Of Note: May 11, 2026

Dear Friends,

This week’s collection of articles is shorter than usual. I’ve been busy with other necessary things. I will keep sending these free posts out as long as it makes sense for me to do so. If you’d like to support the work that goes into making them and also have access to the paid tier of It All Connects, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Iran

Anti-imperialist Left or the “Axis of Resistance” Left?, by Naghmeh Soharbi: “It is possible to occupy an anti-imperialist/progressive/whatever you want to call it position that holds the humanity of all these people in the region in its purview and that does not celebrate the Islamic Republic in order to condemn imperialism. We know it is possible because so many people already do that. But the challenge is in articulating that position.” That is part of Sohrabi’s introduction to Dr. Mohammad Maljoo’s articulation of that position. He writes: “From a methodological perspective, the difference between the Axis-of-Resistance left and other anti-imperialist lefts begins at the point where one important reality, namely, imperialist pressure, gradually becomes their sole lens of analysis…It is here that the first slippage…occurs. Internal issues such as poverty, inequality, repression, and the crisis of representation are no longer regarded as problems arising from within society itself; rather, they are often attributed to the direct or indirect role of imperialism. The real lived experience of the people is not seen as it is, but is instead poured into a ready-made explanatory mold.”

Vijay Prashad's Iran, by Farah Mokhtareizadeh: “The document…describes former Ayatollah Khamenei as ‘recognised globally as a voice against arrogance and terrorism,’ calls for the ‘prosecution and extradition of operatives in anti-Iranian media’, meaning the exiled journalists through whom Iranian workers, feminists, and political prisoners communicate with the outside world [and] actually proposes handing those journalists back to a government that, according to Amnesty International and Iran Human Rights, executed at least 1,639 people in 2025 and killed more per capita than any country for which reliable data exists. [The document] end by declaring that ‘if Iran falls, the hope of a better, enlightened future for the world dies with it.’” The document in question, published in CounterPunch with over 170 signatories, is called “Six Non-Negotiable Terms from International Scholars and Former Officials from 30 Countries to End the U.S. War on Iran.” Mokhtareizadeh begins by pointing out that the signatories to the document make very strange bedfellows, including people on the left and on the right who would otherwise be on opposite sides of just about any other political issue. She asks why this should be the case and then goes on to show how conventional left wing analyses don’t work all that well when applied to the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is a very long, detailed, closely argued piece of writing that is worth reading next to Dr. Maljoo’s piece above. I have now read through it twice and I will probably need to read it two more times times in order fully to understand depth and the breadth of its analysis. It’s well worth reading because I think it has implications beyond the situation in Iran.

Gaza & Lebanon

Palestinians expose torture and sexual violence in Israeli detention, Al Jazeera Staff: “I was confined in a very small space, and then eight female soldiers appeared fully naked and started to touch sensitive organs in my body. They filmed us and forced us to repeat degrading sexual words.” Those are the words of one of the men quoted in this article. If you balk at the idea that women would do such things, I remind you that this was many people’s response when they first about Lynndie England’s participation at Abu Ghraib. The reports quoted in the article document systemic torture and sexual violence against both male and female Palestinian prisoners. It’s the sort of thing it’s easy to look away from because it’s so disturbing to think about. We shouldn’t look away.

Israel

The Israeli left is speaking only to itself, by Samah Watad: “The closest the conference came to discussing practical solutions was through repeated invocations of the two-state solution — the last familiar political framework many activists in Israel’s “peace camp” still cling to, despite the fact that the territorial and political foundations of such a solution have largely disappeared.” Watad, a Palestinian journalist, writes about the complex feelings surrounding his disillusionment with the third annual “People’s Peace Summit” that was held in Tel Aviv. It’s a thought provoking article, and it made me think about the left in this country and how effective/ineffective it is.

Something is shifting in Israel’s peace camp, by Meron Rapoport: “This represents a shift in how the Israeli “peace camp” perceives itself. It is now a camp of resistance. This resistance is directed not only against “settler terror,” but also the army leadership and the soldiers who stand aside — and, in many cases, actively assist — as settler militias attack Palestinian communities.” Rapoport was at the same conference and came away with an impression very different from Watad’s. It’s not a case of one being true and the other false, or one realistic and the other idealistic. They focus on different things, and where one sees the seeds of something that’s beginning, the other wonders if those seeds will ever grow into anything meaningful.

The United States

AOC Just Lost the Far Left by Making the Single Greatest Mistake, by Hen Mazzig: “Marjorie Taylor Greene has spent her career on Jewish space laser theories, “globalist” rhetoric, Holocaust comparisons that desecrate the camps, and conspiracy material you would find on a 1930s pamphlet table. Her own colleagues kicked her off committees for it. She went anti-Israel, and the record was wiped. Tucker Carlson spent years as the most loathed figure on the American left, until he started platforming anti-Israel voices, and segments of the progressive online world began linking him approvingly. Megyn Kelly was untouchable until she became useful. Ana Kasparian was dismissed by the Hasan Piker wing as a sellout, and is now celebrated for declaring on Piers Morgan that the Jewish lobby controls the United States. Piers Morgan himself is anti-trans, anti-woke, contemptuous of every progressive cultural priority of the last decade, and his clips are passed around by activists who would have boycotted him a year ago, because he platforms anti-Israel guests.” I don’t always agree with Mazzig, though I think he is thought-provoking in important ways, but in this piece he makes an good point. Andrea Ocasio Cortez caught hell for calling out Greene as an antisemite, and the people she caught hell from were on the left, who seemed willing—as the the quote I’ve pulled asserts—to forgive her antisemitism because she’s taken an anti-Israel position. That is a phenomenon on the left that needs to be interrogated.

Insane Pre-Crime Strategy Unveiled for Leftist “Extremists,” by Ken Klippenstein: [T]he White House’s newly released National Counterterrorism Strategy…identifies the ‘left-wing,’ ‘anti-Fascists,’ ‘Anarchists’ and ‘radically pro-transgender’ ideologies as threats equivalent to jihadi groups like al Qaeda and ISIS, or narco-traffickers.” This is truly frightening. As Klippenstein explains, counterterrorism here is really a pre-crime strategy, a quasi-analog version of the movie Minority Report, in which the goal is to identify those who are going to commit acts of terror before they do anything—based on what they say, in other words, rather than what they do. Klippenstein’s final sentence is apt: “The war on terror has come home.”

Prominent Christian Zionist Group Is Lobbying U.S. Lawmakers on Israel—Without Revealing It's Funded by Israel, by Nick Cleveland-Stout: “Eagles’ Wings, which has about 30 employees, is not a registered foreign agent. Craig Holman, an ethics expert and government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, told Drop Site that Eagles’ Wings’ lobbying campaign raises serious questions about the organization’s compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the U.S.’ preeminent law for regulating foreign influence.” People rightly criticize AIPAC for its role in influencing American elections and some direct a similar kind of criticism at that organization, ie, that it lobbies and influences the US government on behalf of a foreign entity. Not enough attention is paid, though, to the role Christian Zionists play—and to the extent that the Israeli government has aligned itself with them—especially given the fact that, as I just learned the other day, there are more Christian Zionists than there are Jews in the world.