In his book Black Power and Palestine, the historian Michael R. Fischbach seeks to prove that there are longstanding, widespread, and deep-seated feelings of solidarity between African-Americans and Palestinians—and that the pro-Israel sentiments of such major figures as Martin Luther King, Jr. are mere exceptions. David Swindle sees in this argument an attempt to force the Israel-Palestinian conflict into fashionable notions of “intersectionality,” with little concern for the facts:

According to the Lebanese government, the explosion in its capital city on Tuesday that left over 100 dead and many more injured or homeless was caused by the accidental detonation of some 2,750 of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer often used for making bombs. (Less than one-thousandth of that amount was used by Timothy McVeigh to destroy the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.) Previously, police have discovered Hizballah warehouses in London and Germany storing many tons of the same explosive. Hussein Ibish comments: