Laleh Khalili
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lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Laleh Khalili
@lalehkhalili.bsky.social
18K followers 700 following 1.4K posts
Politics, poetry, ports, pottymouth. She/her.

Typos and dropped words in every post, because sharing is caring.

Find me at l.khalili@exeter.ac.uk
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lalehkhalili.bsky.social
I have organised an amazing roster of *virtual* presentations for the Centre for Gulf Studies at Exeter. Check out these incredible superstars, and register for the events (Tuesdays 17-18.30 London time) here: www.exeter.ac.uk/research/cen...
https://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/centres/gulf/events/
October 22, 2025 at 8:57 AM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Much ink has been spilt on Elon Musk as an individual personality rather than as a product of political economy. On 28 October listen to Quinn Slobodian propose a theory of Muskism analogous to Fordism. For details and to register go to www.exeter.ac.uk/events/detai...
October 22, 2025 at 8:54 AM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
In July 88 a US missile cruiser breached Iranian territorial waters & was fired on by Iranian gunboats.The Vincennes’ incompetent/belligerent crew identified a civilian Iranian plane as an F14 & fired on it, killing 290 people inc. 66 kids.Toby Craig Jones will speak on this in our seminar nxt week.
October 16, 2025 at 10:58 AM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
I have organised an amazing roster of *virtual* presentations for the Centre for Gulf Studies at Exeter. Check out these incredible superstars, and register for the events (Tuesdays 17-18.30 London time) here: www.exeter.ac.uk/research/cen...
October 1, 2025 at 2:02 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
On Friday, 2 May 14:00 (London time), I will hold an information session about the new MA I start convening in September 2025. Registration link: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pgt-webina...
April 28, 2025 at 11:18 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
March 29, 2025 at 11:55 AM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Super excited about the new MA we are launching next academic year (in September 2025) at Exeter. I have been reviewing loads of MAs elsewhere and designed a programme that helps both those who are looking for critical intellectual engagement, AND paths to career development.
March 26, 2025 at 3:16 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
How on earth was Abba (the band) trading in oil? (from FT)
Abba, which in 1980 was trying to set up oil-for-records bartering deals with the Communist Bloc, decided to pull ut of the spot market after losing SKr 30m (£2.6m at present exchange rates). "The business is too risky for us," the group said last week.
January 16, 2024 at 5:40 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Haaretz image of “Sde Teman” prison camp. I'd say Israel's GTMO, except that Israel itself had Ansar I (1980s Lebanon), Ansar II (1980s and 1990s Gaza), & Ansar III (Negev 1980s and 1990s, where The Atlantic editor-in-chief was a guard). Welcome to Ansar IV.
January 5, 2024 at 6:28 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
The military-university-startup circuit of Praetorian Israel:

Haaretz: "Shark Tanks: With Gaza as Testing Ground, Israeli Defense Startups Flourish"

