Harvard Professor Answers Middle East Questions | Tech Support | WIRED

Thanks, everyone, for watching. I wanted to share some readings for those who’d like to dig deeper; make a couple of corrections; and make one shameless plug:



1. As several commenters here have noted, there’s a lot more to be said about the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians for sovereignty, security, and self-determination. For an Israeli perspective, see Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (2013). For a Palestinian perspective, see Rashid Khalidi, The 100 Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (2020). Neither book represents the totality of Israeli or Palestinian views of the conflict or the history of their own peoples, but they are good places to start.

2. If you’d like to learn more about the history of the current Middle Eastern state system and why it is so conflict-prone, you cannot beat David Fromkin’s weighty but eminently readable A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (1989)

3. For a perspective on the absence of democracy in the Arab world that emphasizes the role played by West, see Elizabeth F. Thompson, How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs: The Syrian Arab Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of its Historic Liberal-Islamic Alliance (2020). As the title suggests, the book tells the story of how a relatively liberal and pluralistic attempt at self-government in Syria was thwarted by European colonial powers. For an older, competing, and rather more controversial perspective on the absence of Arab democracy that emphasizes cultural factors internal to the Arab world, see Elie Kedourie, Democracy and Arab Political Culture (1994).

4. To learn more about Mustapha Kemal Atatürk, the man who rescued Turkey from ruin after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in WWI, and who established today’s secular Turkish republic, read Andrew Mango’s superb (if matter-of-factly-named) Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey (1999)

5. To learn more about how oil has shaped the Middle East and the world, read Daniel Yergin’s magisterial, global history of your favorite hydrocarbon, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (1990).

6. Iran should be the subject of its own “Tech Support” episode. Until then, I recommend Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (2003). That book tells the story of the American- and British-backed overthrow of Iran’s democratically-elected prime minister, Mohamed Mossadegh in 1953, which planted the seeds of the Islamic revolution that birthed the Islamic Republic a quarter-century later. For a highly personal account of Iran’s Islamic revolution, see Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis (2004).

7. On the transformations underway in Saudi Arabia, led by the country’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), see New York Times reporter Ben Hubbard’s MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed Bin Salman (2021). You can also read my review of the book in the Journal of Democracy: https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-prince/

8. On how political disputes among the early Muslim community produced the modern day split between Sunni and Shia Muslims, see Hugh Kennedy’s The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 600–1050 (1986). Another book on early Islamic history worth reading is Fred Donner’s Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (2010). That book argues that the early Muslims were originally part of a “community of believers” that included Jews and Christians. A comforting thought in this age of religious strife.

9. Finally, a bonus recommendation is Riad Sattouf’s extraordinary multi-volume series of graphic novels: The Arab of the Future, which tells of the author’s boyhood spent between the Arab world (including Libya, Saudi Arabia, and his father’s native Syria) and his mother’s native France. Originally written in French, the first four of the six volumes are available in English.



All of the above books are fairly accessible and enjoyable, despite the sometimes-difficult subject matter.



Now for two corrections:


1. 01:20 As a few of you noted, the renaming of Constantinople to Istanbul did not happen in 1453. The Ottomans called it “Konstantiniyye.” Istanbul was an informal name that only became official in the 20th century. I am sorry for the error.

2. 22:15 In my answer on the Sunni-Shia divide, I said the Iran-Iraq war took place in the 1970s and early 80s. Though there was armed conflict between Iraq and Iran in the 1970s over the Shatt al-Arab waterway, the conflict we know as the Iran-Iraq war started in 1980 and ended in 1988. Thanks to those of you who flagged this.



Finally, the shameless plug:



If you’re interested in hearing a variety of perspectives on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the war in Gaza, please check out the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Dialogues, a series of in-depth interviews I have been conducting with intellectuals, activists, and leaders from Israel, Palestine, the United States, and the broader Arab world: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-FNnyGuM4IwUeIltpVHnNQHN6azeVUrN



Thanks, again, everyone, for watching and for commenting. And thanks to the great team at Wired for giving me the opportunity to speak to you.

Culturally, Israel is a foreign element in the Islamic world

the explanation of Atatürk's reforms were WAY off

What a joke. Most of the stuff in the Middle East is happening because of Israel. This is pathetic.

Israel is the region's only democracy? This is a joke. Would you call any country that doesn't let half its population to vote a democracy?

🥱

9:04 your information is outdated, there is substantial taxation of all kinds now in gulf countries

FREE PALESTINE
it is a genocide and anyone who tries to argue semantics can go screw themselves.
STOP THE GENOCIDE
FREE PALESTINE

33:11 when you have money, power and interests, you have conflict

10m in, I think this is the best video I’ve seen all year

Blown away by how clear and nuanced he managed to be in so little time and faced with the most controversial questions in the world…

Constantinople wasn't "Officially" renamed to "Istanbul" until the creation of the Turkish Republic btw.

Was the suffering of the Germans after they perpetrated the Holocaust a genocide? Was it only persons without hearts who did not feel sympathy for them? Obviously not.

genocide apologist tries to deny genocide

Giving strong Jeff Goldblum vibes. Life finds a way.

50000? try millions, my dude

This was fantastic. I feel I've learned quite a bit

Give the Gaza kids aid, but also make sure that they know who started it all on an October 7th.

It is strange that you with this much historical knowledge doesn't know that the correct name is Persian gulf!!!!

24:27 That sentence is how the First Crusade started and now Islam is trying to force it's way into every country to "spread" only it's an invisible war

I am curious why he frames it as "a homeland in Palestine which in the Bible is the ancestral homeland of the Jews". The area of the Southern Levant that he is referring to is the homeland of the Jews in the Bible, Quran, Torah.... hes trying VERY hard to not give the full story here; very biased presentation

❤️

33:00 "Peace in our time" - Ultron

As a Jewish American, thank you for accurately pointing out that Jews are in fact also native to that land. That fact constantly gets misrepresented or glossed over in American discussions of this conflict. That’s not to say any of what’s happening now is ok, but ignoring that does a huge disservice to how complex this issue really is.

Very educational and I think even handed explanations of difficult and nuanced topics

28:06 This one didn’t age well, thanks to Trump.

It's not working in the US today either.

9:18 Its genocide.