When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini announced his vision of exporting the Islamist revolution to the region, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) developed the winning strategy of sponsoring Shiite militias to act as proxies. In 1982 the IRGC created Hezbollah in Lebanon, a model proxy. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the IRGC and its foreign operations branch, the Quds Force (QF), set up a large number of Shiite militias under the umbrella of the Hashd al Shaabi, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). The Iranian influence became so pervasive that Qassem Suleimani, the QF chief, became known as the “viceroy of Iraq.”

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Though largely motivated by mutual concerns about surging Iranian imperialism, the strengthening of Israel’s relationship with the GCC monarchies could ultimately help reignite the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Published back in April, the most recent special issue of Israel Studies hit a nerve so raw that it is still reverberating in the pages of online journals and newspapers. As co-editors of this publication, who conceived of the project “Word Crimes: Reclaiming the Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” came up with the admittedly “stark and provocative” title, and solicited the contributing essays – we are flattered by the attention but dismayed by how many readers continue to prefer uncivil denunciations of the volume’s editors and contributors over rigorous analysis and engaging with the substance of the essays themselves.