Gaza: The Dream and the Nightmare
Trump’s Gazan dream is to overlay the complex human history with his own narcissistic real-estate fantasy. But for Maia Carter Hallward, co-author of a new contemporary history of Gaza, this once vibrant Mediterranean entrepôt linking Africa, Asia and Europe is now defined more by nightmare than dreams. “In peace studies, we talk about positive peace, which has rights, liberties, the ability to reach human potential - and we talk about negative peace, which is the absence of war,” Carter Hallward says. “I would say we have none of those in Gaza right now.” No negative peace, no absence of war. For Carter Hallward, that - alongside the more than 70,000 dead Palestinians - captures today’s Gazan tragedy.
Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Jeff Kosseff: What Exactly Is Section 230 and Why Was It So Essential in the Creation of the Internet?
Rick Wartzman on Why Are Walmart Workers Still Broke? The Limits of a "Socially Conscious" American Capitalism That Still Won't Pay Its Employees a Living Wage
Matthew Campbell on Dead in the Water: The True Story of a Fake Hijacking and a Real Murder
Andrew Small on A Cold War Without Limits: The Chilling Story of China's Rupture With the West
Neal Gabler on You Don't Need to Be a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows: Ted Kennedy and the Rise of American Conservatism
Lucas Joppa: Why Both Government and Private Corporations Have Essential Roles in Confronting Global Warming
Jessica Todd Harper: Why Photography Can Be Fine Art and What Photographers Should Learn From Vermeer and Other 17th Century Dutch Artists
Isaac Stone Fish on America Second: Is It Really Possible That America's Elites Are Making China Stronger?
Daphne E. Jones on a Note to Donald Trump: This Is How to Become a Real Winner
Andrew Anagnost: How the Moral Sickness Afflicting Silicon Valley Might Be a Pandemic of Egoism
Peter Rawlinson: The Truth About Battery-Powered and Self-Driving Cars From the Engineer Who Invented the Tesla Model S and the Lucid Air
Edward J. Delaney on Cary Grant as The Acrobat: A Novel About the Hollywood Comic Star Whose Best Joke Was That He Didn't Really Exist
Andrew S. Weiss on Super Unhero: Vladimir Putin, the Accidental Czar, Imagined Graphically