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...
There are quite a few advantages for Israeli startups in the industry. The Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure in the Defense Ministry acts as an incubator. It cooperates with startup companies on numerous projects, helping to develop products and tailor them to the needs of the military. It even places orders for small-scale pilot projects on behalf of the security forces sometimes. This makes the IDF a sort of "beta site" for startup companies. "The feedback loop is fantastic from the company's perspective," says Kleinman. "It propels you forward."
January 5, 2024 at 3:41 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
I am researching diplomatic cables from 1967 and this is Walt Rostow (sec'y of state) writing on 5 June about US support for Israel. Seems familiar.
"Therefore, our behind-the-scenes work with the Russians and others should consist not merely in negotiating a cease-fire; because a cease-fire will not answer the fundamental questions in the minds of the Israelis until they have acquired so much real estate and destroyed so many Egyptian planes and tanks that they are absolutely sure of their bargaining position."
January 3, 2024 at 11:11 AM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Crows are my favourite birds. May the crow standing sentinel outside my rainy window be an omen of a better year to come.
January 1, 2024 at 4:07 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
This extraordinary story from 2014 is about Gazans escaping to an underground city to get away from the bombing: www.haaretz.com/opinion/2014...
"Now, 10 years after we started digging, the mission is complete. Deep, deep beneath the living world there is an entire city – the Gaza ghetto, an underground city. It’s moldier, chillier and a lot bigger. Here, you can barely hear the huge bombs exploding, and the only hint of the tanks smashing the streets is a slight tremor in the ceiling. We dug down into the soil of Gaza, through the layers of time. Sometimes we found bones, remnants – a room containing the jawbone of an ass, Samson’s long braid and Delilah’s thighbone, the bone that once supported the flesh of a splayed leg. And we found two broken pillars of an ancient temple. On one we saw a faint etching: “Remember me, please, that I may be avenged of my two eyes.” The loamy Gaza soil has always been the ally of despair and the despairing."
December 30, 2023 at 4:31 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Not all heroes wear capes
December 27, 2023 at 12:25 AM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Merry Christmas
December 25, 2023 at 2:15 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Yup.
December 21, 2023 at 4:12 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
These images remind me of the massacres Israel committed in Gaza in 1956 (commemorated in Joe Sacco's Footnote in Gaza):
www.bidoun.org/articles/foo...
December 7, 2023 at 11:17 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Here is the bit that really struck me:
SR: "And yet, you say you feel the need togo right back to the beginning, to explain the whole history ofPalestine in order to unmake Sharon Churcher’s lie and show that..." this is in fact genuinely popular Palestinian dress. Doesn’t thisneed to go back again and again over the same story becometiring? ES: It does, but you do it anyway. It is like trying to find the magi‐cal moment when everything starts, as in Midnight’s Children . Youknow midnight, and so you go back. But it is very hard to do thatbecause you have to work out everything and get past a lot of ques‐tions in the daily press about why Palestinians don’t just staywhere they are and stop causing trouble. That immediatelylaunches you into a tremendous harangue, as you explain to peo‐ple: ‘My mother was born in Nazareth, my father was born inJerusalem . . . ’ The interesting thing is that there seems to benothing in the world which sustains the story: unless you go ontelling it, it will just drop and disappear. SR: The need to be perpetually told.
December 5, 2023 at 11:36 AM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Without comment
December 1, 2023 at 7:59 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Lol
November 30, 2023 at 6:33 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Yeah the dignity of the office
November 30, 2023 at 8:10 AM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Hitches has been resurrected to see Kissinger off.
November 30, 2023 at 8:09 AM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Some right-wing journalist from France wrote me to ask me to comment on Palestinian "martyrs" and how that term has spread. So I wrote back:
"This sounds like the perfect kind of article for a gotcha moment. So, no thanks to an interview. However, the term "martyr", if you would like to know, has been used far beyond Palestine and for a very long time. You can read Terry Eagleton's Radical Sacrifice; or Allen Feldman's Formations of Violence on European contexts for it. In fact, you can even read Ernest Renan on the nation and those who sacrifice for it. And you can do it in French! And please do it while singing La Marseillaise (especially verses 3 and 4)."
November 29, 2023 at 5:07 PM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
John Keane's sublime letter of resignation from a German fellowship (on X) includes a quote from Karl Jasper's "The Question of German Guilt" that I had to go find:

"The greater this sensitivity to blame, the greater, as a rule, is the inconsiderate readiness to blame others."
"The greater this sensitivity to blame, the greater, as a rule, is the inconsiderate readiness to blame others. Oddly, sensitivity to blame is very apt to rebound into an urge to confess. Such confessions of guilt-false, because still instinctive and lustful-have one unmistakable external trait: fed by the same will to power as their opposites in the same individual, they betray the confessor’s wish to enhance his worth by his confession, to eclipse others. His confession of guilt wants to force others to confess. There is a touch of aggressiveness in such confessions. Moralism as a phenomenon of the will to power fosters both sensitivity to blame and confessions of guilt, both reproach and selfreproach, and psychologically it causes each of these to rebound into the other."
November 29, 2023 at 10:31 AM
lalehkhalili.bsky.social
Come on! You can't tell me those bulletproof breastplates are not photoshopped (like everything Israeli security forces releases).
November 28, 2023 at 8:12 PM