Five years have passed. The last four turned everything upside down. My private self ceased to matter, and anything that might once have counted as an achievement seemed insignificant amid the blood, the rubble, and the hell of reality. At fifty-five, I find myself returning instead to questions of faith, existence, and what remains of a life—and feeling, perhaps for the first time, that I am on the path toward knowing what I was created for.
Peace has become a trophy, not a condition of life. In an age where war is constant and destruction is boiled down to code, even words have been weaponized. Drones are called Gospel, bombs Lavender — language of healing turned into tools for precise killing. This is not just propaganda; it is theology rewritten for the age of algorithms. Holiness becomes an idea of purity, and to cleanse means to erase. In such a world, it makes perfect sense that Trump would seek the Nobel Peace Prize. After all, in the chaos of meaning, who better to receive a prize for peace than those who have mastered the art of destruction?
In a time when listening to the Other is treated as betrayal, and critique is silenced by fear, this essay proposes a new method of resistance: istishhan. Neither mimicry nor denial, istishhan is a strategy of deconstructing hegemonic narratives from within—using their own language, texts, and myths. Drawing on thinkers like Edward Said and Abdelwahab Elmessiri, and confronting the archaeology, theology, and politics of Zionist discourse, this is a call to reclaim the power of understanding as a form of confrontation.
I doubt I was the only one who opened this morning’s Wall Street Journal article with contempt — and ended in uneasy reflection. At first glance, it felt… Read More »The Hebron Emirate… Treason or a Mirror of Collapse?When the tribal sheikh replaces the president — is this the final unraveling of the Palestinian Authority?
The president stepped off the plane, and his wife gave him a shove—a double-handed push to the back of the head.
If he had done the same to her, we’d still be writing think pieces. But because it was a woman doing it to a man, we laughed.No outrage. No analysis. Just memes.
This wasn’t just a funny clip. It was a quiet scandal in plain sight.
Maybe it’s time for men to say it too: We are all Macron.