By Malik Mukhtar (Full-Length Version with Mbembe Quotations) There are historical moments when the ordinary vocabulary of violence collapses . When “ conflict ,” “ occupation ,” and “ security ” no longer carry the weight required to explain what is unfolding before our eyes. Gaza is one such moment — a rupture in the moral architecture of the present. It is not simply a battlefield. It is an experiment in state-administered dying , in what Achille Mbembe named necropolitic s — the transformation of political power into the authority to dictate who may live and who must die. In Necropolitics (2003), Mbembe writes: “ The ultimate expression of sovereignty resides… in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die.” — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics For Gaza, this is not theory. This is the daily grammar of existence. My book, Calculus of Survival: Necropolitics, Siege, and the Deionization of Life in Gaza , is situated squarely within this reality —...
(A response to Bret Stephens’ sermon on antisemitism, Nov. 11, 2025) Ah, Bret Stephens has spoken again — that weary high priest of moral panic and selective outrage. Once more, he descends from the pages of The New York Times , clutching the sacred scroll of victimhood in one hand and a mirror he refuses to look into with the other. This time, his sermon bears a familiar title — “Meet the New Antisemites, Same as the Old Antisemites.” Catchy. Biblical, even. Only problem? The real “old antisemites” are now wearing army uniforms with Hebrew lettering and dropping U.S.-financed bombs on Gaza — and Bret calls that “self-defense.” The Gospel According to Bret Bret laments Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes — the “Hitler fanboy,” as he calls him — as proof that antisemitism is seeping back through the cracks of American conservatism. And he’s right — it is . Only, one wonders why Bret’s moral radar detects every droplet of hate in American discourse but goes blind to th...