Hazem Saghieh

We often encounter two parties that have hostile relations or are at war, both calling their opponent by their name. Many, for example, saw the Soviet Union as a cloak that Russia hid behind and the Ottoman Empire as a cover for Türkiye, and they believed that these states enslaved entire peoples…

In familiar debates that accompany major events, as is the case with the Gaza War, some increasingly use "history" against those who do not share their opinion. The latter are presented as not standing "on the right side of history," and, borrowing the phrase that Leon Trotsky used to refer to his…

When someone is described as "having his voice heard," it means he is influential or powerful. The voice is a tool of power and empowerment, and because it is so, those who object or make demands "raise their voices." If their demands are not met, they raise their voices even higher, eventually…

Sometimes, we are seized by a moralistic tendency to generate an ideal version of reality in which good unites with good to confront evil which, in turn, also unites with evil. On both sides, what is smaller and belongs to lower rank lines up behind what is larger and of a higher rank. However,…

The Lebanese grew weary of waiting for the "major retaliation" that Iran and Hezbollah have threatened. But it seems that this boredom didn't last long, as they soon began awaiting a strike the Israelis had claimed they would carry out. That, at least, is what the statements of their rabid…

The remark that Hegel made when he saw Napoleon on horseback in the German city of Jena in 1806 would become very famous. To the German philosopher, the French emperor looked like a conqueror bringing the zeitgeist (spirit of the age), as it was unleashed by the French Revolution, to Germany. Thus,…

Benevolence and honorable intentions have undoubtedly played an important role in driving students and legal professionals around the world to raise their voices against the genocide in Gaza. Such efforts, if they are fated to succeed, could correct some imbalances in our region and perhaps across…

A bit of guilt might be needed in all of our societies. Indeed, only such an emotion pushes us to reflect on the harm that the powerful among us have inflicted, and continue to inflict, upon the weak, and to reassess how our social structures have colluded and continue to collude with brutal,…

Today, amid Israel's genocidal war in Gaza, and all the dangerous and even more dangerous future scenarios that are circulating, any talk of a political solution for the Palestinian question seems like extremely far-fetched wishful thinking. However, a history of why a political solution is so far…

Time and again, a pressing need to reaffirm the obvious reemerges: Israel is alarming the people of the region, and they should be alarmed, and not only for reasons tied to Palestinian rights and deterring settlement and the occupation of Arab territories. Added to all of that: First, it is a…