Zohran Mamdani with Donald Trump at the White House, February 26, 2026. IMAGE/Zohran Mamdani
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent this past weekend
celebrating his first 100 days (or thereabouts) in office, holding two
rallies on Sunday together with his mentor, Bernie Sanders. “102 days
ago, we stood together at the dawn of a new era. The world watched,
wondering if change could really come,” Mamdani told the crowd of
supporters in Queens at the second of the two rallies. “With what we’ve
accomplished in 14 weeks, imagine what we can do in four years.”
The
weekend’s campaign-style events were supplemented with a new city-run
website touting Mamdani’s accomplishments in his first 100 days: $1.2
billion secured for universal childcare, $9.3 million secured in worker
and small business restitution and 100,000 potholes fixed.
While
Mamdani was busy patting himself on the back for initiatives like
“fixing a bump on the Williamsburg Bridge,” a critical analysis of the
last three-and-a-half months of the standard bearer for the Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA) sheds a different light on the content of
the supposed “new era” ushered in on January 1.
Speaking on his
accomplishments before an audience of supporters on Sunday, Mamdani did
not dare to highlight the most important political initiative of his
term thus far: his alliance with President Donald Trump. Mamdani has
continued what he calls a productive relationship with the man he
correctly characterizes as a fascist, meeting with Trump at the White
House for a second time on the eve of the criminal war in Iran.
In two addresses Sunday, speaking well over 5,000 words, Mamdani not
once uttered the name “Trump.” He made zero references to the war in
Iran, and managed just one fleeting mention of ICE. The omissions are
not an accident. Mamdani, playing up his “democratic socialism” before
an audience overwhelmingly hostile to Trump, would rather avoid dwelling
on the blossoming partnership with the leading advocate of world war
and dictatorship.
Despite his reticence on the subject, Mamdani’s
collaboration with Trump is extremely significant. Mamdani and the
Democratic Socialists of America are put forward as the “left”
alternative to the pro-business and pro-war politics of the Democratic
Party establishment and the fascist politics of the Republicans. Mamdani
himself was elected on the basis of left-wing appeals to address the
affordability crisis and take on a system dominated by an oligarchy.
In
the first months of the Mamdani administration, the strain on the
working class is not abating; on the contrary, it’s reaching a breaking
point. Trump’s criminal war in Iran is the latest catalyst. The
administration is determined to make the working class pay for the
unfolding disaster. Trump has requested $200 billion in supplemental war
funds specifically for Iran, and roughly $1.5 trillion in military
spending next year—a World War III budget. Beyond the inevitable cuts to
social services to pay for war, the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz
has already led to major increases in energy prices and will reverberate
into all aspects of the economy. And an expansion of the war would have
catastrophic consequences for the working class everywhere.
Alongside
the war crimes in Iran, Trump is continuing to eviscerate democratic
rights within the United States. Trump’s immigration Gestapo operates
without constraints. ICE agents in New York City have arrested three
times as many people in the first month and a half of 2026 as they did
in the same period a year ago. Meanwhile, Trump is preparing the
narrative that midterm elections—if they happen at all—are illegitimate
and can be overturned.
When Rashid Khalidi canceled the History of the Modern Middle East course he was set to teach as a special lecturer this fall, he cited Columbia’s July 15 adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism as the reason.
However, his 2021 decision to retire as a full-time faculty member was not related to concerns over academic freedom. Instead, as Khalidi explained in an interview with Spectator, he was worried that Columbia was prioritizing its financial interests over its academic ones.
“They don’t really care about the educational values that I thought Columbia represented and that I think it did represent when I first arrived,” Khalidi said in an interview with Spectator.
Born in New York City in 1948, Khalidi grew up around Columbia, where his father earned his Ph.D. in 1955.
“I used to play in the steps of Low Library when the poor man was at Butler,” Khalidi said.
Khalidi first taught at the University from 1985 to 1987 before joining the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he developed a large lecture course titled History of the Modern Middle East, which covered the history of the Middle East from the 18th century to the present.
He returned to Columbia in 2003 as the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies, a position in the history department named for the Palestinian-American academic and Columbia professor whose book “Orientalism” transformed the field of postcolonial studies.
