Gaza invasion gets underway as pressure mounts on Netanyahu By Simon Mabon, Lancaster University “Phase two” of Operation Protective Edge has begun: Israeli military forces have launched a ground incursion into Gaza. Protective Edge began on July 8, with the stated goal of protecting Israeli citizens from the rocket attacks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad […]
Archives for July 2014
Gaza meets the New Politics of the Middle East: “Islamic State,” Egypt, Turkey
By Juan Cole The Israeli security establishment was almost certainly encouraged to launch its military assault on little Gaza by the current divisions over political Islam in the Middle East. Hamas is an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, though they are quite separate in policies and leadership. The overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government […]
Health Catastrophe in Gaza after Israel bombs water infrastructure
By: Ahmed Hadi Gaza – Bassem Siam carried two plastic gallons as he left his home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza, ignoring the intense bombardment and the continued Israeli military flights. He went to his neighbors who happen to have a small supply of drinking water to get a sip of water […]
Blow-Back: How Bush-Cheney Reduced Iraq to Ashes
By Dahr Jamail [This essay is a joint TomDispatch/Truthout report.] For Americans, it was like the news from nowhere. Years had passed since reporters bothered to head for the country we invaded and blew a hole through back in 2003, the country once known as Iraq that our occupation drove into a never-ending sectarian nightmare. […]
Besieged and Blockaded: What Gaza is fighting Back Against
Ed. note: When war breaks out there is a tendency to focus on the nitty-gritty detail of tit for tat. But all wars have a back story. The inhumane and frankly creepy Israeli treatment of the Palestinians of Gaza is the back story for today’s conflict. AFSC explained the situation as it unfolded toward the […]
Where’s the Outrage over Spying on US Muslim Civil Rights Leaders?
TheRealNews: “Where’s the Outrage Over Spying on Muslim Civil Rights Leaders?”
Falluja and Gaza: Why Counter-Terrorism fails when the Problem is Political
By Juan Cole There are such things as small terrorist groups that do a lot of harm and lack any significant social or political support. It may well be that such groups can be defeated by counter-terrorism operations. Other so-called terrorist groups are more organic, growing out of the profound suffering and grievances of a […]
Netanyahu’s Last Stand: Why he Cannot Win by Bombing Gaza
Published on Wednesday, July 16, 2014 by Common Dreams By Ramzy Baroud When the bodies of three Israeli settlers – Aftali Frenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19 – were found on June 30 near Hebron in the southern West Bank, Israel went into a state of mourning and a wave of […]
The Pretender-Caliph and Islamic History: The Truth about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
By Asma Afsaruddin So Muslims of the twenty-first century have a caliph, do they? According to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 has now been reversed and the institution has been revived after an interregnum of ninety years. The new caliph is even called Abu Bakr, […]