Senior editor, Carnegie Middle East Center. Author of The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon's Life Struggle (Simon & Schuster 2010).

Beirut
Joined January 2011
I also have a Substack titled BeirutCalling (link in my profile), where I post most of my published articles and interviews, as well as original material, which I'm expanding. I encourage you to subscribe. It's free.
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Michael Young retweeted
Israel is uninterested in peace with Lebanon, seeks to fragment the country, maintain a buffer zone on its land, and engage in pereptual war. That's why Lebanon should avoid civil conflict. Don't believe me, believe the IDF's former intelligence head. Mine for @NationalComment: thenationalnews.com/opinion/…
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Michael Young retweeted
I also have a Substack titled BeirutCalling (link in my profile), where I post most of my published articles and interviews, as well as original material, which I'm expanding. I encourage you to subscribe. It's free.
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Michael Young retweeted
Marco Rubio Misses the Point in Athens -Michael Young beirutcalling.substack.com/p… @BeirutCalling
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Michael Young retweeted
Reposting by article on Marco Rubio’s recent speech in Athens defending Western civilization, which really sounded jarring in light of the collusion with Israel by leading Western countries in the slaughter in Gaza. At the same time, Rubio completely failed to address the way the global order is shifting away from the United States and the West, even if this was the prime motivation for his speech. I believe Gaza was a foundational moment in this shift, and the stain will not soon be washed away, certainly not through speeches reaffirming Western civilizational grandeur. substack.com/home/post/p-220…
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Precisely.
No mention of victims as usual. Just that it’s bad PR.
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Sorry to see @amanpour leaving CNN, where she was a class act. Evidently she didn't want to go through the same humiliations as CBS, managed by journalistic nonentities scraped up by the Ellisons. edition.cnn.com/2026/10/19/m…
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Michael Young retweeted
What struck me most about Naza was not just hearing Israeli soldiers describe, in their own words, the horrors they witnessed and took part in during the bombing of Gaza. But it was also how they described it: for some, the killing was “fun”. Others struggled to remember whether they had killed hundreds or thousands. They spoke with chilling casualness about the children and even babies they knew they were killing. One compared it to playing a video game. As the credits rolled, no one moved. No one spoke. For several minutes after the film ended, everyone just sat there, stunned. I’ve never experienced anything like it. A deafening silence that echoed the collective shock and disbelief at what we had just witnessed. A silence that spoke louder than words.
Despite Israel’s efforts to deny its direct evidence, the film NAZA is receiving rave reviews because it powerfully reveals the Israeli military’s clinical devaluing of Palestinian civilian life in Gaza, all told by Israeli military officers themselves. trib.al/ToyA0a5
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Israel is uninterested in peace with Lebanon, seeks to fragment the country, maintain a buffer zone on its land, and engage in pereptual war. That's why Lebanon should avoid civil conflict. Don't believe me, believe the IDF's former intelligence head. Mine for @NationalComment: thenationalnews.com/opinion/…
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Michael Young retweeted
Excellent analysis by @BeirutCalling
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Michael Young retweeted
The badly negotiated trilateral agreement by @LBpresidency appointed negotiation team well summarized: “the June agreement imposed all conditions on the #Lebanese side, above all Hezbollah’s disarmament, without requiring #Israel to fulfil any of its own. Indeed, the term “withdrawal” is not even in the document, and there is no timetable for what the text describes as a progressive [Israeli] redeployment out of Lebanese territory.”