“A lot of his writing was on Palestine, and that had an enormous effect at Columbia because people engaged with his ideas, and many of them came around to a different view than they had started from,” Khalidi said of Said’s work.
When Said threw a rock across the Lebanon-Israel border in 2000, then-Provost Jonathan Cole, CC ’64, GSAS ’69, and then-University President George Rupp came to his defense in a Spectator op-ed on the grounds of academic freedom.
“There is nothing more fundamental to a university than the protection of the free discourse of individuals who should feel free to express their views without fear of the chilling of a politically dominant ideology,” Cole wrote.
Since Khalidi was offered the position in 2002, he has faced backlash over his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. In 2005, the New York Department of Education dismissed Khalidi from leading a course for K-12 teachers after a New York Sun article took issue with his views on Israel. Khalidi said that he and the Middle East Institute, which he led, were featured in the New York Sun “two or three times a week.”
“Sure, the comfort level of these Jewish kids is important,” Khalidi told the New Yorker in 2008. “And some of them have real complaints. But education is about the exchange of ideas, it’s about arguments over ideas, and you can’t have an argument over ideas if you carry the ‘comfort level’ of a kindergarten.”
Despite the backlash, Khalidi continued teaching at Columbia for two decades.
A woman passes in front of an anti-American mural on April 12, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. IMAGE/ Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
The most important lesson of the First World War is that leaders who think they can manage escalation usually can’t.
Saturday’s back-to-back headlines on The Washington Post were: “’They Have Chosen Not To Accept Our Terms,’ Vance Says” and “U.S. Intelligence Shows China Taking A More Active Role In Iran War.” They echo headlines from a century ago that reported on the early days of what quickly became World War I.
In 2021, China and Iran became military allies, signing a “broad strategic partnership encompassing economic, diplomatic, and security dimensions.” Russia signed a similar comprehensive military/security agreement with Iran in January of last year. The three countries are now military allies and formally assisting each other. Hold that thought.
Then, on Sunday morning, America’s resident madman Donald Trump announced on his Nazi-infested social media site that the United States Navy will illegally blockade the Strait of Hormuz—the narrow chokepoint through which twenty percent of the world’s oil used to flow every day—threatening to intercept “every vessel in International Waters” that’s paid a toll to Iran.
The US blockade of the Strait begins the hour that this article was published: 10 AM ET on Monday, April 13th.
What happens when a US destroyer orders a Chinese-flagged tanker to heave to in the Strait of Hormuz and a Chinese warship sails between them?
That means all the shipping of oil for China and drones for Russia
will be intercepted by the US. We’re now blocking the war and energy
supplies of nations that have nuclear weapons
and whose military assets are already in the region. And it came just
hours after the peace talks in Islamabad—led by three American grifters
with absolutely no diplomatic experience—had predictably collapsed.
What
happens next will depend entirely on whether anyone in this
administration has ever seriously studied what happened the last time a
similar cascade of great-power commitments, cornered leaders, and
military miscalculations all converged at once.
A hundred and
twelve years ago this summer, a young Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip
fired two shots in Sarajevo, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria-Hungary.
What followed was a deadly catastrophe, because
every major European power had spent the previous forty years putting
together mutual defense treaties with other major European powers.
(In the 1908 Bosnian Crisis Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia, land that Serbia claimed; the Serbs were humiliated and furious. The Balkan Wars of 1912-13
left Serbia stronger and more willing to reach out to the Slavic people
still living under Austria-Hungarian rule, particularly those in
Bosnia, further enraging the Austria-Hungarians.)
Everybody was
armed to the teeth and, frankly, paranoid about everybody else. So, when
Franz Ferdinand’s assassination gave Austria-Hungary an excuse to
punish it’s longtime enemy Serbia, those treaties clicked into place
like the tumblers of a massive combination lock and the doors of hell
swung open onto the most catastrophic war the world had, at that time,
ever seen.
Zubaan Aur Tehzeeb [Language and Civilisation] is a recent book by Dr
Safdar Rasheed, an author and researcher on language and culture, which
is based on a series of discussions that Dr Rasheed held during his
post-doctoral stay at Heidelberg University in Germany.
