Martin Kramer is The Washington Institute's Walter P. Stern Fellow and author of one of its most widely read monographs, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America.
Articles & Testimony
The painting and the historical scene it depicts remind us that many aspects of the coronavirus pandemic—from equipment rationing to ‘Orient blaming’ to political clashes with medical science—are nothing new.
“The appearance of Bonaparte in Palestine was only like the passing of a terrible meteor, which, after causing much devastation, again disappears.” This was the verdict of the great Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz, who was referring to Napoleon Bonaparte’s short-lived invasion of Palestine in 1799. One possible reason for Napoleon’s failure was the plague. This is the point at which a huge neoclassical masterpiece comes in...
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