“All That’s Left of You” — a moving and brilliant film by Cherien Dabis that captures the trauma of the Palestinian nakba. Film opens in a limited number of US theaters on Friday.

Once in a while, @nytimes.com goes with a local headline on a major international story

"The last thing that protesters in Iran need are threats of intervention from the U.S. government. The last thing that the U.S. needs is another conflict in the Middle East." daniellarison.substack.com/p/trumps-thr...

NY Post home page on Mamdani’s inauguration. You can always count on Rupert Murdoch’s Post to scrape the bottom of the journalistic barrel.

“When I look at Mamdani, I didn’t see some radical departure from the past. I see him as the heir to an old and venerable Jewish tradition – that of Yiddish socialism – which helped build New York” — powerful essay by the inimitable @mollycrabapple.bsky.social

“Data is power and data is control. And these American cloud providers allow the Israeli military to store a lot of data and to sift through it very effectively. That has direct consequences for people on the ground” — excellent interview with journalist Yuval Abraham

My latest op-ed in Globe and Mail on AI race between China and US. Trump’s war on talent in universities and international scholars may kill what pwas US has had www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

US taxpayers pay $8.6 billion for Israel’s new F-15 warplanes, while Israelis get universal healthcare and heavily-subsidized college education from their government

Hi it's my birthday. If you think I have added anything to your bsky experience, please donate to the Elhakawati Theater in Jerusalem. el-hakawati.org/support-us/s...

An infuriating NYT analysis: “For more than a decade, war has ravaged the Middle East. Will it persist in conflict, or forge a brighter future?” As if people of the region chose all this war and destruction and it wasn't imposed on them by the US and its proxies since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Trump always thought it was more important to build his brand than to build a business. Now he's using the presidency as the ultimate branding opportunity — my latest @theguardian.com | www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“Trump is using the US presidency as the ultimate branding opportunity. He’s slapping his name on as many buildings, monuments and government projects as he can” — my latest for @theguardian.com

While Bethlehem Holds First Full Christmas Since Genocide Began, Little to Celebrate in Gaza

Israel has bombed Lebanon once every 4 hours on average since a “ceasefire” took effect in late November 2024, according to ACLED, an independent conflict monitor.

Powerful and poignant piece by @aidaalami.bsky.social in Columbia Journalism Review on how Western legacy media covers Gaza | www.cjr.org/the_media_to...

“Friend-of-the-court briefs, or amicus briefs, are increasingly being used as a litigation tactic rather than for their intended purpose. Federal rules around disclosing who is funding them are pretty anemic” — important reporting by @karenzraick.bsky.social

I want to add that the same is happening in the UAE, despite the outside facing, English-speaking young “influencers” emerging on X/Twitter, agitating against the Muslim Brotherhood while using pro-Israel talking points. Domestically, we’ve had two good years of solid re-education on Palestine.

As Greenpeace and Energy Transfer head back to court tomorrow in North Dakota, new details on the effort to get the state's top court to block the enviro group's countersuit against the pipeline giant in Amsterdam www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/c...

Saudi Arabia ‘sets new death penalty record in a year’. Riyadh breaks its own record for death sentences carried out annually, with 340 executions, according to AFP tally. www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-a...

“A Paramount takeover of Warner Bros could mean not only that his son-in-law and Arab allies are a crucial part of the deal, but it could also ensure that CNN’s parent company has a Trump-friendly owner. It would be a win-win for Trump – and a loss for democracy and rule of law” — @theguardian.com

“In Trump’s transactional and corrupt approach to governance, it certainly helps that Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros directly involves Jared Kushner and the three Arab petrostates that have struck lucrative business deals with the Trump Organization” — my latest for @theguardian.com

Designating MB as terrorist is “comparable to what RFK Jr is doing to vaccines –a manifestly harmful policy driven by crackpot ideologues using state power to impose their fringe views based on no evidence to win applause from the worst right wing radicals.” abuaardvarkghost.ghost.io/the-muslim-b...

