VP for Arts&Culture @MiddleEastInst. Believer in the power of art, storytelling & smart policy

Washington, D.C.
Joined April 2009
West Bank today: I watched settlers attack Palestinian farmers: kill livestock… then drove to Taybeh to attacks on French, Belgian and Polish diplomats. The Israeli settlers are heavily armed, coordinated, protected by the @IDF. Totally out of control. apnews.com/article/west-bank…
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Another case of the Israeli Army claiming they fired at a Palestinian running at them "posting a threat" who turns out was running away from them & unarmed. Unfortunately for the IDF, the NYT was on the scene to document the truth. nytimes.com/2026/10/16/world…
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KateSeelye retweeted
Fantastic to see my book on this list of favorites by @nytimes books critics and editors: Get your copies of The Best Kind of American, wherever you buy your books. nytimes.com/2026/10/15/books…
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KateSeelye retweeted
Thrilled to be in @ftweekend with a four-page spread, adapted essay from my new book The Best Kind of American. My research and interviews help reveal the fate of the four Iranians who went missing in Lebanon in July 1982. ft.com/content/838428eb-9618…
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Outrageous attack by settlers on Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine. While at The Post, I copy edited probably hundreds of stories she photographed from Israel, the West Bank and Ukraine, and she is nothing but professional
Masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villagers on Friday, setting olive groves on fire and slinging rocks. Caught in the attack was Post photographer Heidi Levine. “They just kept kicking me and kicking me, like probably 50 times,” Levine said. wapo.st/4yt6dHY
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I’ve just returned from another trip to #Syria. There’s a lot of takeaways, but one thing was palpable: The #Iran war has created *profound* regional & economic ripples that have directly challenged #Syria's capacity to meaningfully recover -- for the foreseeable future. 🧵
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KateSeelye retweeted
“Let me die,” American photojournalist Heidi Levine repeats to journalists Jasper Nathaniel as they try to outrun masked Israeli settlers who attacked her on Friday while she covered the olive harvest in the West Bank village of Abu Falah, near Ramallah. Around 80 settlers attacked Palestinian olive harvesters in the village, AP reported. The Palestinian Red Crescent said it treated six people injured in two attacks in Abu Falah. Levine, a freelancer for the Washington Post, told the Committee to Protect Journalists that the settlers knocked her down and kicked her for at least 10 minutes, even after she identified herself as an American journalist. They stole her camera, phone and bag. She was eventually taken to a hospital in Ramallah. "The IDF provided cover, with tear gas and machine guns, while the settlers beat" Levine "nearly to death," Nathaniel wrote, adding that soldiers then shot a Palestinian bystander and aimed their guns at and shoved paramedics trying to treat him. AP photos and circulating videos show Israeli soldiers standing over a wounded Palestinian man after they shot him. Andrey X, an activist also at the scene, said a Palestinian man "saved our lives from the settler-terrorists who attacked the olive harvesters and journalists” armed only with a slingshot.
To be clear, the only reason I was able to reach Heidi was because young Palestinians provided cover with rocks against machine-gun- and tear-gas-wielding settlers and soldiers. It’s those kids, not the settler terrorists, who the IDF was hunting after the attack.
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MEI hosted a panel yesterday on the future of the US AI “stack” in the Middle East. The discussion covered what the American stack includes beyond chips, how the export program is working, the UAE’s A:5 designation, the impact of the Iran war on the region, and how the US can compete with China’s offer. MEI is grateful to moderator @Iyengarish of @ForeignPolicy, Nazak Nikakhtar of @WileyRein, and Ruth Berry of @nvidia for a candid, insightful conversation alongside MEI Senior Fellow @ThisIsSoliman.
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KateSeelye retweeted
Another sad day for Turkey. Halk TV, one of the country’s most-watched opposition television channels, has been taken over by a government appointee after police raided its offices and abruptly cut off its live broadcast.
