Dear friends--
I hope this finds you well?
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The above photo was taken right before one of the more unsettling and humiliating events in my life, the very tightly speech-policed "book launch" that London's LSE school held for Just World Ed'srecent book Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters last Monday. It shows moderator Dr. Michael Mason (at left) and the three live panelists in that discussion, myself included.
Before the event, Mason and his deputy subjected the other three of us to what he said was a mandatory "risk management review" for the event. During that pre-meeting, he informed us that we could not utter the words "demonization" or "solidarity" on stage, and that if we did not agree to these and other strictures he laid out, then he was fully empowered to cancel the event completely, even at that very last minute.
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Oh, and at that "book launch", we were not permitted to sell copies of the book or even have any direct contact with members of the audience, which by then had been restricted to LSE students and staff members only. Mason did not explain whether this latter restriction was intended for our protection or for that of members of the audience, which included some people who expressed very strong opposition to our presence and others who expressed strong support for it. Fwiw, none of us on the podium had requested any "protection" from the audience.
I'll be writing more later about the extremely oppressive/skewed nature of the stage-managing of the LSE book launch. (I continued my participation in it despite my misgivings because I was there as the guest of Dr. Jeroen Gunning, at right in the photo above. Jeroen has been a valued contributor to our Understanding Hamas project, and he's also a Visiting Professor with a busy teaching load at the LSE Middle East Center.)
![]() As we held our event there at LSE, rival demonstrations opposing and supporting our event were swirling around outside the building's main entrance. Throughout the preceding week, ardently pro-Israel groups in London had mounted a big campaign against LSE's hosting of the event. Israel's ambassador Tzipi Hotovely even took to The Daily Telegraph on March 7 to call openly on LSE to cancel it.
Soon after the book launch wrapped up, the right-wing UK news-site "GB News" devoted more than 13 minutes to reporting on and discussing the event and the brouhaha around it. (In case you're interested.)
LSE has still not released the video they must have recorded, of the launch.
Three quick thoughts from me here:
![]() ** 1: The book has suddenly been selling in far greater numbers in the UK than it was before!
** 2: The fuss that London's pro-Israel crowd made about the book and the misrepresentations, dis-rerepresentations, and distortions that they spread about it have served mainly to underline of the importance and timeliness of the book and the material we present in it. If there were no perceived need to "understand Hamas" then I imagine the discourse suppressors would not raised the kind of furor that they did.( In case you haven't read the book let me assure you that my co-author Rami G. Khouri and I are at pains to repeat therein-- lest this needs stating-- that we neither support nor oppose the movement but seek, rather, to explore how it works, what its goals are, what its track record is, and so on...)
** 3: The fuss that the Israeli ambassador, the pro-Israel Londoners-- and even, reportedly, the UK's Home Secretary-- raised about LSE's hosting of the event and the contacts that the Home Secretary reportedly had with the LSE administration on the matter are just some examples of the extremely chilling effect that Britain's counter-terrorism legislation has on freedom of _expression_ and freedom of association regarding Palestinian issues, throughout the UK. (Which makes the news about the newly enhanced activities of the Balfour Project, now re-named the Britain Palestine Project, even more timely and welcome.)
News on more 'Understanding Hamas' events!
That weird and unsettling event that Dr. Gunning, Dr. Catherine Charett, international scholar Mouin Rabbani, and I were part of last Thursday at LSE was, fortunately, not the only speaking gig I had during my recent visit to London. ![]() On March 6, I took part in an excellent, far-ranging conversation conducted by Dr. Nate George of the School of Oriental and African Studies-- which is also, like LSE, part of that amorphous, broader body the University of London.
You can see the video of the whole conversation here. (The lighting was pretty poor, but the audio there is excellent, so you might want to just listen it while you're at the gym, doing dishes, or whatever.)
