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Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is being widely reported based on press leaks that the Egyptian government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has privately threatened Israel. Cairo is said to have warned that the 1978 Camp David Peace Treaty will be suspended “with immediate effect” if the government of Binyamin Netanyahu tries to take […]

Arab Spring

Why, Despite the Arab Spring and Mass Protests of the 2010s, People Got the Opposite of What they Wanted

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (New York: PublicAffairs, 2023). Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – At the end of 2019, there was no shortage of articles looking retrospectively at the events that had shaped the decade of the 2010s. One of them was aptly titled “A […]

Featured

Netanyahu Plans to chase 1.4 mn. Refugees from Rafah, then to Invade, as Biden complains, “Over the Top”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that the Israeli army has agreed on a plan prepared for the land invasion of Rafah City in South Gaza. The city is the last refuge for over a million Palestinian refugees pushed out of the northern Gaza Strip by earlier Israeli military operations. […]

censorship

Systemic Journalistic Malpractice: How Western Journalism Failed in covering Gaza

Mohamed Jegham

At the beginning of their classic Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman pondered the proposition that “media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth, and that they do not merely reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived.” We all know how that story turns out. Media often […]

Featured

Saudis Contradict Blinken: Want Actual Palestinian State now, not Vague ‘Peace Process’

Farhang Jahanpour

Oxford (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – On Tuesday afternoon (6 February 2024), U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took part in a joint press conference with Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Doha. The press conference was mainly about the war in Gaza and the possibility […]

Conspiracy Theories

Super Bowl Conspiracy: How the MAGA Republicans are (Taylor) Swift-Boating Themselves

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – I love how Republicans are using the romance of pop star Taylor Swift and football great Travis Kelce to forecast and promote their own political doom. They’re crying, “This is how we’re gonna’ lose and it’s not fair.” They are “swift-boating” themselves, and they have my permission. […]

Featured

Greater-Israel Advocates see Gaza Crisis as Opportunity for Expansion

Jeremy Pressman

Storrs, CT (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The media rightly focused attention on a recent “packed gathering” of Israeli leaders and citizens discussing their support for returning Israeli settlers to the Gaza Strip, where they have not been since Israel’s disengagement in 2005. More generally, for the past four months, some ministers in the […]

Featured

New York Times’ Friedman hits new Low with Animalization of Arabs and Iranians

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Calling people animals is a way to dehumanize them, and probably helps convince individuals that the other people around them approve of treating the animals badly. In ways that aren’t entirely clear, this way of speaking is certainly wrought up with violence and even genocide. Israel’s Defense Minister called the […]

Featured

Biden Isolated as 85% of Americans fear wider Mideast War, and 50% say Israel has gone Too Far

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a new NORC/ AP opinion poll, 50% of Americans say that they believe Israel has gone too far in its war on Gaza. That is up from 40% in November. Even though the US television news networks steadfastly decline to cover the Israeli war on Gaza in a concerted […]