A group of experts discuss the roots of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. This is a must-read piece, a starting point for understanding for the genocide happening in Gaza today:
Nadim Bawalsa: The mandate period sets a precedent for how Palestine will be handled at the international level, which is to say as an exception to the law. Britain started off as the military occupier of Palestine at the end of World War I and then unilaterally altered its own status to civil administrator, even though it didn’t have the power to do so under international law. The League of Nations then left it to the British authorities to manage Palestine however they saw fit.about:blank
Around the same time, local Muslim-Christian associations were springing up all over historic Palestine, in Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Jerusalem. They would convene regularly to draft grievances and submit them to the British authorities in Jerusalem.
The local associations convened a Palestine Arab Congress, which met between 1919 and 1928.They always made the same demands: self-determination as part of an undivided Arab Syria and opposition to Jewish immigration and land acquisition.about:blank
So the British were very much aware of exactly what it was that the Arabs or the Palestinians wanted. But to serve their own interests, they pitted the Palestinians against one another. Right after the Nebi Musa riots, they sacked the mayor of Jerusalem and appointed Raghib al-Nashashibi in his place. He was of the Palestinian nationalist elite who opposed Zionism, but he was more obedient and agreeable to British interests. The British also created the Supreme Muslim Council to oversee Islamic property, endowments, schools and courts and appointed Haj Amin al-Husseini, from a rival elite family, to head the council as the grand mufti of Jerusalem.
Al-Husseini was chosen for mufti by the British high commissioner of Palestine after he stated his “earnest desire to cooperate with the government and his belief in the good intentions of the British government towards the Arabs,” according to Rashid Khalidi. A mufti can issue rulings based on Islamic law.He was seen as more of a people’s leader, but he also collaborated with the British. The point is that during the 1920s and early ’30s, Palestinian nationalists could oppose Zionism all they wanted so long as they didn’t get in the way of Britain’s goals.
And of course, all of this falls short of actually giving the Palestinians national and territorial rights.
Derek Penslar: Many Zionists wanted to believe that they represented progress—they would come with their technology and electricity, with better farm machinery, and improve everyone’s lives. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, whose version of Zionism was the precursor to Likud, the party of Benjamin Netanyahu, had a more realistic vision. He said: Don’t condescend to the Arabs. They have every reason to oppose Zionism, and they will do so, until they are met with overwhelming force.
Rabinovich: In 1923, the British offered to have a legislative council in which the Arabs would have had a larger share than the Jews, but they boycotted the elections for it. And this is a theme I think that we need to follow all the way from 1920 to 1948—the theme of missed opportunities, mostly by the Palestinians.
Dallasheh: This council was not supposed to be proportional or truly representative. The Zionist movement was never willing to accept that because until 1948, any such voting body would have meant a decisive Palestinian majority.
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Being a pet food taster at Waltham Petcare Science Institute sounds like a pretty sweet gig. As Vivian Ho writes, each day the dogs and cats there “eat two meals, and from there, teams of behaviourists, statisticians and nutritionists study how they respond to the food.” I had no idea pet food was studied so deeply. Interspersing her piece with tales of her own (toothless) cat, Florence Meowmalade, Ho creates a delightful read.
When I arrived at Waltham one overcast day last summer, I found cats lounging in their outdoor catios, gazing out over swaths of manicured lawn, or shimmying up scratch trees. Labradors of every hue chased balls in play areas and walked on leads with their handlers. The animals live in state-of-the-art facilities. The dogs have heated squares for sleeping and bunk two to a room to prevent loneliness; the cats have specially designed climbing nests that look like spiral staircases. All the animals can access the outdoors from their living quarters.
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You’ll savor Kevin Pang’s nuanced profile of “Ramen Lord” Mike Satinover, a man who became obsessed with creating the perfect bowl of noodles after falling in love with the dish in high school. One part precision, one part love, one part pure devotion, Satinover’s noodles have become renowned in Chicago since Akahoshi Ramen opened in Logan Square just a few short months ago.
