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the Alyoum7 newspaper was accused by an Israeli religious website of publishing hate because of its position against Okasha

Published in the first few months after the 2011 uprising, Ben Mhenni’s book is the most euphoric of the four testimonies. Much of the narrative is a celebration of the power of cyber dissidence, which Ben Mhenni defines as a combination of citizen journalism (blogging and filming events) and on-the-ground activism

While acknowledging how her parents’ history of resistance as members of the UGTT prepared her for a life of activism, Ben Mhenni attributes much of her political development to the “real-world” friendships she established with cyber dissidents in the Tunisian blogosphere.

This testimony is more chronological and personal than Ben Mhenni’s. It constructs the author’s life teleologically as a journey from bourgeois indifference in suburbia to grassroots activism in the country’s downtrodden interior. It also documents Ben Mbarek’s co-founding of the civil rights network, Dostourna, which marked her renewed faith in “the power of citizens.”

Like Ben Mhenni, Ben Mbarek celebrates the politicizing power of social media, crediting Facebook for encouraging the rise of citizen journalism, which sparked her political (re)awakening. As she argues, it was thanks to citizen journalists from besieged cities that she finally felt connected to the leftist cause long championed by her father.

As a professor of philosophy, Belhaj Yahia champions the values of the Enlightenment and believes in the vital importance of dialogue. Accordingly, her text probes the origins of the discord between Islamists and secularists, in order to understand the tensions marking the post-Ben Ali period

Convinced that the stultifying bureaucracy of political parties made them incapable of meeting the demands of the leaderless Arab Spring revolt, Ben Mbarek sought to create autonomous regional cells of civil rights activists throughout the country. Their job would be to address each region’s specific political needs

she analyzes the “schizophrenic” discourses of her diasporic family members and the “narcissistic wounds” of old dissidents, who are now mimicking Ben Ali’s authoritarianism. She also critiques the regional and class disparities perpetrated by the old regime

Belhaj Yahia believes she is the product of a moderate and worldly national education, which is currently under threat in Tunisia. She locates this threat in the state’s gradual abandonment of public education and the resurgence of conservative ideologies

Her book ends with a call for other Tunisians to publish their own self-reflections, in the belief that writing and reading autobiographical accounts can pave the way for more understanding between the different factions comprising Tunisian society.

Fakhfakh’s book is a fictionalized diary written between January 14, 2011, the day of Ben Ali’s ouster, and May 18, 2015

Each diary entry is comprised of two parts. The first part is a summary of national and regional events with a brief commentary from the author; the second part is a biography of a pioneering Tunisian woman

As the author notes throughout the book, state attempts to propagate an institutional-form of feminism have devalued women’s history

The author worries that women’s achievements are constantly erased, in order to accommodate the ego of male leaders, like Bourguiba. She is also concerned that the rise of political Islam may eventually obscure Tunisian women’s “legacy of freedom” even further

Fakhfakh embraces the narrative of “Tunisian exceptionalism,” in which Tunisian women are presented as the most progressive in the Arab and Islamic world. This nationalist mythology about Tunisian women is common, even among Tunisian intellectuals, and is used as a means of differentiating and elevating Tunisian women above Arab and Muslim women more broadly. The inherent divisiveness of this narrative is problematic, and is left unexamined in Fakhfakh’s book

The older generation remains mainly supportive of the Palestinian cause and official government statements emphasise that support. But some young Saudis, who have adopted an ultranationalist agenda, view the conflict as a distraction and argue that citizens must focus on their own country and ignore pan-Arab issues.

Given increased government control of the entertainment industry over the past four years, some observers said that tackling controversial topics, such as Israel and homosexuality, was now easier for broadcasters than criticising official institutions or raising the real issues that affect people’s daily lives — something that past Ramadan shows, featuring the same actors, have done to strong effect.

“Even though it managed to stir controversy and generate much discussion, the topics [the programme] deals with so far remain distant from the daily concerns of Saudi citizens making it seem like an alien imposition even if performed by familiar faces.”

He gets to decide, for instance, that Peter Beinart (J Street-aligned liberal Zionists) and David Frum (respectable #NeverTrump neoconservatives) should represent the poles of acceptable Jewish discourse. Meanwhile, the emerging generation of American Jews who supported Sanders, and who in many cases feel totally alienated from Zionism, are shut out. Goldberg’s project is to define the center, both for politics in general and for Jews specifically. And as that center buckles and shifts leftward, it’s worth reevaluating the macher who for so long has set the terms of debate.

The story of Jeffrey Goldberg is one of hypermasculinity, nationalism, and careerism, a steady ascension facilitated by the right friendships and the right positions at the right times. Along the way he has drawn many harsh critics, none of whom have successfully held him back. But his disproportionate influence on the conversation and his vigorous policing of Jewish communal politics merit a closer look.

After enduring antisemitic bullying as a suburban child, he fell in love with Israel on his first visit at age 13.

At 20, he dropped out of Penn and made aliyah. As an Israel Defense Force volunteer during the First Intifada, he worked as a guard (or “prisoner counselor,” as he later insisted) at the overcrowded Ketziot prison camp, which was condemned by human rights groups at the time for violating the Geneva Conventions. There, he witnessed a fellow guard beating a Palestinian prisoner for talking back. In Goldberg’s account, he tried to stop his friend but then helped cover the incident up (“‘He fell,’ I lied”).

