Israel, Iran, and Hizballah: Between Deterrence and Escalation

... On the Margins of Genocide in Gaza

Speakers
Narges Bajoghli
Ali Hashem

Moderator
Bassam Haddad
Maya Mikdashi

Thursday, 18 April 2024
2:00 PM EST | 8:00 PM Palestine

In this timely conversation, our speakers will address the impetus for regional war and the tactics of deterrence as Israel, Iran, and Hizballah repeatedly weigh their options. With Israel viewing regional escalation more favorably, how might matters spin out of control in the coming days and weeks? To what extent can we take the cautionary statements of the United States at face value? How does an actual escalation reorder the priorities of all actors involved, state and non-state, in the region and beyond? How might escalation affect Israel’s onslaught in Gaza?

Gaza in Context Collaborative Teach-In Series

We are together experiencing a catastrophic unfolding of history as Gaza endures a massive invasion of potentially genocidal proportions. This follows an incessant bombardment of a population increasingly bereft of the necessities of living in response to the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7. The context within which this takes place includes a well-coordinated campaign of misinformation and the unearthing of a multitude of essentialist and reductionist discursive tropes that dehumanize Palestinians as the culprits, despite a context of structural subjugation and Apartheid, now a matter of consensus in the human rights movement.

The co-organizers below are convening weekly teach-ins and conversations on a host of issues that introduce our common university communities, educators, researchers, and students to the history and present of Gaza, in context. 

Co-Organizers: Arab Studies Institute, Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, George Mason University’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program, Rutgers Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Birzeit University Museum, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies, University of Chicago’s Center for Contemporary Theory, Brown University’s New Directions in Palestinian Studies, Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies, Georgetown University-Qatar, American University of Cairo’s Alternative Policy Studies, Middle East Studies Association’s Global Academy, University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, CUNY’s Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center, University of Illinois Chicago’s Arab american cultural Center, George Mason University’s AbuSulayman’s Center for Global Islamic Studies, University of Illinois Chicago’s Critical Middle East Studies Working Group, George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies, Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

Featuring 

Narges Bajoghli, Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins-SAIS, is an award-winning anthropologist, scholar, and filmmaker. Her book, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic received the 2020 Margaret Mead Award, 2020 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title, and the 2021 Silver Medal in Independent Publisher Book Awards. She co-authored How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare and directed the documentary "The Skin That Burns.” Bajoghli has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Jacobin. She has appeared as a commentator on CNN, DemocracyNow!, NPR, BBC WorldService, BBC NewsHour, PBS NewsHour, and in Spanish on radio across Latin America. Bajoghli is the co-director of SAIS Rethinking Iran.

Ali Hashem is a broadcaster and columnist covering the Middle East with extensive focus on Lebanon, Iran and Iraq. He is currently a correspondent for Al Jazeera English Channel. He is also a research fellow at Lancaster University’s Sectarianism, Proxies and De-Sectarianization Project.

Bassam Haddad (Moderator) is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding the Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press)

Maya Mikdashi is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and a lecturer in the program in Middle East Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.  Maya is an anthropologist (PhD Columbia University, 2014) who is deeply engaged in ethnographic, legal, and archival theory and methodology. She currently is completing a book manuscript that examines the war on terror, sexual difference, secularism, and state power in the contemporary Middle East from the vantage point of Lebanon. 
Maya has been a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow from 2014-2016 at Rutgers University, and a Faculty Fellow/Director of Graduate Studies, Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University (2012-2014). She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, in addition to online platforms. She is a co-founding editor of the e-zine Jadaliyya.com.Maya is also a filmmaker and writer, she is co-director of the feature length documentary film About Baghdad (2004), co- founding member of filmmaking cooperative Quilting Point Productions, and director of Notes on The War (2006). Most recently Maya co-conceptualized, co-wrote (with director Carlos Motta), and performed in a historical fantasy film set in 19th century Beirut and Bogota, Deseos/رغبات", which is currently playing in international film and art festivals.