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Category: History/Archeology

How the unedifying ‘lessons of Iraq’ reappraisals obscure the war’s real lessons

How the unedifying ‘lessons of Iraq’ reappraisals obscure the war’s real lessons

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: During the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, Democratic Party candidate Bill Clinton distinguished himself from the Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush with regard to Bosnia by supporting a “lift and strike” policy. Armed with weapons from the old Yugoslav Army, Bosnian Serbs were on a rampage, and a United Nations embargo was preventing Muslim Bosniaks from being able to defend themselves, even as the Bush administration looked on. Clinton’s proposal would lift the arms blockade and…

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The Supreme Court’s supreme betrayal

The Supreme Court’s supreme betrayal

J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe write: The Supreme Court of the United States did a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation in Trump v. Anderson. In a stunning disfigurement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court impressed upon it an ahistorical misinterpretation that defies both its plain text and its original meaning. Despite disagreement within the Court that led to a 5–4 split among the justices over momentous but tangential issues that it had no need…

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The real reason Trump loves Putin

The real reason Trump loves Putin

Franklin Foer writes: For nearly the entirety of the past decade, a question has stalked, and sometimes consumed, American politics: Why do Donald Trump and his acolytes heap such reverent praise on Vladimir Putin? The question is born of disbelief. Adoration of the Russian leader, who murders his domestic opponents, kidnaps thousands of Ukrainian children, and interferes in American presidential elections, is so hard to comprehend that it seems only plausibly explained by venal motives—thus the search to find the…

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How Israel quietly crushed early American Jewish dissent on Palestine

How Israel quietly crushed early American Jewish dissent on Palestine

Debbie Nathan writes: The Israeli government covertly meddled into American Jewish politics from the 1950s to 1970s, and they did so to quash Jewish criticisms of the 1948 Nakba — the mass dispossession and expulsions of Palestinians during Israel’s founding — and Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Israeli diplomats who oversaw the furtive campaign were at one point assisted by Wolf Blitzer — today the host of CNN’s primetime show “The Situation Room.” These are some of the findings of “Our…

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Pankaj Mishra: Is Israel, in its survivalist psychosis, the portent of the future of a bankrupt and exhausted world?

Pankaj Mishra: Is Israel, in its survivalist psychosis, the portent of the future of a bankrupt and exhausted world?

  Pankaj Mishra, in a recent lecture, said: In​ 1977, a year before he killed himself, the Austrian writer Jean Améry came across press reports of systematic torture against Arab prisoners in Israeli prisons. Arrested in Belgium in 1943 while distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets, Améry himself had been brutally tortured by the Gestapo, and then deported to Auschwitz. He managed to survive, but could never look at his torments as things of the past. He insisted that those who are tortured…

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Biden can end the bombing of Gaza right now. Here’s how

Biden can end the bombing of Gaza right now. Here’s how

Mehdi Hasan writes: Picture the scene. An Israeli prime minister launches airstrikes on an Arab population. Civilians are killed in their thousands. An American president, stunned and shocked by the scenes of carnage on his TV screen, makes a call to his Israeli counterpart. And … within minutes … the bombing is over. Sound crazy? Or maybe simplistic? Perhaps naive, even? Yet, the year was 1982. What was supposed to have been a limited incursion into southern Lebanon by the…

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A new look at our linguistic roots

A new look at our linguistic roots

Kurt Kleiner writes: Almost half of all people in the world today speak an Indo-European language, one whose origins go back thousands of years to a single mother tongue. Languages as different as English, Russian, Hindustani, Latin and Sanskrit can all be traced back to this ancestral language. Over the last couple of hundred years, linguists have figured out a lot about that first Indo-European language, including many of the words it used and some of the grammatical rules that…

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AI used to decipher the Greek text of 2,000-year-old charred Herculaneum scroll

