Joelle M. Abi-Rached
Dignity and Access | On Food and Power
Joelle M. Abi-Rached
Back during the end of history, Thomas Friedman presented his “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” in a 1996 New York Times op-ed. As he put it, “no two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.” There was “no question,” he declared, that McDonald’s “is part of this worldwide phenomenon of countries integrating with the global economy and submitting to its rules.” Today,...
Instruments of Siege | Gaza Under Blockade
Joelle M. Abi-Rached
When historians look back on the genocide in Gaza, they will be struck by the ways it both echoes and deviates from historical precedents. The deliberate, politically engineered famine combines old instruments of siege, including blockade tactics, with twentieth-century developments in caloric management: the control of food and other essentials to keep a population at subsistence level. It also bears distinctly 21st-century features, like the use of social media and...