The odd human rights violation, pointless imperial war, or botched hire notwithstanding, no one can deny that he has done well for himself, and it seems likely he’ll be shaping the national conversation for years to come. But in the Jewish world, Goldberg wields perhaps even more influence than outside of it, and by patrolling its borders he defines a narrow center of opinion antithetical to dissent.

If there is any justice, Goldberg’s career will be remembered primarily for a long, award-winning reported piece from Iraq that ran in The New Yorker in March 2002, at the height of the post-9/11 jingoistic fervor, which informed that magazine’s readership that Saddam Hussein had both an active WMD program and ties to Al-Qaeda. Goldberg endorsed George W. Bush’s catastrophic war of choice in an article for Slate later that year, in which he wrote, “I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.” He was hardly the only high-profile journalist to help launder what turned out to be false intelligence into the mainstream media, but whereas Judith Miller was pushed out by the New York Times in 2005 and has since become persona non grata in liberal elite circles, Goldberg’s status and influence have only grown.

palpable distaste for Diaspora Jewry features frequently in Goldberg’s writing

a conservative minority of us has accepted a faustian bargain with Trump’s white supremacist base in order to support the right-wing coalition in Israel

Goldberg is not part of the ascendant right. Rather, he is perhaps the single most representative figure of the liberal Zionist establishment in all of media, voicing the anxieties of a rapidly collapsing order. And with at least the passive approval of an elite network, Goldberg has spent years passing harsh, biblical judgment on both Jews and gentiles who dare to weigh in on issues related to Israel, from authors to organizations to U.S. presidents.

Goldberg started out as a police reporter but achieved greater renown as a national security correspondent, with dispatches from Gaza, Cairo, and Iraqi Kurdistan in the months before and after 9/11. This period is crucial to understanding Goldberg’s influence—he had already become one of the most widely read reporters on the Middle East at precisely the moment when the Washington establishment became single-mindedly focused on terrorist and extremist threats from the region. This gave him an outsized role in shaping liberal elite discourse, with outsized consequences.

it fit in perfectly with Goldberg’s longstanding project to deny the very obvious influence of pro-Israel advocates over U.S. politics.

Obama successfully pandered to Goldberg, who noted, “speaking in a kind of code Jews readily understand, Obama also made sure to mention that he was fond of the writer Leon Uris, the author of [the 1958 Zionist pulp bestseller] Exodus.”

In 2009, Goldberg referred to “the rather circumscribed universe of anti-Zionists-with-Jewish parents”, neatly ostracizing Jews he disagrees with from the tribe

For Goldberg and the tribe he leads, a reactionary gentile who unapologetically supports Israel is preferable to a progressive Jew who expresses hesitation, discomfort, or outrage.

an epically sleazy hit job

Goldberg has spent most of his adult life in affluent Northwest DC, so it would be absurd for him to directly question the legitimacy of American Jews, but he has had no such reservations about European Jews, and especially the largest such community, the Jews of France. In 2015, he wrote a long reported essay in The Atlantic entitled, “Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?”, accompanied by a 20-minute video conversation with Leon Wieseltier and James Bennet, in which he concluded, “I am predisposed to believe that there is no great future for the Jews in Europe, because evidence to support this belief is accumulating so quickly.”

Goldberg represents what, at least until recently, was an influential set of attitudes among mainstream Jewish liberals. But his approach seems exhausted, unable to respond to the scale of the disaster Jewish liberals now confront, from the ultra-orthodox, pro-settlement coalition firmly in charge of Israel to White House-approved antisemitism in the U.S.

superficially curious and open-minded about big ideas, yet forever bound within a narrow establishment consensus averse to channeling any kind of populist anger

to whatever extent my own Jewish identity has been stunted, I blame Jews like Goldberg. Of course I don’t blame him personally or exclusively, but he’s representative of, and has worked hard to reinforce, a set of attitudes that have made institutional Judaism and Jewish communal identity seem unattractive or unattainable. I’m certain I’m not alone in feeling this way. Membership in non-Orthodox synagogues is in steady decline, as is American Jews’ attachment to Israel, especially among millennials. Jewishness as defined by Goldberg is not our community’s future; it isn’t even our present

Goldberg embodies the worst contradictions of American Zionism: on the one hand, the phony machismo, the insistence that Israel is the bedrock of a meaningful Jewish identity, and the morally bankrupt defense of Israel’s routine violence against its Arab subjects; and on the other hand, the smug, comfortable, coddled daily existence of the Beltway elite

It’s taken me well into my thirties to grasp that there is a Jewishness to be located between the synagogue-attending, aggressively Zionist establishment that Goldberg presents to the most powerful people on Earth as definitive, and the superficial bagels-and-Seinfeld gloss on basic American whiteness that often seems like the only alternative. Jewishness can be righteous, confrontational, progressive, maybe even cool. It doesn’t have to be defined as a religion, a nationality, or a vaguely embarrassing set of quirks; it can be a way of asserting one’s humanity and moral fervor as America, Israel, and the world descend into a crude parody of fascism.