AI used to decipher the Greek text of 2,000-year-old charred Herculaneum scroll

Nature reports: A team of student researchers has made a giant contribution to solving one of the biggest mysteries in archaeology by revealing the content of Greek writing inside a charred scroll buried 2,000 years ago by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The winners of a contest called the Vesuvius Challenge trained their machine-learning algorithms on scans of the rolled-up papyrus, unveiling a previously unknown philosophical work that discusses senses and pleasure. The feat paves the way for artificial intelligence…

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Jill Habig’s amicus brief gives the Supreme Court’s originalists a taste of their own medicine

Jill Habig’s amicus brief gives the Supreme Court’s originalists a taste of their own medicine

The Guardian reports: When Jill Habig had an office down the hall from Kamala Harris in California, Barack Obama was US president, abortion was a constitutional right and January 6 was just another date on the calendar. A lot has happened since then. On Thursday Habig, now president of the non-profit Public Rights Project (PRP), hopes her arguments will persuade the supreme court that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist who should be disqualified from the 2024 presidential election. Habig has…

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Insurrection and Trump’s ineligibility for office

Insurrection and Trump’s ineligibility for office

Timothy Snyder writes: Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment bans oath-breaking insurrectionists from holding office. The Supreme Court of Colorado has ruled that Trump’s name should not appear on primary ballots in that state. In Trump v. Anderson, the Supreme Court will consider whether Colorado erred. Oral argument begins on Thursday. Under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, Trump disqualified himself from office on January 6th, 2021, at the very latest, when he violated his oath of office and took…

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What South Africa really won at the ICJ

What South Africa really won at the ICJ

Sasha Polakow-Suransky writes: For those with long memories, the seed of South Africa’s case against Israel—accusing it of genocidal acts in the Gaza Strip—might be traced to a spring day nearly 50 years ago. On Apr. 9, 1976, South Africa’s white supremacist prime minister, Balthazar Johannes Vorster, was welcomed with full red-carpet treatment to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The moment, for those who knew the prime minister’s past, was incongruous. A former Nazi sympathizer who had proudly…

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How Broadway helped Irgun’s Zionist terrorists in their war against British rule

How Broadway helped Irgun’s Zionist terrorists in their war against British rule

In a letter to the New York Times published on December 2, 1948, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and 26 other leading American Jews wrote: Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the…

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The past is being destroyed in Palestine — as well as the present

The past is being destroyed in Palestine — as well as the present

Olivia Snaije writes: It is nearly impossible today to imagine Gaza as a thriving port on the sparkling Mediterranean, where a rich socioeconomic exchange took place over thousands of years of human history. Yet for millennia, Gaza was an essential stopping point on the overland route between Africa, Asia and Europe. Rich archaeological treasures found in the area indicate that trading was brisk throughout the Bronze Age — including finds indicating a close relationship with Ancient Egypt — to Hellenic…

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The U.S. lacks what every democracy needs

The U.S. lacks what every democracy needs

Richard L. Hasen writes: The history of voting in the United States shows the high cost of living with an old Constitution, unevenly enforced by a reluctant Supreme Court. Unlike the constitutions of many other advanced democracies, the U.S. Constitution contains no affirmative right to vote. We have nothing like Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, providing that “every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of…

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Germany and Israel’s genocidal partnership draws strong rebuke from Namibia

Germany and Israel’s genocidal partnership draws strong rebuke from Namibia

The Times of Israel reports: The German government sharply rejects allegations before the UN’s top court that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza and warned against “political instrumentalization” of the charge. Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit says in a statement that Israel was “defending itself” after the “inhuman” attacks by Hamas on October 7. He says Germany would intervene as a third party before the ICJ under an article allowing states to seek clarification on the use of a multilateral convention….

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Don’t turn away from the charges of genocide against Israel

Don’t turn away from the charges of genocide against Israel

Megan K. Stack writes: The word genocide rings loudly in our imagination. We think of Rwanda, Bosnia, the Armenians, the Trail of Tears and, of course, the Holocaust. I have heard many people balk at the suggestion that Gaza could be experiencing genocide. The Holocaust, after all, wiped out over 60 percent of European Jews. Israel’s war — instigated, no less, by the murder of Jews — has killed about 1 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza. One percent is…

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