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Michael Young retweeted
Rob insists that 242 actually does not say what it says: the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war. An “original bargain” has no legal standing. If there are any doubts, in July 2024 the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation illegal. Decision here: un.org/unispal/wp-content/up…
To that end, I propose the Admin urge #Israel to restore confidence in its commitment to the original bargain of 242 on which the lawfulness of its occupation rests, outlining six steps #Washington should counsel #Jerusalem to take - none of which flout Israel’s post-Oct 7 national consensus on security. 10/11
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Hezbollah is a major problem for Lebanon, but it makes little sense today to risk internal Lebanese strife just to satisfy an Israel that appears to be committed to destabilising Lebanon. Opinion | Michael Young @BeirutCalling via @TheNationalNews thenationalnews.com/opinion/…
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Rob insists that 242 actually does not say what it says: the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war. An “original bargain” has no legal standing. If there are any doubts, in July 2024 the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation illegal. Decision here: un.org/unispal/wp-content/up…
To that end, I propose the Admin urge #Israel to restore confidence in its commitment to the original bargain of 242 on which the lawfulness of its occupation rests, outlining six steps #Washington should counsel #Jerusalem to take - none of which flout Israel’s post-Oct 7 national consensus on security. 10/11
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Michael Young retweeted
SCOOP - Qatar would construct two power plants in Lebanon and sign a 20-year liquefied natural gas supply deal under a proposal to revive the ailing Lebanese power sector, a document seen by Reuters showed. The plan - which still requires approval - includes: - New combined-cycle plants at Deir Ammar & Zahrani, 825 MW each - QatarEnergy 20-year LNG supply agreement - FSRU - 800 MW solar, 440 MW wind Lebanon has had many power plans that went nowhere due to political bickering and vested interests of politicians. Will this one be different?
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Michael Young retweeted
"The reason I keep bringing up the Palestinians throwing rocks to protect Heidi is because, I mean, I can’t emphasize enough how much these young men are . . . Yesterday, they put their lives on the line. There were soldiers there, and soldiers will shoot when somebody is throwing rocks. These young men put their lives on the line to protect a sixty-three-year-old Jewish American journalist. And, I mean, these guys are heroes. If they were not doing that, so many villages would’ve been overtaken. They are literally the only defense. [On Saturday] I was in a village called Jalud, and the exact same thing happened. We got attacked by settlers, and it was these young men, whom we call the shabab, who fought them back with rocks. And the reason I just want to put a fine point on this is because, for me, just in terms of where things are going with Israel-Palestine politically, I think that a sort of discursive shift in how we talk about Palestinians’ right to defend themselves needs to happen." @infinite_jaz to @IChotiner
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Michael Young retweeted
I excerpted my @NewYorker column on Rubio in Athens in Substack, with additional shoutouts to @lionel_trolling, @Malinowski and @BeirutCalling ishaantharoor.substack.com/p…
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Nothing on who is actively supporting these people, or the policies that have given them a sense of impunity—shown again in their attack against Europeans officials yesterday.
Heidi Levine, photojournalist for @wapo suffered serious injuries from vicious & cowardly attack. Heidi is US Citizen, clear ID as journalist. Details of who under investigation, but those who attacked unarmed reporter should spend YRS in prison. We have called for a full investigation, arrest, and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law to whoever participated in this. Attacking a female photographer is despicable act of terror carried out by masked cowards. Dishonorable act of senseless violence.
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But will any of these countries sever diplomatic relations with Israel, whose government has fully supported these thugs?
🇮🇱🇪🇺 Masked ISRAELI SETTLERS now ATTACKED EUROPEAN DIPLOMATS in the West Bank?! Diplomats from France, Belgium and Poland were visiting a Palestinian olive harvest in the Christian village of Taybeh when seven masked settlers reportedly surrounded their vehicles on ATVs. They demanded identification, threw stones and smashed a Belgian consulate car window. Footage also shows a diplomat on the ground. Imagine going to watch people harvest olives and finding yourself surrounded by masked men with clubs. WTF IS HAPPENING over there?! Writer: Oliver
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Michael Young retweeted
European diplomats—including French and Polish representatives—visited the occupied West Bank to observe the olive harvest, where they were violently attacked by Jewish Israeli settlers. Among those attacked was Bernard Baudoux, mayor of Aulnoye-Aymeries in northern France, who was participating in the olive harvest in Taybeh, a Palestinian Christian village in the occupied West Bank. The Jewish Israeli settlers carrying out these violent pogroms are not acting alone. They are heavily armed militias, fully backed and directed by the Israeli state and protected by the IDF. Their violence is the machinery of a brutal apartheid regime: terror and ethnic cleansing.
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