The Nakballs

Israel's extraordinary pager operation.

First: I’m delighted to announce that Nervana Mahmoud will be joining our ME201 discussion on Sunday. I’d been hoping she would join us since we started this class. From her website:

Nervana Mahmoud is a British-Egyptian doctor, regional observer and independent commentator on Middle East issues  She started blogging and writing on Middle East issues after the Egyptian revolution in 2011.

At the start of 2013, Nervana began publishing a weekly compilation of Egyptian news and reports. She writes mainly about Egypt, liberal Islam, women’s rights, radicalism, and wider issues in the Middle East. She has contributed to several outlets including The Telegraph, Al-Monitor, Now Lebanon, and Egypt’s Ahram, Daily News Egypt, Al-Hurra and Ahval. Nervana has also written guest posts for the US’s Council on Foreign Relations CFR, and has been quoted on several articles for many top outlets.

Nervana’s Twitter account  was featured in The Washington Post’s must-follow on Twitter accounts to understand Egypt,  by The Daily Beast’s list in 2013, and her blog was featured in the The Economist’s list of what to read on Egypt.

In November 2013, Nervana was featured by the BBC as one of its 100 women of the year. In 2015, she was nominated for Lebanon’s Samir Kassir Award. She has given several talks about Egypt, women rights, and radicalism in various institutes, as well as many radio and TV interviews. Her posts and tweets have been quoted in various reports. Currently hosting a podcast on Turkey Trends for Ahval English.

While she’s joining us to help us make sense of this week’s reading assignment, but I think we should reserve a bit of time with her for a discussion of the politics of the region, too. She’s so interesting and so knowledgeable. Here’s a selection of videos and podcasts from her site:

🎧 Podcast: Sex and Islamism

🎧 Podcast: Islamism from Cairo to London

🎧 Podcast: The Hamas Mindset: Lessons from the medieval battle of Yarmouk

Here’s Nervana’s excellent Twitter feed.¹

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Nervana posted this on Twitter yesterday:

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Paging Hezbollah

Speaking of pagers: Now that the dust, so to speak, has settled, it’s clear that Israel pulled off the most astonishing first strike in modern history—comparable to the destruction of the Egyptian Air Force in the Six Day War.