Instead of relying only on documents and archives when writing the
book, he also spoke to European and South Asian scholars, teachers and
writers on language, culture and education. Urdu, Hindi and Sanskrit are
Dr Rasheed’s main interests, but there are dialogues in the book on
Bengali, Tamil and Nepali as well. Through these, he explores these
languages’ history, shared roots, conflicts and their links with
religion and the nation. He also looks at their present condition.
One strength of the book is Dr Rasheed’s method of writing. He does
not dominate the discussions. He simply asks questions and lets the
other person speak freely. This makes the book more open and diverse in
tone.
The first dialogue with Dr Anand Mishra, who became associated with
Heidelberg University’s Department of Cultural and Religious History in
2009, concerns Sanskrit. It challenges the common view that Sanskrit was
the language of only Brahmins. We learn that it once served as a
“cosmopolitan” language across South Asia, written in various scripts
and used in many regions. The discussion offers an overview of
Sanskrit’s evolution, from an oral to a written tradition and traces it
to South Asia’s oldest intellectual history.
Through a series of dialogues with scholars, a recent Urdu book
examines language, identity and culture across South Asia and Europe
As an elite language Sanskrit was used by educated and scholarly
groups for intellectual, religious and literary purposes. At the same
time, it functioned as a lingua franca among people across different
religions. So Dr Mishra says, people from the north of India could
communicate with South Indians through Sanskrit. He also notes that much
of South Asia’s ancient literature, including philosophical and
scientific texts, is preserved in Sanskrit, making it one of the richest
classical traditions in the world. Dr Mishra further explains that many
modern South Asian languages emerged from, or were deeply influenced
by, Sanskrit. Therefore, he describes them as tributaries of a larger
linguistic river that is Sanskrit.
Finally, the discussion connects language to identity, culture and
learning in the present day. Dr Mishra stresses that studying multiple
languages helps uncover shared histories and encourages cultural
exchange rather than division. Therefore, languages should not be seen
as enemies.
The Urdu-Hindi conflict is not a conflict and shouldn’t be a matter
of concern. The actual concern, he warns, is the English language and
Americanisation, which is being spread in the name of so-called
“globalisation”.
The most important dialogue in the context of today’s South Asia is
with Dr Pankaj Prashar, associate professor of Hindi at Aligarh Muslim
University. Here, the focus is on Urdu and Hindi and Dr Prashar’s main
aim is to highlight the shared past of these two languages. Instead of
stressing their differences, he emphasises their similarities. According
to him, insisting too much on difference only feeds conflicts related
to identity, which we already see taking place on both sides of the
border, especially in India.
Jacqueline Luqman (BAP Coordinating Committee Chair), Margaret Kimberley (Africa Team Co-coordinator), and Netfa Freeman (Africa Team Co-coordinator) joined @YourWorldNewsMedia.
They discussed critical issues being suppressed by the U.S. corporate media and government, combating the lies and false propaganda that are fueling the brutal imperialist war on Iran and pushing towards a World War.
The Indian subcontinent (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan) was unified under British colonial rule. In 1947, India was divided into India and Pakistan. In 1971, Pakistan got divided into Pakistan and Bangladesh. Since coming to power in 2014, Hindu nationalist Modi’s hatred of minorities, particularly Muslims, has created internal division and turned Muslims into second class citizens.
On the other side, Pakistan today is facing another crisis which, if not handled humanely and fairly, could result in yet another division.
The Indian subcontinent is not a homogeneous entity, it is an amalgam of various ethnicities, one could say nations. India is suppressing Kashmir‘s autonomy. The southern states in India are not happy, too, with the central government. Ditto with the northeastern states.
Same situation exists in Pakistan: the province of Punjab’s domination since Pakistan’s creation forced the majority province of East Pakistan to secede, and form the new nation of Bangladesh. The other three provinces, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly NFP or North Western Frontier Province), and Balochistan are not happy either — especially Balochistan. It is sparsely populated, and is the largest province and is also the most ignored by the central government.
As Pakistan marks the 65th anniversary of its independence, the ongoing rebellion of the Baloch is a damning verdict on the country’s ruling-class. The fact that the national question remains arguably the most salient fault line in the country’s politics — not just in Balochistan, but in Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan, and even inside Punjab itself — illustrates the colossal failure of the State’s attempts to chloroform popular aspirations in the hollow language of “national unity.”