![]() And here's some great news for people in South-east Michigan or South-west Ontario! Next weekend my co-author the great Rami G. Khouri will be speaking at a number of events there on the topic of "War or Peace: How Gaza Shapes the Middle East"-- and I gather that the topic of our book may also get addressed in some of those events.
Click on the flier's image there to enlarge it and get the details! There are events listed there for Southfield, Dearborn, and Ann Arbor, MI, along with Windsor, Ontario. Be sure to share the news of these events with all your friends in those regions!
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Update on Ahmed Masoud's 'Vanished' release in the U.S.
![]() I'd planned the trip to London primarily to do business for my publishing company, Just World Books LLC, at the London Book Fair, which wrapped up Thursday. My goal was to figure out the best way to get JWB's powerful backlist of titles well distributed in markets East of the Atlantice and elsewhere in the non-North American world. (I had lots of very productive and informative meetings there. Big thanks to everyone who made time for me!)
![]() Along the way I had the intense pleasure of handing to the London-based author Ahmed Masoud a print copy of JWB's forthcoming (re-)release of his acclaimed 2014 novel, Vanished: The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda.
This work is almost certainly the only mystery/thriller novel ever set in Gaza's Jabaliya refugee camp. It received some great plaudits when it first came out, many of which you can read if you click on its page on our web-site. But a few years ago it fell out of print, so I was thrilled when Ahmed gave JWB the chance to re-issue it...
Along with a gripping, fast-moving plot laced with many twists, turns, and surprises, Vanished plunges the reader deep into the twisting alleys and complex family relations of the world that Ahmed himself had grown up in, in Jabaliya... a world that, over the pas eight months, the Israeli military has bombed and bulldozed into a death-plagued nullity.
The official launch date for Vanished here in North America is March 25. Stay tuned for news of the launch events!
You can place pre-orders here-- or with your local community bookstore, or elsewhere. Be sure to tell your friends about it!
(By the way, the Understanding Hamas book was published not by JWB but by our friends at OR Books. They also have a fabulous backlist of titles on Palestine-related issues!)
JWE's PalCast: Conversation with Samah Zaqout
So, back to news from Just World Ed, the non-profit, now.
This past week Yousef and Tony, the co-hosts of our long-running podcast, the PalCast, had as their guest the Gaza-based writer Samah Zaqout, who talked about the devastating impact that Israel's military campaign/genocide has had on her and her family.
![]() In the episode, which you can listen to on Apple, Spotify, or elsewhere, Samah recounted the three times she narrowly escaped death during the genocide.
Braving the vagaries of a spotty internet connection, she described how bombings targeted places she had just left, including a bakery and a supermarket, highlighting the ever-present danger. She also shared the terrifying moment she woke up to find shrapnel on her pillow, a chilling reminder of the indiscriminate violence.
Samah's story underscored the inescapable reality of living under siege, where no place remains safe, and every location still bears the mark of destruction.
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Zionist-fueled assaults on basic freedoms soaring in UK, U.S., other 'Western' nations
The oppressive and extremely disrespectful curtailment of basic freedoms that I experienced at LSE March 10 were small beer to the oppression that numerous other pro-rights and anti-colonial/anti-occupation leaders, speakers, and activists have experienced in the UK, the United States, and other 'Western' countries.
In the UK, special police units stopped university lecturer and David Miller at Heathrow airport a couple of weeks ago, and demanded that he give them access to his devices. A few weeks before that, they invaded the home of journalist Asa Winstanley in a pre-dawn raid and seized the whole range of the electronic devices on which his work depends. (He has still not had them returned to him.)
Here in my long-time home country of the United States, the crackdowns on pro-Palestinian, pro-rights activism have been even more severe. On March 8, plain-clothes agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested recently graduated Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder, in a pre-dawn raid. They're still holding him now in a notoriously harsh ICE prison in Louisiana, far distant from his very pregnant, U.S.-citizen wife; and they're threatening to deport him despite having provided zero evidence of any illegal activities and despite the fact that green-card holders are generally accorded the same rights as citizens.
