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Frederick Deknatel

@freddydeknatel.bsky.social

2.3K followers 3.1K following 2.1K posts

Journalist, editor, fellow at Century International. Previously: Founding executive editor, Democracy in Exile, DAWN’s journal @dawnmenaorg.bsky.social; managing editor @wpr.bsky.social; staff editor @foreignaffairs.com http://www.frederickdeknatel.com/

www.frederickdeknatel.com

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 15d

I'm thrilled to join the Century Foundation as a fellow at Century International, where I'll be writing on Syria's future, from the huge challenges of reconstruction to the prospects for U.S.-Syria ties after Assad. @centuryintl.bsky.social @tcfdotorg.bsky.social
tcf.org/experts/fred...

Frederick Deknatel - The Century Foundation

Frederick Deknatel is a journalist, editor and fellow at Century International, where he writes about Middle Eastern affairs. From 2021 to 2025, he was

tcf.org

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 9h

Meanwhile, the architects of Biden’s Middle East policies have plum positions at Harvard etc and are awaiting the call to advise the next Democrat in the White House and do this all over again.

Andrew Exum @exum.bsky.social · 10h

This week has confirmed my suspicion that Biden’s Middle East policies will look worse, and will be even more embarrassing for Democrats, with the passage of time.

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 12h

Trump, as ever, has no idea what he’s talking about or what he’s supposedly committing the US to.

He wants a hostage deal that he can boast about and take credit for, and then… “we’ll see.”

Naturally, the media response is a flood of articles on Trump the peacemaker. bsky.app/profile/atru...

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 16h

Q: What guarantees Hamas disarms and that Israel doesn't resume bombing?

TRUMP: The first thing we're doing is getting our hostages back. After that we'll see.

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 13h

Give it up for Trump’s “new vision” for peace that “promises a practical approach” instead of “endless, abstract negotiations over maps and the hypothetical constitutional arrangements of two states.” 🙃 www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 13h

Trump is sure to lose interest here in a matter of days, yet his plan commits the US — and Trump personally — to brokering long talks over many incredibly messy and intractable issues.

As Aaron David Miller put it, do you think Trump knows what he signed up for? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/u...

"He has created a peace plan that, if in fact Hamas accepted it in principle, would require an extraordinary lift by the United States," said Aaron David Miller, a former longtime State Department official who is now a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Every single point is going to be negotiated to death."
Mr. Miller said he was struck by how the peace proposal seemed to hinge so much on the president personally playing a role. "Trump signed up for something that I think is going to require an extraordinary amount of American involvement and monitoring, and he's made himself the key monitor," Mr. Miller said.
"This is not a throwaway cease-fire agreement,' he added. "This is the full monty here, and at the top of this full monty sits one Donald Trump."

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 13h

Perhaps you should wait until the details of the deal are actually public before praising Trump’s “vision” as “the best chance of creating lasting peace since the Oslo accords.”

Just one small detail. www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 13h

Sounding like Jared Kushner, they somehow call this “the best chance of creating lasting peace since the Oslo accords in 1993 and 1995.” www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

A new beginning for the Middle East

The breakthrough in Gaza could open up a new approach to peace

www.economist.com

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 14h

The Economist just might be getting ahead of itself on Trump and Gaza. Is it as thirsty for Trump to get a Nobel Peace Prize as he is? view.e.economist.com?qs=d6448b77a...

Instead of endless, abstract negotiations over maps and the hypothetical constitutional arrangements of two states, the Trump plan promises a practical approach in which Israelis and Palestinians can rebuild their lives. Success looks less like a ceremony in the White House and more like cement mixers spinning in Gaza, as the threat of missiles fades and ordinary people embrace a slowly rising belief in a safer, more prosperous future. It is a triumph for President Donald Trump's transactional, bullying style of diplomacy.

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Reposted by Frederick Deknatel

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 1d

My piece - to be in this week's issue - on the South Shore raid and what it says about Donald Trump's America:

www.economist.com/united-state...

My view is this stuff is as much or more about creating content and fear than it is about actually catching immigrants, though that's a goal too

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 20h

“Jack Smith’s Lawfare” ….

The Post opinion pages will soon be indistinguishable from the WSJ or National Review. Just as Bezos wants.

Philip Bump @pbump.com · 1d

I spent more than a decade at The Post. It was good to me and I was proud to work there. I’ve largely refrained from being critical since I left. But this framing of the special counsel probe is embarrassing and flatly wrong. Stunning, but not. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | Jack Smith’s lawfare and James Comey’s arraignment on pathetically weak charges

Good people will be deterred from public service if they see a meaningful risk of winding up in jail afterward.

www.washingtonpost.com

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 20h

Habeas, now there’s a name people are saying more and more.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Q: Have you given any more thought to possibly suspending habeas corpus?

TRUMP: Suspending who?

Q: Habeas corpus

TRUMP: I don't know. I'd rather leave that to Kristi.

Reposted by Frederick Deknatel

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 20h

Live TV, folks. 🤓

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 20h

C-SPAN caller to Mike Johnson: "Have you ever voted against anything that Trump has set forth in terms of policy? ... Trump is a dictator. So it doesn't matter what Johnson does or what they guy over in the Senate does."

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 1d

“The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 percent share of US GDP growth this year… AI companies have accounted for 80 percent of the gains in US stocks so far in 2025.”

What happens if (when?) the AI bubble bursts: on.ft.com/4pTQ3US

America is now one big bet on AI

It’s seen as the magic fix for every threat to the US economy

on.ft.com

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 1d

“I lost my son because of the funding cuts. It is not only me—many more children in other camps have also died helplessly from hunger, malnutrition and no medical treatment.”