Balochistan Liberation Army
On March 11, 2025, BLA members, based in the Baluchistan region of Afghanistan, hijacked Jaffar Express, a train with over 440 passengers in Pakistan on its way from Quetta, Balochistan to Peshawar, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
The 1,600km (994-mile) train journey from Quetta to Peshawar takes more than 30 hours to complete with more than 30 stops along the way. IMAGE/Al Jazeera
The clash between the government forces and the hijackers lasted over 36 hours and resulted in the death of 33 hijackers, 26 hostages, and 5 security personnel. BLA attacks have been steadily prevalent as is evident from the list of all the BLA attacks over the recent times.
Government reaction
Pakistan, Iran, the United Kingdom, China, the European Union, and the United States have declared BLA a terrorist organization. It is widely believed that BLA gets support from India and Afghanistan.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif (PML-N) issued a statement similar to other world leaders’ when confronted with such situations. An extract:
“We will continue the war against the monster of terrorism until it is completely eradicated from the country. We will thwart every conspiracy to spread insecurity and chaos in Pakistan.”
President Asif Zardari’s (PPP) declaration was no different:
The Balochistan issue is a decades old problem and needs some serious planning and negotiations with the Balochi people and their leaders, rather than issuing worn out useless statements.
“Balochistan only enters the mind of mainland Pakistan when something spectacular happens.”
The tragedy is that governments are not interested in listening to the Baloch grievances or to enter into negotiations. The PML-N’s previous government had made an indirect effort but it didn’t yield results because of its lack of enthusiasm to grant Baloch requests, or to continue negotiations.
“The latest wave of militant violence gripping the country may have shaken the corridors of power but so far there have been few signs of any course correction. There is not even an attempt to understand what has gone wrong and what needs to be done.”
Nothing has changed in the government’s approach, and the situation has worsened.
Government crack down
Thousands of Balochis have been protesting over the disappearance of their relatives and friends. Over 5,000 Balochis are missing but the government refuses to take any action. Critics of the administration are jailed. The Pakistani government’s indifference towards Balochi peoples’ plight and their grievances has exacerbated the situation.
Human rights lawyer Imaan Mazari (right) with her husband and fellow lawyer Hadi Ali Chattha, during a court hearing in Islamabad on December 5, 2025. IMAGE/AFP-JIJI/Human Rights Research Center
A human rights activist and lawyer Imaan Mazari fights for the rights of various communities and, also, defends journalists. She fights for Balochi struggle for their rights and has been incarcerated many times. In January 2026, she, along with her husband, human rights lawyer Hadi Ali Chattha, were sentenced to 17 years in prison. The judgement read:
“She propagated a narrative that aligned with hostile terrorist groups and proscribed organisations and individuals. Her contents incited ethnic hatred, undermined public trust on state organisations and portrayed the armed forces are behind terrorism and forced disappearances.”
The judgement further noted the tweets made between 2021 and 2025 by Mazari “portrayed the agenda” of the banned Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
The Pakistani military spokesperson Lieutenant General, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, accused Mazari of “terrorism:”
“They operate under the guise of democracy and human rights to promote terrorism.”
Defending people against the Pakistani government’s terrorism becomes “terrorism.” It is the strange reality currently prevalent in Pakistan (also true in most of the world today).
People, associated with the United Nations (UN), who have expertise in human rights urged the Pakistan government to not equate freedom of expression with “criminal” behavior or “terrorism”.
“Lawyers, like other individuals, are entitled to freedom of expression. The exercise of this right should never be conflated with criminal conduct, especially not terrorism.” “Doing so risks undermining and criminalising the work of lawyers and human rights defenders across Pakistan and has a chilling effect on civil society in the country.”
Journalist Arifa Noor points out that news about Imaan Mazari “on the idiot box is a no-no.” The result is that the issue does not receive coverage.
According to Balochistan Times, Pakistan’s intelligence agencies use death squads made up of local men, “mostly thieves and drug peddlers,” who “sell drugs, loot, abduct and kill without fear of consequences.” These squads hold protest rallies, against Baloch political activists.