On March 5, Yale Law School abruptly fired Helyeh Doutaghi, a scholar in international law, who had worked since 2023 as deputy director of YLS's Law and Political Economy Project, which promoted itself as working for “economic, racial and gender equality.”
According to that NYT report on the firing, Dr. Doutaghi had described herself as a scholar and a "loud and proud" supporter of Palestinian rights.
The NYT report also notes, with some accuracy, that, "The swift action against Dr. Doutaghi illustrates the tightrope American universities are walking as the Trump administration takes aim at higher education."
The Trump administration is currently undertaking numerous broad, and potentially debilitating, attacks against many U.S. universities and other institutions essential to the functioning of a normal, modern society. Pres. Trump and his minions base these attacks on a number of different justifications. The ones most frequently adduced in cases of suppression of pro-Palestinian speech are to "counter or suppress alleged affiliations with terror organizations", or to "ensure that Jewish students feel safe." (Similar argument have only rarely, or perhaps never, been brought to bear regarding the always live possibility of threats to the safety of pro-Palestinian individuals or groups.)
But Trump and his people are also slashing the funding of universities and other national institutions on the basis of many other arguments. These include: participation in "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility" initiatives; connections with vaccination or other public-health initiatives; allegation (often DOGE-fueled) of fraud, waste, and abuse; or sometimes, it seems, just pure caprice.
The assaults on pro-Palestine activism here in the United States have definitely become caught up with, and are an inseparable part of, this broader assault on basic academic and other democratic freedoms.
It has been extremely disappointing (to say the least) to see the extent to which the leaders of once-respected academic institutions like Columbia, Yale, or even LSE have been prepared to bend the knee to power and to enforce tight, one-sided restrictions on speech and other activities that completely belie their claim to be standing up for basic academic freedoms including the freedoms of speech, inquiry, and association.
Gaza's situation getting harsher by the day
It is crucial to understand that, despite the oppression, turmoil, and suffering being inflicted on pro-rights activists in Western countries, the situation of our brothers and sisters living inside Gaza is immeasurably more dire.
For nearly two weeks now, the Israelis have allowed not a single truckload or pallet of aid into Gaza.
This is what the courageous young journalist Abubaker Abed posted on X three days ago:
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This NYT report gives some details of the effects of the aid cut-off, and explains that
[N]o aid has gotten in since March 2. That was the day Israel blocked all goods in a bid to pressure Hamas into accepting an extension of the current cease-fire stage and releasing more hostages sooner, instead of moving to the next phase, which would involve more challenging negotiations to permanently end to the war.
For some reason, the UN-OCHA reports that used to faithfully track how many truckloads of aid Israel allowed to enter the Gaza Strip each day/week/month have recently stopped presenting those numbers. (See this most recent OCHA report, PDF, from March 11.)
It is truly a pity that OCHA no longer sharing those numbers-- most especially because for the past two weeks the number has been ZERO.
Of course, the use of restrictions on humanitarian aid for political purposes is a complete violation of international law.
International action to save the deeply ravaged remnants of the Gaza-Palestinian people has never been more needed. Pres. Trump has reportedly brought an end to the diplomatic overture that his Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs, Adam Boehler, earlier undertook toward Hamas in an effort to revive the ceasefire/hostage-release process. But that three-stage, 18-week process-- which was fully agreed to and accepted by all the parties involved back on January 15-- has been completely blocked by the Israeli government since March 2. With devastating impact on the people of Gaza.
... I hope you can join me and my colleagues on the board of Just World Ed in doing whatever you can to push for the full implementation of the January 15 agreement, a process that will certainly involve all the relevant parties (including the U.S. government) returning to the pursuit of the effective, results-based diplomacy with Hamas that during earlier ceasefires resulted in the return of dozens of Israeli captives-- and many hundreds of Palestinian captives-- to their families.
You stay well in these darkly unsettling times--
~ Helena
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