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
An American Epidemic of Speculation: Bubble Blowing in Silicon Valley and Washington DC
Should a College be a Museum or a Startup? Why Universities Need to Teach Failure
American Advocates of Foreign Devils: How Rudy Giuliani and Hunter Biden Sold Access to US Foreign Policy
Sometimes We Need a Calamity: How to Save the American Experiment
The Frankenstein Version of Neo-Liberalism: When American Business Overtook Government
America as a Contradiction Trapped Inside an even Bigger Contradiction: Princeton Historian's Explanation for Everything, Everywhere All at Once
Jeffrey Archer: How Margaret Thatcher would have disciplined a Naughty Donald Trump
Sam Altman's Rigged Imperial Gambit: Too Important to Fail & Too Well-Financed to Go Public
America's Most Wounded Generation: Returning Home after World War II
AI Hype is a Feature, not a Bug: Why We Can't Trust Big Tech With Our Agentic Future
Springtime for Charlatans: How Grifters, Swindlers and Hucksters are Bamboozling the Media, the Markets and the Masses
Navigating around Christopher Columbus: The Nine Lives of the Genoese Sailor Who Became History's Greatest Saint and Sinner
41 Years for a Crime He Didn't Commit: Gary Tyler's Journey from Death Row to Freedom