If ever a bowl of noodles could kick your ass, Sumire’s miso ramen did it to Satinover with steel-tipped boots. For the first time since arriving in Japan, he was tasting food in the outer bounds: intense savoriness, extreme richness, wobbly fat from the chashu, bean sprouts charred dark. As he sat alone at this second-floor walkup in Sapporo, his life changed, even if he didn’t know it at the time. But the problem with losing his ramen-in-Japan virginity to something so maximally delicious was that it set Satinover up for a high nearly impossible to replicate…
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After Texas Governor Greg Abbott put them on a chartered flight to Chicago, Angi and her family found themselves not in a shelter but stuck in limbo at one of the world’s busiest airports, sleeping on the floor as holiday travelers glided by. Elly Fishman offers a glimpse into the lives of just a few of the vulnerable people—in this case, from Venezuela—who are hoping to put down roots in the United States:
On this December morning, Angi’s children keep themselves entertained on the airport floor. Yenni, her belly flat against the ground and her legs propped up behind her, takes a marker to a stack of construction paper. She sketches a collection of faces: Happy. Laughing. Sad. As she draws, a pair of police officers idly pace the room. They nod at familiar faces and chuckle at their quiet, private jokes. Angi watches Yenni draw. She admires her daughter’s artwork.
“The other day she said to me, ‘Mom, all the effort we put into coming here, and for what? We’re stuck here,’” Angi says. “I told her we were going to take it day by day. It’s a slow process.” The truth is Angi gave up long-term planning many years ago. The notion of a permanent home has been fractured and scattered in the years since she left Venezuela. For Angi, the airport is just another point in a long list of impermanent places.
Sliding back into her chair, Angi watches as a group of holiday travelers—headphones wrapped around their necks, skis tucked snugly inside tailored bags—weave their way through the room. Even their baby’s car seat comes with its own bag. The group soon settles in an otherwise empty row of chairs. The baby gurgles from a stroller while the older children remain fixated on their tablets. The man, likely the children’s father, surveys the room. His face remains stony as his eyes dart from one corner to the other. He holds a water bottle to his mouth and silently directs his family toward the automatic doors. The group rise to their feet and obediently make their way toward the exit.
Angi watches the family as they cut through the crowd. “Sometimes I look at them and think about how they are able to travel and carry bags,” Angi says. “I hope someday that will be me.”
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Steve Fisher’s account of Mennonite farmer Franz Kauenhofen’s rise and fall reads like a real-life Breaking Bad tale. In 2000, Mennonites eventually settled on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula; they bought and cut down large areas of jungle in Campeche to grow crops like soybeans and hoped to live in isolation and peace, free of religious persecution and the distractions of modern life. When Pablo Escobar sought a new shipping route to smuggle cocaine into the US, the fields the Mennonites had created were perfect landing strips for planes that needed to refuel or unload drugs. This setup propelled one of the Mexican cartels, later known as the Sinoloa cartel, to become one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the region—and launched Kauenhofen down an unlikely trajectory.
Kauenhofen also testified that he oversaw an additional 20 cartel members who provided logistics and security for planeloads of cocaine.
He continued to dress like everyone else. But he amassed a fleet of trucks, four-wheelers, motorcycles and an arsenal of weapons — including high-powered machine guns capable of taking down helicopters — to safely escort shipments to Sinaloa, according to the deposition.
In his deposition, Kauenhofen specifically mentioned 15 different planeloads of cocaine during his four years working for the Sinaloa cartel, and he alluded to many more. He said each landing earned him $325,000.
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In this essay—a written version of a speech given on January 27—Nicki Kattoura reflects on the attacks on Gaza over 113 days; the futile process of writing about war and destruction; and the way that our sentences fail to convey the scale of Palestinian suffering.
I’ll give you another example. Typically, when reciting the devastation of genocide we tend to rapid-fire statistics. To date, 26,000 Palestinians have been martyred (comma) over 60,000 have been injured (comma) over ten thousand are trapped underneath the rubble of buildings and presumed dead (comma) 2 million people have been internally displaced (comma) millions are starving (comma) dehydrated (comma) dying of disease… The comma neatly separates a list of things that are completely entangled, and in the process obscures the degree of violence happening to each individual person.
A thousand eulogies are exported to the comma, a tiny line or symbol, that just cannot bear the weight of the lives and aspirations of this many people. People whose lives are as intricate and multi-faceted and contradicting as our own.
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For most of my adult life, I have been, in the words of Beyoncé, a single lady. I met my current partner in 2021. My previous relationship ended in 2009. For the intervening 12 years, I was single.