Many Balochis fighting for their rights have been murdered. In 2013 alone, 116 bodies were discovered throughout the province.
Activists murdered
In 2016, the BBC had named Baloch as one of its 100 ‘inspirational and influential women’ IMAGE/Karima Baloch’s Twitter/Al Jazeera
In May 2014, Karima Mehrab Baloch, first woman to be a chairperson of Baloch Student Organization (BSO-Azad), outlined the murderous nature of the Pakistani security agencies:
“… many of our members have been brutally killed and thousands have been abducted. Two months back, the chairman of my organization was kidnapped right in front of my eyes. Before that, in 2009, the vice-chairman of our organization Zakir Majeed was kidnapped by the secret services while he was attending a crowded procession.”
In 2013, BSO-Azad, Pakistan’s largest ethnic Baloch student group was banned on charges of “terrorism” — the easiest excuse to arrest, ban, or even kill. Sensing danger to her life, Karima exiled herself to Canada. In 2020, Karima’s dead “body was found near Toronto.”
Baloch activists, particularly those calling for independence, have been subject for years to a sustained and documented campaign of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, local and international rights groups say.
That same year, journalist Sajid Hussain Baloch‘s body was found in Sweden’s Fyris River. Between 2012 and 2017, he lived his years in exile in Oman, UAE, and Uganda where in 2015 he started Balochistan Times. In 2017, he settled in Sweden.
There has been a sharp escalation in Baloch separatist violence over the past five years, with 2025, the deadliest year on record. “According to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, the province sawat least 254 attacks in 2025 (a 26 per cent increase from the previous year) resulting in more than 400 deaths.”
Sometimes bodies of Balochis are just thrown in graves, without being covered with a shroud, by the authorities.
Pakistan needs to tackle the Balochi problem
Globally and regionally, the world is changing rapidly. Old alliances are disappearing or losing relevance. New ones are being formed; some are in embryonic stages. Then, there are US and Israel led wars in Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon, and in particular, against Iran that have created economic hardships, rise in inflation, and shortage of oil and gas due to the blockade of Strait of Hormuz.
In the face of this reality, Pakistan’s leaders are gloating in the worldwide coverage of their role as mediators between Iran and the US. But that is not going to solve the pressing economic problems facing the country.
Then, there are problems in the neighborhood. Pakistan’s relations with two of its four neighbors are not good at all. With India, Modi’s unnecessary rigidity and his four day war with Pakistan last May further deteriorated the already strained relations.
Also, for some time now, the war between Afghanistan and Pakistan has resulted in border closings affecting Pakistan’s trade with Central Asia. Pakistan is now using different routes via Iran and China making it more costly and time consuming.
With Afghanistan, an additional problem exists of the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) <1>, a Jihadi group operating from Afghanistan, that the Pakistani authorities accuse of supporting BLA.
Already financially constrained, Pakistan faced another problem recently, when UAE suddenly demanded its loan of $3.5 billion back. The reason being the UAE wanted to see Iran nuked but Pakistan argued that if Israel nuked Iran today, they’ll come after Gulf countries tomorrow. Saudi Arabia and Qatar came to Pakistan’s rescue with billions of dollars.
In this critical situation, Crisistan should try to keep peace within its borders, by:
granting due rights to Balochi people
letting Balochis decide what course their province wants to take
release the thousands of Balochis if still alive, and the whereabouts of all who have disappeared by the army
the central government should contribute towards the economic development of the province
and so on …
Only steps to placate Balochistan would permit the government to concentrate on other critical problems facing the country, rather than wasting its energy on fighting its own people.
<1> Looking for “strategic depth,” Pakistan wanted to use friendly Afghanistan as an area to retreat in case of an Indian attack. The idea germinated during Benazir Bhutto’s rule. But now, things have changed so much that Afghanistan has become a pit full of anti-Pakistan terrorist groups, including TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan), which consists of several armed militant groups. This, in turn, has led to unjust and inhumane deportation of Afghan refugees, many of them had settled in Pakistan for decades.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com
United Nations expert
Francesca Albanese’s latest report warns that Israel is systematically
torturing Palestinians on a scale that “suggests collective vengeance
and destructive intent” and that “torture has effectively become state
policy” since October 2023.