“These US cuts to humanitarian aid are assisting the military in their genocidal policy of starvation against the Rohingya.”

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

apnews.com

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Reposted by Frederick Deknatel

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

The elimination of USAID is a moral atrocity and all involved made a choice to enable, and then lie about, ending the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

MAE SOT, Thailand (AP) - Mohammed Taher clutched the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son and wept. Ever since his family's food rations stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April, the father had watched helplessly as his once-vibrant baby boy weakened, suffering from diarrhea and begging for food.
On May 21, exactly two weeks after Taher's little boy died, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and declared: "No one has died" because of his government's decision to gut its foreign aid program. Rubio also insisted: "No children are dying on my watch."
That, Taher says, "is a lie."

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Reposted by Frederick Deknatel

Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 1d

If the economy could be represented by a giant dashboard of lights, they'd all be flashing red

soybean farmers are panicking over loss of Chinese buyers, declare possible 'bloodbath'

Trump assault on wind projects hits red states hardest

businesses that depend on government contracts are already feeling the pain of the shutdown

no official jobs numbers during shutdown means Wall Street is turning to alternative measures -- and they show the situation is bad

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Reposted by Frederick Deknatel

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 3d

I'm writing a new monthly column in @wpr.bsky.social. My first piece is on the flaws in international law on genocide and the gap in the Genocide Convention between genocidal intent and "military necessity," drawing on the indispensable work of @dirkmoses.bsky.social

Gift link:

Gaza, Genocide and the Limitations of International Law

The Genocide Convention that Israel has been accused of violating may contain a critical loophole when it comes to military action.

www.worldpoliticsreview.com

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Reposted by Frederick Deknatel

World Politics Review @wpr.bsky.social · 3d

“The need to call something what it is, as in Gaza today, is arguably more a moral imperative than a legal one—an urgent appeal to the nebulous international community to force Israel to stop.”

Gaza, Genocide and the Limitations of International Law

The Genocide Convention that Israel has been accused of violating may contain a critical loophole when it comes to military action.

www.worldpoliticsreview.com

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 3d

A reminder not only of the flaws in international law, but of how its treaties and conventions are all a product of their time, in this case the postwar era.

Is the Genocide Convention actually working just as its drafters intended, privileging state sovereignty in armed conflict above all else?

“Mass state violence against civilians is not a glitch in the international system; it is baked into statehood itself,” Moses has written, explaining how international law effectively shields states that can assert the military goal of self-defense when accused of committing grave war crimes, even genocide. Moses’ study of the history and origins of the Genocide Convention is a reminder of the flaws in international law. It is selectively or rarely enforced, leaving the decision of whether to adhere to it up to states themselves.

What is more, the treaties and conventions that make up international law are all a product of their time, in this case the immediate postwar era. When the Genocide Convention was being drafted in the aftermath of World War II, under the shadow of the Holocaust and at the dawn of the Cold War and decolonization struggles, the state parties to the treaty, according to Moses, “distinguished genocidal intent from military necessity, so that states could wage the kind of wars that Russia and Israel are conducting today and avoid prosecution for genocide.”

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 3d

For @wpr.bsky.social, I wrote about Gaza and the origins of the Genocide Convention, which was written with such intentionally high bar for establishing culpability "that a state’s military could conceivably never violate it if it claimed it was only pursuing military objectives." Gift link:

Gaza, Genocide and the Limitations of International Law

The Genocide Convention that Israel has been accused of violating may contain a critical loophole when it comes to military action.

www.worldpoliticsreview.com

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 3d

"Now that the deal has gone through and Weiss has taken one of the most powerful positions in American news, the richest people in the world will have taken big steps toward ushering in the toothless, acquiescent future of mainstream media they have always wanted." defector.com/bari-weiss-s...

Bari Weiss Signs Huge Deal To Usher CBS News Into Its Vichy Era | Defector

On Monday, newly appointed Paramount CEO David Ellison announced that his company had acquired the Free Press, the smirking blood-and-soil blog founded and run by former New York Times hall monitor Ba...

defector.com

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 3d

As @dirkmoses.bsky.social has argued, “international law on genocide is working as it was designed to: allowing states to ruthlessly exterminate security threats while making it difficult to apply that law.”

A grim reminder of how the Genocide Convention came to be. dawnmena.org/why-the-inte...

Why the International Community Made It So Difficult to Prosecute the Crime of Genocide

Today, international law on genocide is working as it was designed to: allowing states to ruthlessly exterminate security threats while making it difficult to apply that law.

dawnmena.org

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 3d

Gaza, Genocide and the Limitations of International Law

The Genocide Convention that Israel has been accused of violating may contain a critical loophole when it comes to military action.

www.worldpoliticsreview.com

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 3d

The "shocking secret" here is that he did not have legal status in the country (but had it recently).

A New York Post-style subhed in the NYT that shows how much the discourse around immigration has sunk under Trump, dutifully adopting his outrage and hysteria. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/u...

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 5d

Whose partisan messages? Apparently you can’t say in a headline.

Partisan Shutdown
Messages Could Hurt Civil Service, Experts Warn
Messages on official government channels blaming Democrats for the shutdown are one of the most significant hits yet to the longstanding wall between federal workers and politics, historians said.

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 6d

Trump, the hardest-working president ever, "was first told of the cuts by Hochul during a phone call on Sunday evening, according to three people with knowledge of the conversation." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/n...

Trump Administration Reverses $187 Million in N.Y. Counterterrorism Cuts