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Dès 1991, le grand orientaliste Bernard Lewis s'inquiétait de voir Israël devenir, sur le modèle du Liban, «une association difficile, une de plus, entre ethnies et groupes religieux en conflit». Et il ajoutait: «les juifs se trouveraient dans la position dominante qu'avaient autrefois les Maronites avec la perspective probable d'un destin à la libanaise en fin de parcours.» Pour empêcher cette prédiction de se réaliser, il serait urgent de faire ce qu'Ariel Sharon, à la fin de sa vie, appelait de «douloureuses concessions territoriales». Si ses successeurs y répugnent, c'est parce qu'ils se défient de leur partenaire, mais c'est surtout parce qu'ils ont peur de leurs propres extrémistes. Ils craignent la guerre civile entre Israéliens qui accompagnerait le démantèlement des implantations de Cisjordanie.

Si la civilisation de l'image n'était pas en train de détruire l'intelligence de la guerre, personne ne soutiendrait que les bombardements israéliens visent les civils. Avez-vous oublié Dresde? Quand une aviation surpuissante vise des civils, les morts se comptent par centaines de milliers. Non: les Israéliens préviennent les habitants de Gaza de toutes les manières possibles des bombardements à venir. Et lorsqu' on me dit que ces habitants n'ont nulle part où aller, je réponds que les souterrains de Gaza auraient dû être faits pour eux. Il y a aujourd'hui des pièces bétonnées dans chaque maison d'Israël.

Je critique la politique israélienne. Je plaide sans relâche depuis le début des années quatre-vingt pour la solution de deux Etats. Je condamne la poursuite des constructions dans les implantations en Cisjordanie. Je dis que l'intransigeance vis-à-vis du Hamas devrait s'accompagner d'un soutien effectif à l'autorité palestinienne.

Many of us didn’t see, and still don’t see, how Yglesias’s signing of the letter is supposed to increase the likelihood that VanDerWerff suffers harm. This is VanDerWerff’s most significant complaint against Yglesias

because it comes in the form of a worry over personal safety, rather than as an intellectual challenge to the letter’s contents, this has the effect of preempting critical engagement with VanDerWerff’s response, since disagreement with her no longer seems morally appropriate.

this is my second point — disagreement with her no longer seems logically appropriate, since what’s been offered is not so much a counterpoint to the Harper’s letter but something less cognitive, less vulnerable to the forms and checks of reason and argument

I am getting some small notion of what it feels like to be white in America. What my classmates are telling me is that the Anglophone world is the international power. It dominates. Thus knowledge is tangibly necessary for them in a way that it is not for me

Of course the flip-side of this calculus is that power enables ignorance. Black people know this well.

I think this is the seed of the "We don't have any white history month!" syndrome. Through conquest the ways of whiteness become the air.

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds.

Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions. The University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality. The University of Kansas suspended a professor for writing a harsh tweet against the N.R.A. Vanderbilt University derecognized a Christian group that insisted that it be led by Christians.

Moreover, provocateurs and ridiculers expose the stupidity of the fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are people who take everything literally. They are incapable of multiple viewpoints.

Death threats circulated online against the surviving staff members of the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo.

Survivors of the attack had said they would proceed with their next issue and again depict Muhammad.

It shows Muhammad displaying the slogan that has become the symbol of resistance to Islamic militants: “Je Suis Charlie,” or, “I am Charlie.” He is shown weeping under a headline that reads: “All is forgiven.”

Pope Francis has defended freedom of expression following last week's attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo - but also stressed its limits.

religions had to be treated with respect, so that people's faiths were not insulted or ridiculed.

The magazine was targeted for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. It printed another cartoon of the Prophet on its front page after the attacks, angering some Muslims who say all depictions of the Prophet should be forbidden.

A number of protesters burned the French flag at the holy site

The protest concluded without incident.

The most recent issue of the controversial publication showed a cartoon image of the prophet on the front page of the magazine holding a sign that says “Je Suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), a slogan made popular following the January 7 attack on the satirical weekly’s Paris headquarters by two jihadist gunmen that killed 12 people.

One of the murkiest issues has to do with the nature and causes of Stalin’s terror and the question of whether Stalin had broken with Lenin’s policies or continued them. Behind this lay the question of the institutionalization of violence in Bolshevik culture and the Soviet state.

the policies of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party did not at first rely on terror. However, the extreme conditions of the civil war from 1917 to 1922, in which some seven million people were killed, together with Lenin’s ruthless economic policies, led to the destitution and desperation of millions of people who found themselves without food, livelihood, shelter or security.

He concluded this grisly note with the directive: “Find some truly hard people.”The following month, he ordered: “It is necessary secretly — and urgently — to prepare the terror.”