Of all the investigations Albanese has carried out, “this has been
absolutely the most excruciating, that led me to say that Israel uses
torture in a systematic and widespread fashion, intentionally and
sadistically, to break the spirit of the Palestinians, not just as
individuals, but as a people,” says Albanese, the U.N. special
rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory since 2022.
This comes as Israeli forces reportedly tortured a Palestinian
toddler earlier this month, by using a cigarette to burn one of the
child’s legs and a nail to puncture the other, in order to coerce a
confession from his father.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:
An Israeli court has closed an investigation into the death of Walid
Ahmad, a 17-year-old from the occupied West Bank who died in an Israeli
jail six months after he was arrested, held without charges and accused
of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. An autopsy showed Ahmad likely
starved to death after suffering extreme weight loss, muscle wasting and
untreated scabies. Human rights groups say nearly a hundred
Palestinians have died in Israeli jails since October 2023.
Meanwhile, local and international media outlets report Israeli
forces recently tortured a Palestinian toddler in Gaza to coerce a
confession from his father. According to reports from Palestine TV, Al
Jazeera and others, the child’s father, Osama Abu Nassar, was detained
near the al-Maghazi refugee camp after he came under fire from Israeli
soldiers. He was forced to approach an Israeli checkpoint, where he was
separated from his 18-month-old son, stripped naked and forced to watch
as soldiers used a cigarette to burn one of the toddler’s legs while
using a nail to puncture the other.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as a new U.N. report
warns Israel is systematically torturing Palestinians on a scale that
“suggests collective vengeance and destructive intent.” The report,
titled “Torture and Genocide,” was written by Francesca Albanese, the
U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.
In July, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on her over her report
naming dozens of companies she says are profiting from Israeli
occupation and genocide in Gaza. Amnesty International blasted the
sanctions as, quote, “shameless and transparent attack on the
fundamental principles of international justice.” Francesca Albanese’s
new book is When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine. She joins us from Geneva, Switzerland.
Francesca, thank you so much for being with us. Why don’t you lay out what you found in your new report, “Torture and Genocide,” that you just presented at the U.N. Human Rights Council?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Thank you. Thank you, Amy and Nermeen.
I’ve been investigating genocide for over two years now. So, five out
of eight reports I’ve produced for the United Nations focus on
genocide, acts of genocide, the context in which a genocide happens, why
the genocide is not stopped, the layers of complicity from states and
private companies, which is the reason why also I’m sanctioned by the
United States, against which now my 13-year-old daughter, who’s an
American citizen, is the only one to take action suing the Trump
administration. But of all the investigations I’ve carried out, this has
been absolutely the most excruciating, that led me to say that Israel
uses torture in a systematic and widespread fashion, intentionally and
sadistically, to break the spirit of the Palestinians, not just as
individuals, but as a people, considering the scale and intensity of
torture.
And I monitored torture behind bars, collecting hundreds, hundreds of
testimonies, directly and from Palestinian and Israeli human rights
organizations, but also analyzing what experts call torturous
environment, meaning the cumulative impact of all the practices, of all
the crimes that Israel has massively inflicted on the Palestinians —
again, beyond the torture, sodomization, raping in jail, the enforced
disappearance, which is touching 4,000 people. This is new. This is a
new crime, including for Israel, toward the Palestinians. But also
starvation, constant forced displacement, not just in Gaza, but in the
West Bank and East Jerusalem, and home demolition, the fear of being
always threatened with death or other crimes, it creates a torturous
environment for the Palestinians, which is an essential element of
genocide. And it is genocide.
Below is an open letter from a group of Jewish authors to the
Jewish Book Council (JBC). A group of us—consisting of writers with
books eligible for the 2025 National Jewish Book Awards and those who
have written for their magazine, had our books reviewed in their pages,
or had some connection to the JBC—came together because we felt that the
JBC, the pre-eminent US organization for Jewish writers and literature,
did not represent or value us, as non- and anti-Zionist Jewish writers.
