Is Normalization Normal?

“Keep reminding yourself: This is not normal,” warned comedian John Oliver on Last Week Tonight. It was less than a week after Election Day, and the country was just beginning to process Donald Trump’s unexpected victory. Opponents of the president-elect were scrambling to discern what had changed in a world they thought they understood.

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Book Essay // Refracted Identities, Mirrored Lives

Suleiman’s new book, The Némirovsky Question: The Life, Death and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in 20th-Century France, explores Némirovsky’s tragic career and the deteriorating civil society of pre-World War II France that first nurtured the writer and then ultimately turned on her. Drawing on parallels to her own life, Suleiman makes of the story a meditation on allegiance, foreignness and assimilation—one with uncanny echoes for today’s politics.

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Opinion // Why There Won’t Be a ‘One-State’ Solution

Trump’s use of the phrase opened up a debate about its many meanings. by David Makovsky It’s fitting that the Israelis and Palestinians, who cannot agree on how to solve their conflict, don’t even agree on its terms. Take the phrase “one-state solution,” which recently popped up in the news when President Donald Trump mentioned it in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What is the “one-state solution”? It means very different things to different people. Israeli settlers and their sympathizers see a one-state solution as meaning Israel should be sovereign not just over Israel according to pre-1967 lines, but also over the entire West Bank (what some refer to as Greater Israel). To some Palestinians, a one-state solution means no Israel whatsoever, but rather a binational state in Israel and the West Bank....

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