New: Pregnant immigrant women are showing up to deliver their babies w/ surveillance smart watches on their wrists as part of an ICE monitoring program. They’re too afraid of being detained to have the watch cut off even when it’s medically necessary. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado secretly left Venezuela on a small fishing boat. Her allies worried the US military bomb her boat: “We coordinated that she was going to leave by a specific area so that they would not blow up the boat.”

“Like millions of Syrians in the diaspora, I had resigned myself to the idea that I may never see my birth country without Assad in charge. But an 11-day rebel offensive led by Ahmed al-Sharaa changed all of that” — powerful, personal essay by @hhassan.bsky.social on anniversary of Assad's fall

A quick dispatch from Damascus, on the eve of the anniversary of the Assad regime’s collapse.

“Rather than confront the devastation that Americans have wrought on Afghanistan, Trump and his acolytes are eager to demonize the people of a ‘broken’ country – one the US helped destroy” — my latest for @theguardian.com

My latest for @aljazeera.com "Why Qatar lives rent-free in the far right’s head: Conservative influencers are playing a central role in a new campaign of weaponising Islamophobia" www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202... #lauraloomer #tommyrobinson

“A Ceasefire in Name Only” — @scotnational.bsky.social is not afraid to call out Israel's continued attacks on Gaza

The most notable thing about this State Dept. press release: Trump and Rubio decided to literally replace the United States with Trump. The building that was called the U.S. Institute of Peace is now the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.

Pleased to speak with @nickturse.bsky.social. “Oversight needs to be broader than this one incident. It needs to cover the entire maritime bombing campaign. And it needs to go beyond the Department of Defense. We need to know how this policy was formulated in the first instance.”

Democrats in Congress Are Out of Touch With Constituents on Israeli Genocide

I wrote for @theguardian.com on Trump using the National Guard shooting to demonize Afghans refugees — and how the US has yet to reckon with the blowback caused by its foreign invasions and war on terror | www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

ICYMI: This is such important reporting by @jgedeon.bsky.social at the Guardian on the American teenager who was held in an Israeli prison until last week www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

“In the generation since George W. Bush’s administration unleashed its global war on terror – invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq – the US has failed to reckon with all the ways its legacy of violence abroad eventually comes home” — my latest @theguardian.com

A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon took effect a year ago today. Since then, Israel has violated the ceasefire nearly 10,000 times: 7,500 violations of Lebanese airspace and almost 2,500 ground violations, according to the UN.

A year on from the ceasefire in Lebanon, near daily attacks continue, while others worry about another intensification similar to last year’s. I report from Beirut on the fear in Lebanon and how people are responding to the current moment. www.aljazeera.com/features/202...

Congratulations to my NYU colleague and friend @keshavarziana.bsky.social for winning the Middle East Studies Association's Roger Owen Book Award for his exceptional book, “Making Space For the Gulf: Histories of Regionalism and the Middle East”

Trump fell in love with Mamdani, who didn’t even give him a luxury plane or invest billions in Trump’s real estate and crypto ventures

“With little restraint on his power, Trump has expanded his corrupt and transactional method of governing in his second term. And autocrats like MBS are eager to benefit from Trump’s brazen effort to use the presidency to enrich himself and his family” — my latest for @theguardian.com

Elliott Abrams says regime change is the only way forward in Venezuela and nothing could go wrong. Just like with Iraq. Do we really have to do this again? www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

It's almost as if one of the belligerents doesn't honor its ceasefire commitments.

After the Jan 6 attack, when the Trump brand became toxic, Saudi Arabia became one of the most important sources of new deals for the Trump Organization. My latest for @theguardian.com on how Trump and MBS bailed each other out | www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

When Trump was out of power, Saudi Arabia became one of the most important sources of new deals for the Trump brand, which had become toxic after the Jan 6 attack. Trump has now reciprocated by absolving MBS for ordering Jamal Khashoggi's assassination — my latest @theguardian.com