Further, we were—and remain—concerned that the institution’s apparent
bias toward centering Israeli and Zionist voices is not only
exclusionary but harmful, contributing to the dehumanization of
Palestinians and advancing a system of cultural apartheid.
To name a few practical examples of this bias: Since October 7, 2023,
JBC leadership has spoken to national press about anti-Semitism and
violence against Jews while remaining silent about the loss of life to
Palestinians; has taken special care to highlight Israeli narratives and
Zionist voices in the announcement of—and choice of recipients of—their
2025 National Jewish Book Awards; has launched an anti-Semitism
reporting tool that did not offer any definition of anti-Semitism (thus
rendering anti-Zionist voices vulnerable); and has posted a round-up on
social media of Jewish AWP panels that only included ones with a Zionist
bent and excluded those with a non- or anti-Zionist lens.
We sent this letter directly to the JBC first because the JBC is a
historically social justice-oriented institution, and we wanted to have a
good faith conversation about how they might expand their awards,
programming, and institutional vision to support non- and anti-Zionist
voices. They agreed to a conversation, and we met with their leadership
in a moderated Zoom conversation, where representatives from our
informal coalition asked questions about the JBC’s actions—including the
use of the data from their anti-Semitism reporting tool and their role
in curating and publicizing panels of Jewish interest at AWP 2025—and
proposed a number of specific ideas for more inclusive programming and
messaging. The JBC’s leadership listened and promised to follow up.
We are Jewish authors who believe in Jewish books, and for whom Palestinian liberation is a moral imperative.
Unfortunately, no follow-up has been forthcoming and none of our
proposed action steps have been implemented, even after several
additional attempts to reach out for status updates. We felt
disappointed that no action steps were taken. We have now decided to
publish our original letter as an open letter to the literary and
cultural community in the hopes that even more Jewish authors will sign
in support and that the JBC will finally take meaningful action.
Khánh Ly and Tr?nh Công S?n in 1967. IMAGE/ YouTube screengrab.
From AI to Bob Dylan to Van Dung, songwriters and singers have captured the moment of conflict like few others have.
In the third week of March, a video circulated on social media ‘on behalf of the women of Iran’ contained a song titled ‘Hey America! Hey Israel!’ with lyrics that went as follows:
“Hey America, keep your bombs to yourself Stay away from our land, this is our homeland And our freedom belongs in our own hands We don’t want your democratic bombs Take your poison, take your filth, and get out.”
The song emerged around June 2025 as a
viral protest anthem against American and Israeli foreign policy in
West Asia, specifically within the context of Iranian protests from
2022, where women played a huge part in resistance against the regime.
The song was not identified with any specific person or group. It also
became known an example of a hugely successful protest song that was
AI-generated. It was circulated through social media activist networks,
and was one which could respond to events with appropriate lyrics as
they unfolded.
The lyrics of the song in a sense sum
up the politics of the current conjuncture, opposing American-Israeli
aggression which is being called a war of liberation waged on behalf of
the Iranian people, justified by the fact that they have been protesting
conditions in their own country. In a sense, the song also symbolises
the vastly different conditions of production and circulation of
campaign material in an era where the global anti-war movement, as it
emerged during and after the World War II, has become fragmented and has
largely dissipated.
In the post-World War II world, there
have been several wars waged by the US, beginning with the Vietnam War
in the 1955-75 period, the two Gulf wars against Iraq in 1990 and 2003,
against Afghanistan from 2001 onwards, against Libya in 2011 and several
other military actions, where the narrative has been similar.
Music and musicians have played an important role in protesting these wars, even if the most extensive repertoires that are known are from the Vietnam war.
In the period from 1969 to 1975, vast
repertoires of music got created and performed protesting the Vietnam
war. In America itself, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and several
others, wrote and sang songs that became iconic as anti-war anthems. Bob
Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, Pete Seeger’s ‘Where Have All The
Flowers Gone’ and ‘Bring ‘Em Back Home’, Joan Baez’s 1973 album ‘ Where
Are You Now, My Son’ and the song ‘Saigon Bride’ are some examples. The
Woodstock Festival, held over three days in August 1969, brought
together more than 400,000 people and was dedicated to ‘Peace and
Music’, featuring many of the musicians who were protesting the Vietnam
war.
