Middle East

Palestinian Lives Matter: Huge Jewish-Arab Rally in Tel Aviv Decries Netanyahu’s plan to Annex 1/3 of West Bank

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Arab48 reports that some 6,000 Israelis gathered in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday to protest the Netanyahu government’s plan to annex one third of the Palestinian West Bank. The gathering was addressed via video by US Senator Bernie Sanders, who said, “It has never been more important to […]

Israel/ Palestine

How Trump’s US and the International Community are Complicit in Israeli Apartheid

Ramona Wadi

By Ramona Wadi | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – For several years, the call for a one-state solution has been part of the alternatives to the two-state paradigm which forms the backdrop to international diplomacy on Palestine. “One state” is generally described as a state with equal rights for all Palestinian Arabs and […]

Democracy

George Floyd and Mohamed Bouazizi: What Americans can Learn from Tunisia’s Arab Spring

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In mid-December, 2010 in the small Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, a small drama unfolded that would change the world, and certainly would change Tunisia. Tareq Mohammed Bouazizi, a street peddler who had just bought $200 worth of produce to sell off a cart, was harassed by police for not […]

Bashar al-Assad

Syria from Eden to Ruin: The World may forget, but the Catastrophe hasn’t Gone Away

Bert de Vries

From Eden to Ruin ( Christian Courier) – While living in Jordan, my wife Sally and I fell in love with Syria and its people through many visits stretched over four decades. Our last adventure in 2006 was to Aleppo, when we stayed in a converted khan in the middle of its souq (market), which […]

Israel/ Palestine

Black Americans and Palestinians ‘can’t breathe’ because of injustice

Middle East Monitor

By Ahmed Al-Burai | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Over the past week, two brutal events added more sadness to the morbid climate of the coronavirus pandemic. In Minneapolis, a black American citizen was killed by a police officer, and then an unarmed 32-year-old Palestinian man with special needs was shot and killed […]

Bill of Rights

How American cities were Reduced to Esper’s “Battlespace”: From Fallujah to Minneapolis

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Bush administration’s war of aggression on and military occupation of Iraq that began in 2003 shifted the United States to a militaristic society. Some 2.7 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, an astonishing number. The Bush administration began the practice of sending to civilian police departments military […]

Arab Spring

The Authoritarian Logic of Killing Protesters

David Faris

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – On October 9th, 2011, Egyptian army vehicles plowed into a Coptic Christian protest outside of the Maspero state television building in the capital city of Cairo, killing more than two dozen peaceful demonstrators. Less than a year after the Arab Spring came to Cairo and dislodged the country’s longtime […]

African-Americans

Riots or Uprising? If this Turmoil were in Iran, Trump would be Cheering on Arsonists and Dreaming of Regime Change

Omar Ahmed

(Middle East Monitor ) – The scenario is all too familiar: the almost casual murder in Minneapolis of an unarmed African American citizen — say his name: George Floyd — by police officers has sparked a wave of social unrest and protests across the country. Since Floyd’s killing on 25 May, we have seen what […]

Israel

Understanding Israeli PM Netanyahu’s Political Survival

Al-Shabaka

By Nijmeh Ali | – Overview ( Al-Shabaka.org ) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dominated Israeli politics for nearly 25 years, first between 1996 and 1999 and then again since 2009. Winning a total of five elections, he has become the longest-serving prime minister in the country’s history and has laid the foundation […]