Elias Khoury's new book encapsulates the symbiotic relationship between literature and the Nakba, exploring its nature as a continuum of calamities.
“The Continuous Nakba,” by Elias Khoury, Dar Al Adab, 2023.
Palestinians march during a rally marking the anniversary of the Nakba in the West Bank city of Nablus, May 15, 2024. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)
In 2013, Elias Khoury, the renowned Lebanese novelist and public intellectual, delivered a speech from Beirut via Skype to a group of (...)

Thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel joined the annual March of Return, with many making connections to the violent displacement in Gaza.
In the shadow of what many Palestinians are describing as a second Nakba in Gaza, around 15,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel participated in the 27^th annual March of Return on Tuesday. After gathering in the northern city of Shefa-Amr, participants marched to the site of Hawsha and Al-Kasair, Palestinian villages that were forcibly depopulated (...)

China's leftist intellectuals, once regime critics in the 1990s, have shifted from their socialist origins to support statism and the China model. Where does that leave their thinking now?
ILLUSTRATION: XINMEI LIU
Last May, in a Beijing coffee shop, a well-known Chinese intellectual complained to me: “There is no left wing in China anymore. Instead, we have people who call themselves ‘leftists' who in fact are extreme rightists and even flirt with fascism.”
This intellectual (whose (...)

In his public speeches, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev often refers to Armenia's sovereign territories as “Western Azerbaijan.” After Azerbaijan's victory in the 2020 war in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), the blockade that left 120,000 Armenians cut off from the world, and the fighting in September 2023 that led to Azerbaijan's full control over the region and the eviction of the Armenian population, Aliyev continues to make new territorial claims against Armenia.
We talked to (...)

Thai authorities are helping neighboring governments to take unlawful actions against refugees and dissidents from abroad, making Thailand increasingly unsafe for those fleeing persecution. These targets of transnational repression have gotten caught up in a “swap mart” in which foreign dissidents are effectively traded for critics of the Thai government living abroad. The Thai government should investigate alleged harassment, threats, surveillance, and forced returns against migrants, (...)

Under the government's strict control, independent unions have been devastated, labor protests are prohibited, and opposition to the government's labor policies has become rare.
It's been five years since Hong Kong has held 5.1 marches on International Labor Day. Since the implementation of the draconian Hong Kong National Security Law (NSL), which the government has weaponized to crack down on the city's independent trade union movement, numerous trade unionists have been arrested, (...)