Few thinkers have had so enormous an impact on the humanities as Edward Said, an English professor whose 1978 book Orientalism argued that all Western scholarship of the Middle East—indeed, all European writing about the Islamic world—was inherently suspect, reflecting only stereotypes and fantasies. Accompanying this argument was vituperation against Israel, to which Said dedicated much of his subsequent public life, inspiring multiple generations of academic Israel-haters. William D. Rubinstein examines Said’s distortions and tortured logic:

In 2004, a group called Ansar Allah—also known as the Houthis, after the tribe that dominates the movement—launched an insurgency against the government of Yemen, and in 2014 seized the capital city of Sanaa. Since then, a bloody civil war has engulfed the country, with Iran backing the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and (until recently) the U.S. backing their opponents.