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October 31, 2023
Dispatches on the War on Gaza
Bobuq Sayed, Dylan Saba, Hadas Binyamini, Mariam Barghouti, Nasreen Abd Elal, Natan Last, Sophia Goodfriend
There have been many dark hours in Gaza since war broke out on October 7, but on Friday, that darkness became literal: for 34 hours, internet and phone services were shut down, cutting off Gazans from one another and from the outside world. As the violence continues into a fourth week, we asked writers to share their perspectives on the unfolding crisis from across the globe — from the West...
October 31, 2023
Davy | Fiction
K Patrick
Ronnie did not know the bed-and-breakfast was haunted until she checked in. Then, there it was, proudly announced on a leaflet propped up on the desk. The Fifth Most Haunted Building in the Country. They went all over, assured the woman retrieving Ronnie’s room key, and this place came in the top five! The woman was proud, referred to the ghosts as “they.” Told Ronnie that they must have put...
October 25, 2023
Turning the Tables | The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process Revisited
Nancy Ko
Deep down, here’s what we already know: this is not just a war. It is not just a war because wars happen between states. It is not just a war because there is a world of difference between a military with the capacity to even consider cutting off water, electricity, and routes of escape to more than two million of its captives — and the people who are those captives....
October 24, 2023
“A Desperate Situation Getting More Desperate” | An Interview with Rashid Khalidi
The Drift
Since Hamas’s gruesome attack on October 7, we’ve watched as Israel has — with our government’s blessing and material aid — bombarded the captive residents of the Gaza Strip and displaced more than a million people. As protesters around the globe have expressed outrage at Israeli violence, a series of debates has played out on the American left: over whether mourning the deaths of 1,400 Israelis lends cover to Israel’s...
October 24, 2023
To the Watchlist | Poetry
George Abraham
a disappearing ghazal for my body, staying I get it. You’re obsessed with me. Damn the waters, now you’ll be blessed with me. When did you get this fabulous? A beloved said after reading your little profile, your unintentional publicity for me. I still hope someone spits in a zionist’s salad today, & not in a sexy way — Happy Aries Season to me! Call it what you will —...
October 24, 2023
the ghosts of the dead sea are rising | Poetry
George Abraham
from the waters] alight [with the oceans] alight [against] alight [this seasink] alight [into land] alight [of us] alight [turned robe] alight [of concrete] alight [and cement] alight [the desert] alight [bloomed] alight [into strip] alight [ma(u/l)l] alight [settler] alight [on branch] alight [of their own] alight [making] alight [they see us] alight [daily] alight [wade into] alight [beneath which] alight [o gaze] alight [o un-attention] alight [o hyper] alight...
October 23, 2023
Propaganda, Disinformation, Ideology | What the Fog of War Conceals
Erik Baker
The image of the “fog of war,” former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara explains in Errol Morris’s 2003 documentary of the same name, suggests that “war is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables.” In this way war resembles the rest of reality — a fact that McNamara perceives dimly but often succeeds in putting out of mind. “Belief and seeing, they’re...
July 12, 2023
The Bad Patient | Fake Illnesses, Illness Fakers, and the Problem of Medical Testimony
B.D. McClay
In July of 2022, a woman we’ll call F. logged onto Instagram and posted a selfie from the hospital. “Just been told I’m on life support for my blood pressure,” she wrote, tagging the post with various medical terms and conditions: #gastroparesis, #addisonsdisease, #pancreatitis, #fullbowelobstruction, and even #lifesupport. Three days later, she said she was out of the I.C.U. but still struggling. By September, she was dead. A scroll through...
July 11, 2023
Customs / Psychological | Fiction
Angelo Hernandez-Sias
CUSTOMS Julio was halfway through a text to Deja when the guard scanning his passport ordered him to follow. It was a slow, excruciating text, typed into the phone bought for him after the mugging, a brick, eight bucks, courtesy of the Foundation, i.e., one blue-eyed program coordinator who had taken pity on him, him and Sadiya both — Do you need a new one, the coordinator said, come with...
July 12, 2023
An Offer You Can’t Refuse | How a Mob Statute Metastasized
Piper French
For Shani Robinson, an activist and former educator in Atlanta, the ongoing racketeering trial against the rapper Young Thug and his record label YSL has occasioned a strong sense of déjà vu. Robinson has been ensnared in her own RICO — Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations — case for a decade now. Along the way, she has become a reluctant expert on the statute, but back when she was first...