Halk TV Genel Yayın Yönetmeni Suat Toktaş açıklama yaptı: "Aşağı yukarı 20 yıldır yayında olan bir kanala Türkiye'nin yeni normali olarak el konuldu. Ana kumandayı teslim alamadık. Teslim alsaydık sizi de yayından veda ederdik" "İliç'te de vardık. Narin Güran'ın yanında da vardık, Akbelen'de de vardık. Kimi zaman Kürt olduk, kimi zaman Türk olduk, kimi zaman LGBTİ+ olduk, onların haklarını savunduk. Kimi zaman Ekrem İmamoğlu, kimi zaman Can Atalay olduk. Onların sesi olmaya çalıştık Şimdi o ses susturuluyor"
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KateSeelye retweeted
The Best Kind of American is out today in the US. Buy your copy at your favorite bookstore or order online here: bookshop.org/p/books/the-bes…
It's publication day! Great to be on @Morning_Joe with @ScarboroughNow , Mika and the team to talk about my new book The Best Kind of American, the story of how we got here with the US-Iran-Israel war. It all starts in 1982 Beirut...and it's sadly not over.
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KateSeelye retweeted
Today, 48 of the roughly 60 villages and towns within Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon have been mostly leveled. The scale of Israel’s systematic demolition has fueled fears that Israel is seeking to permanently empty the territory of its population. trib.al/dO9g0kU
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SNL TURNED A WHITE HOUSE RENOVATION INTO A HOME-IMPROVEMENT SHOW. And that format choice is what makes the premise interesting. “White House Makeover” takes the familiar language of property-renovation television and applies it to Trump's plans for the White House ballroom. Instead of treating the subject like a conventional political report, the sketch borrows a format audiences recognize immediately. The makeover reveal. The confident hosts. The promise that a big renovation will solve everything. But the White House isn't an ordinary house, and a presidential building project isn't just another television renovation. That contrast gives the satire its starting point. SNL takes a political story and changes the lens through which we see it. Suddenly, a question about presidential priorities becomes a parody of television's obsession with dramatic transformations.
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KateSeelye retweeted
Out this coming week! "The Best Kind of American" by @KimGhattas, a riveting work of true crime about the murder of Malcolm Kerr, Middle East scholar and president of @AUB_Lebanon in 1984. Pre-order her book here: us.macmillan.com/books/97812…
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I worked on a daily basis with the US Consulate in Jerusalem for more than thirty years. I encountered situations where I learned that the reporting was being strictly monitored, at time censored. I have specific examples in mind. Nothing is comparable to what is being reported about Milstein. I learned about this filtering sporadically. Almost always my interlocutors were attentive, but didn't volunteer much information. I didn't probe, which is one of the reasons they spoke with me. On rare occasions, I was encouraged, by means of raised eyebrows and nods, to report something directly to friends in the White House and/or the State Department. One time, a political officer told me that I was one of the most quoted sources in Consular cables to DC. He told me that they rarely stated "this is what happened" or "this is what it means". They generally reported with attibution, that "John/Jane Doe" reported such and such", or "believes this to be of significance". We quoted you more than most, he said, not because you're so brilliant but because you said what we wanted to say, but couldn't, because it was not approved by the censors in the front office.
David Milstein—a top aide to U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Mark Levin’s stepson—suppressed and altered U.S. diplomats’ reports critical of Israel, skewing the record to serve the Netanyahu government. This included shielding illegal annexation in the West Bank, stonewalling accountability for nine Americans killed by Israel in the occupied West Bank, and rewriting diplomatic cables documenting mass killings and atrocities in Gaza. This is a deliberate distortion of the truth—the sanitizing of American diplomatic reporting to protect a foreign government. For Milstein, acting as a foreign agent, accountability is long overdue.
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KateSeelye retweeted
Personal News: Excited to join @EurasiaGroup's Middle East & North Africa team as a consultant, collaborating with the multi-talented @FirasMaksad and other top-notch colleagues and experts. My focus will be on geoeconomics & long-term investments and transformations in the Gulf Arab region (Photo: Blue Eye Picture, Dubai)
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For the first time in its history, Morocco has a woman prime minister, following the King's selection of Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri on Tuesday. Speaking to @nytimes, MEI Senior Fellow @IntissarFakir stated that "from the perspective of the regime, having a woman prime minister is hugely consequential." She cautioned, however, that the progressive image Morocco seeks to project internationally could "clash with the hard reality of her background and track record" at home. nytimes.com/2026/09/29/world…
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KateSeelye retweeted
Congress finally acting: @ChrisVanHollen, @timkaine & @SenSanders: 9 Americans have been killed in the West Bank in recent years, w/no accountability. Bill would force the USG to report on the violence—or cut US military aid to ISRAEL. This should have been law long ago! Least we can do is support this effort. vanhollen.senate.gov/news/pr…
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