I loved those years. I devoted a lot of time to building my career as a communications specialist for international NGOs: working internationally, immersing myself in local communities, and seizing every opportunity that came my way. Outside of work, I traveled widely and prioritized my own development. I practiced yoga and learned to cook. I wrote a novel. I bought and made a home. I found and lost friendships. So much of life exists outside of romantic relationships, and I immersed myself in this realm. I embraced solitude, relying on myself for sustenance and happiness. It was an enormous gift to intentionally build a happy, fulfilling life, just for me. And I’m not the only one to think this way. The number of single people in the U.S. has increased significantly in recent decades: In 2004, 33 percent of people aged 18-34 were unpartnered. By 2018, that number had risen to 51%.
During my single years, I had one friend who would always ask if I was dating anyone. No matter what else was happening in my life, my relationship status was the only thing that mattered to her. The rest of my life was only window dressing around that central, critical question: had I been chosen by another person? I tried to be generous with her. I knew she came from a generation of women defined entirely by their relationship status. If I’m honest with myself, her questioning only bothered me because it struck a nerve.
There were times when I longed for a partner. I knew it was better to be alone than in a bad relationship, but I still craved some kind of romantic connection. I dated: immersing myself in dating apps, swiping and liking, and going on first dates, before scampering back to my solitude. Sometimes my dates liked me and wanted more. Sometimes I liked them and wanted more. But those desires rarely overlapped. In 12 years, I had only a few flings, all of which were more trouble than they were worth. I was sometimes lonely, though less than people assumed. I missed having a steady person by my side, someone to drive me home from the hospital after a medical procedure or collect medication from the pharmacy when I was sick. But I certainly didn’t feel lonely on weekend nights, curled up with a novel and a bubbling lasagna.
Interestingly, I struggled to surface articles about heterosexual men choosing to remain single. There are plenty of alarmist pieces about how dating opportunities for heterosexual men are diminishing as relationship standards rise, but few include the voices of men who’ve found value in remaining single.
But despite rising numbers of single people, the cultural expectation that we will fall in love and get married remains strong. For some, it’s only when we’re happily partnered that our lives are considered complete. Being single is usually positioned as something to overcome, not something to celebrate. Someone like me—who remained single for more than a decade in a world devised for couples—is a puzzle to be solved, not a reality to be accepted.
What follows is a collection of articles offering different perspectives on single life. I hope they will challenge your perceptions of what a single life can look like and push you to make space for the richness that exists independent of romantic partnership.
On Spinsters (Briallen Hopper, Los Angeles Review of Books, July 2015)
I first considered my singlehood as an identity while reading Kate Bolick’s book Spinster, which grew from this 2011 article in The Atlantic. I enjoyed the book, but it was Hopper’s blistering review that really resonated with me. Hopper doesn’t criticize the book, as much as she imagines what could have existed in its place. Bolick’s book features five white female writers living in the American Northeast. The review challenges this framing and imagines the diverse group of radical women who built lives full of “friendship, faith, family, community, political purposefulness, significant caregiving responsibilities, dazzling professional success, and, occasionally or eventually, real romance.” This review adds queerness and radicalism to a book I loved, while expanding our understanding of what a satisfying life can look like outside of the same old heteronormative, patriarchal pattern.
Spinsterhood, for Bolick, is not simply being an unmarried woman. Nor is it cat-collecting, celibacy, or the social indignity of life as a human Old Maid card. Instead it is something luxurious, coveted, and glamorous, associated with long days of reading, plenty of room to sprawl in bed, ecstatic self-communion, and, as befits the former executive editor of the decorating magazine Domino, a well-appointed apartment of one’s own.
I also loved another piece from The Cut—Anna Holmes’ thoughtful take on her decision to stay single. “For a certain type of creative, highly sensitive soul,” she writes, “singledom was a feature, not a bug.”
Building from her own experience as a longtime single woman, Traister writes about how a cultural reassessment of female life could spark a significant political shift. I enjoyed how Traister takes what is ostensibly a cultural issue and traces its influence on our collective political priorities, pointing to how issues like pay equity and caregiving are rooted in the changing role of women in society.
