The rise of the extremist Israeli far right to power in Israel, which set the stage for the Gaza genocide, is traced, from the declaration that sovereignty is invested only in Israel's Jews (79 percent of the population) to increasingly racialist pronouncements in 2023. Some of this writing was informed by his visits to Israel and East Jerusalem, and conversations with Israeli and Palestinian interlocutors. Cole is an academic scholar of the Middle East, and despite the current events focus of these analyses, they inevitably reflect his training and practice as a historian, including his extensive work on colonialism and Arab nationalism. They underline his conviction that the internet is itself a sort of postmodern archive, and that historians cannot afford to avoid commenting on an increasingly rapid news cycle. His treatment is distinctive in that he takes into account the impact of these events on the wider Middle East, and the importance of Iran and its allies, one of the focuses of his scholarship. These essays reflect his decades of involvement in the Middle East, giving them a perspective different from North American and European observers with a more North Atlantic set of concerns.