Joseph Nichol, at The Blogs

Joseph Nichol

Jan 12, 2025, 6:40 PM

How workers of a Brooklyn theatre are trying to hijack history

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, George Orwell, Politics and the English Language The Alamo Drafthouse theatre in Brooklyn recently started screening September 5, a historical drama thriller that depicts the 1972 Munich Massacre from...

Dec 13, 2024, 1:35 AM

Made in Canada, forged in Israel

I was awakened the morning of October 7, 2023 by the air raid siren. My wife and I rushed our young children to our safe room as, we would soon learn, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust...

Sep 9, 2024, 6:51 AM

Pro-peace Palestinians and the ‘traitor’ libel

"Bring them home now!" (a call for the return of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, in Arabic) poster at the entrance to the Arab-Israeli town of Jaljulia / Courtesy of the author

“Traitor,” “kaffir,” “Mossad agent,” “race traitor,” “sellout,” “Nazi,” “genocidal Zionist,” “liar,” “Jew.” These are some of the epithets leveled at Palestinians and other Arabs that call for reconciliation with Israel, and criticize Hamas for its intractable and devastating role in...

May 22, 2024, 12:54 AM

The campus Left and the post-October 7th language of terror

Student protest on campus / Free to use under Unsplash License.

Of course, there is merit in protesting civilian casualties, calling for an end to hostilities, and advocating for Palestinian statehood. Legitimacy notwithstanding, in the recent wave of protests that swept the campuses of Western universities, under the pretense of...

Jan 26, 2024, 5:57 PM

The problem(s) with Mohammed El-Kurd

In London, thousands cheered when Mohammed El-Kurd, the 25 year-old talented Palestinian journalist and poet finished his speech: “ we need to normalize massacres as the status quo.” This was before he took to X to clarify that he misspoke,...

Sep 22, 2022, 11:08 AM

How the ghost of Amin al-Husseini still haunts the Middle East

Uprooting the destabilizing ideology that torments the Middle East requires us to first understand the story of its origins.

May 25, 2022, 12:27 PM

Does torture help fight terrorism?

Source: Unsplash. Credit: Spencer Tamichi. Copyright: Use permitted under Unsplash free-to-use license.

Moral and legal debates aside, we should ask ourselves whether there would be any pragmatic benefit to torturing terrorists

May 15, 2022, 4:29 PM

QAnon is still growing in Israel. Why should we care?

We should pay attention to the corrosive effects disinformation and conspiracy theories have on democracy

Feb 2, 2022, 4:17 PM

Whoopi Goldberg jumped aboard the ‘let’s exclude the Jews’ train

Actress Whoopi Goldberg speaks during the opening of the 'Planet or Plastic?' exhibit, Tuesday, June 4, 2019 at United Nations headquarters. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Whoopi Goldberg’s comments on the Holocaust were shocking. But they are representative of a bigger pattern — progressives denying minority status to Jews

Oct 28, 2021, 11:42 AM

Can and should Israel try harder to resolve the water crisis in Gaza?

Israel should use its power to get more fresh water to the Gaza Strip if it wants to avoid a region-wide disaster.

About Me

The writer is an independent journalist who focuses on Middle East history and politics and he is the co-host of the Lappin Assessment podcast. His work has appeared in The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, and Quillette, among others.