Today’s women are, for the most part, not abstaining from or delaying marriage to prove a point about equality. They are doing it because they have internalized assumptions that just a half-century ago would have seemed radical: that it’s okay for them not to be married; that they are whole people able to live full professional, economic, social, sexual, and parental lives on their own if they don’t happen to meet a person to whom they want to legally bind themselves. The most radical of feminist ideas—the disestablishment of marriage — has been so widely embraced as to have become habit, drained of its political intent but ever-more potent insofar as it has refashioned the course of average female life.
This heart-wrenching essay about being single in a world that expects us to want romantic partnerships was published on Them, one of my favorite sites for queer news. With beauty and simplicity, Brandon Taylor writes about his history of childhood sexual abuse and how it impacted his life. Like Taylor, I experienced sexual trauma during childhood and found snippets of my own experience between his sentences. Taylor writes movingly about how sexual attention makes him squirm, and how he craves the intimacy of close friendship rather than romantic connection. Ultimately, he strives to make peace with himself knowing that, at least for the moment, singlehood is the best fit for him. I related to it deeply.
Perhaps that’s the source of my uneasiness. That every time a person interacts with my body, I’ve got to live with the record of it; that suddenly I have another voice to contend with as I try to make peace with myself. It’s another thing I have to move aside or reconcile as I move slowly, so slowly, with the speed of geology, toward a deeper accordance with myself and what I want or don’t want.
I didn’t expect to relate to a 15th-century Catholic nun, but I was very happy to be proved wrong. Jessa Crispin travels to Ávila, Spain, where the locals are celebrating a philosopher who pioneered women’s independence more than 500 years ago. In the Catholicism of my youth, a woman’s only role was to birth and raise more Catholics. But St. Teresa chose another path, joining the church because it was the only way for a woman to be a philosopher and an author. In doing so, she became an unlikely role model for women choosing to create a life alone. This piece also highlights how unmarried women are often the most socially and politically engaged members of society, which reflects my own experience volunteering during my single years. Without a romantic partnership, I had more energy to devote to my community. For a season, I spent my Friday nights volunteering at a children’s hospital—more meaningful than a night of socializing.
Teresa did not want to be reduced to merely a body, bred and sacrificed for the sake of her husband and children. If she had to choose between being a body and a brain, she would choose to be a brain. So she entered the church — the only way a woman could become a philosopher.
DePaulo has published several books on singlehood and has also given a popular TEDx talk on the topic.
We’ve all heard the studies: married people are, on the whole, happier and less lonely than their single counterparts. But when social scientist and long-term single person Bella DePaulo decided to examine the research, she uncovered serious methodological flaws in how these studies were conducted. This piece examines the research that currently exists on single people and highlights how further studies could benefit society as a whole. Single people have a lot to teach us about the pleasures of solitude, the importance of building a life based on your own values, and why we shouldn’t prioritize one central romantic relationship to the exclusion of everything else.
Ever since social science has been interested in the concept of marriage, it has endorsed the idea that everyone’s goal and likely trajectory is to get married at some point. “The idea has been that everybody wants to get married, and eventually everybody will, so why bother studying single people?” she said. Single people are either people who have failed to get married, in other words, or married-people-in-waiting. They’re not worth studying as a category unto themselves.
Throughout most of my single years, I was fortunate to be able to live alone. I couldn’t always afford it, but would sacrifice other luxuries to ensure my own space. One of the biggest challenges to remaining single in a world structured for two is the financial strain it can cause. In this thoughtful and deeply researched piece, Anne Helen Petersen dives into the ways our society is organized to support the needs of partnered people. The tax code, social security benefits, pensions, health insurance, IRAs, and countless other aspects of our societal infrastructure are set up to support married family units—and disadvantage those who choose to stay single. This particularly impacts women, who can expect to live longer than men, but earn less over their lifetimes. Women of color, especially Black women, are particularly penalized. It’s a sobering article about the need for policy—as well as cultural—change when it comes to the rights of single people.
American society is structurally antagonistic toward single and solo-living people. Some of this isn’t deliberate, as households cost a baseline amount of money to maintain, and that amount is lessened when the burden is shared by more than one person. There are other forms of antagonism, too, deeply embedded in the infrastructure of everyday life.
Clare Eganis a queer freelance writer based in Dublin. She writes a regularnewsletter about life after trauma and is working on her first book.
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