By Elliott Colla, author of Baghdad Central While visiting Baghdad last year, I was struck by what Iraqis said every time I tried to apologize for the 2003 invasion: “Don’t apologize for that. We needed an invasion to get rid of Saddam Hussein.” And then they would add, “But you do need to apologize for […]
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Middle East
Need for Tough Love: Defending the Gaza Assault Hurts Israeli, American Interests
By Gregory Harms Almost two-thirds of Americans feel Israel’s operations in Gaza were justified. When given sufficient information, and when thinking outside ideological parameters, Americans commonly draw reasonable conclusions and are in agreement by a two-thirds majority. In the case of the Gaza-Israel conflict, a knowledge deficit and ideology are to explain why the population […]
Blown Chances in Gaza Israel and the U.S. Miss Many Chances to Avoid War
By Sandy Tolan via Tomdispatch.com Alongside the toll of death and broken lives, perhaps the saddest reality of the latest Gaza war, like the Gaza wars before it, is how easy it would have been to avoid. For the last eight years, Israel and the U.S. had repeated opportunities to opt for a diplomatic solution […]
Iraq: Al-Abadi garners Iranian, US, Saudi Support: But can He Unite Iraq?
By Juan Cole Middle Eastern regional powers joined the US in welcoming the appointment of Haydar al-Abadi as Iraq’s next Prime Minister, creating a dorm full of strange bedfellows. The chairman of Iran’s national security council, Ali Shamkhani, congratulated al-Abadi and said that Iran approved of the legal process whereby President Fuad Masoum appointed the […]
Hundreds, if not Thousands will Die: Film Crew finds Iraqi Yezidis still Trapped on Mountain
Channel 4 News “Dramatic footage as our Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Rugman helps drag dehydrated children to the back of a military helicopter who have fled Islamic State forces in northern Iraq. As the helicopter left Mt Sinjar it came under fire from IS militants and the helicopter crew are filmed returning fire. Camerawoman: Philippa […]
Israel Drones Gaza Human Rights Worker to Death
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — A rights group Monday condemned an Israeli drone attack on Gaza that killed a Palestinian worker for a human rights organization the day before, a statement said. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that an Israeli drone attack killed 43-year-old Anwar al-Zaanin, a staff member of al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, […]
Gaza and the Palestine Crisis in History: World War II
By William R. Polk At the outbreak of World War II, both Palestinians and Zionists enlisted in large numbers — 21,000 Jews and 8,000 Palestinians — to help the British in their hour of need. But both kept their long term objectives firmly in mind: both continued to regard British imperialism as the long-term enemy […]
The Long Knives Come out in Baghdad
By Juan Cole The coup-like atmosphere created by Nouri al-Maliki’s stationing of his troops at the Green Zone, checkpoints and bridges in Baghdad on late Sunday backfired on him with Iraq’s parliamentarians. Nearly half of the members of his Islamic Da`wa Party (Islamic Call or Mission Party) in parliament defected from him. Most of the […]
Nightmare in Iraq
Joe Stork via Human Rights Watch Fearing for their lives, more than 150,000 Yezidis fled Sinjar and surrounding villages to mountains north of the city on August 3, 2014 when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attacked the area. Some young and elderly are dying from the harsh conditions. I visited a Yezidi […]