on Iran.
Perhaps highest profile case of massive repressive wave in GCC states against anyone challenging state narrative.
Media reports below.
I don’t doubt that this 👇🏻 is what Lebanon’s president and prime minister are attempting, but the United States cannot be enrolled in a process that produces the Lebanese government’s desired outcomes. That is not what the U.S. is doing here.
Rather…
x.com/beirutcallin...
1/2
"Greater Israel should be seen as a geopolitical and strategic concept as much as a territorial one."
"Talk of a Greater Israel dominion might be treated as typical wartime hyperbole. Recent Israeli policy tells us it would be a mistake to do so."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
(2) how much of this is really a new strategy responding to Oct. 7, instead of new int'l configuration making long-proposed objectives/strategies by parts of Israeli military more possible w/out real consequences? Israeli genocide in Gaza (+ US/EU/Arab complicity) removed any and all “guardrails."
(1) unlike Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, Israel since 1948 has refused to declare its borders, always leaving them open to aggrandizement. This raises serious questions about the seriousness of lamenting Israel not "going back to the international border."
Good reporting (to an extent) by @reuters.com on Israel's current "buffer zone” strategy, combining territorial expansion & unending regional war. Yet misses two really important details (taking Israeli sources at face value), therefore misleading authors + readers:
www.reuters.com/business/aer...
Another must ready by @eskandarsadeghi.bsky.social, this time detailing the nature of US-Israeli destruction in/of Iran, the stakes of it, and how to understand the conditions of its possibility.
jacobin.com/2026/04/isre...
I wish I was being original, but these are basic 101s of analyzing & speaking about Lebanon, deeply researched + brilliantly articulated by so many critical activists, journalists, researchers, and scholars in Lebanon long before I even began learning about Lebanon.
The “war of others” framing also renders (if not directly claims) Hizballah—and its social base—as exogenous to the Lebanese body politic and the Lebanese nation. A quintessential anti-Shi’a trope, whether intentionally or not.
And in this sense, erases the inhabitants of the territory of Lebanon as either cultivating or resisting Zionist/Israeli interventions, invasions, and occupations.
For one, it ignores the historical territorial, military, and resource designs in Lebanon of the Zionist movement (pre-1948) and Israel (1948 onward).
Remarkable how so-called experts of Lebanon recycle claim of “the war of others," framing the present as Lebanon being “caught between Israel and Iran” and history as Lebanon being “the arena for other countries’ battles."
And as @larajbitar.bsky.social noted, today has a sense of “the scorched earth campaign the Zionist entity waged against the country 24 hours before the so-called ceasefire went into effect on Nov. 27, 2024.”
Third, it is also typical display of destructive violence preceding a cease fire.
In 2006, Israel dropped approximately 85% of cluster bombs in 72 hours before cease-fire took effect while increasing number of daily bombs and artillery rounds from 2500 to 6000.
Second, this is an attempt to undermine cease-fire, trying to bait Iran into enforcing its insistence that Lebanon is included in cease fire. Or at the very least hoping by not responding (at least immediately) it adds pressure on Lebanese society & strains Iran-Hizb relations.
First, it is increasing the pressure on Lebanese society to foment civil strife and civil war. And certain Lebanese figures are not innocent of playing into this or taking advantage of it.
