By Juan Cole The Egyptians appear to have floated their cease-fire agreement Tuesday morning in the press, and Hamas insisted any such proposal had to be communicated directly with them. As a result, an Israeli spokesman alleged, Hamas continued to fire rockets into Israel, with an Israeli man being killed by one (the only Israeli […]
Rand Paul to Rick Perry: Why Send US Troops to an Iraq that Won’t Defend Self?
By Juan Cole Texas Gov. Rick Perry, apparently considering another run for president (assuming he can remember to do it), attacked Rand Paul as an “isolationist,” calling him “blind” to the danger of international “terrorism” and pointing especially to the rise of the so-called Islamic State in northern Iraq. Perry said, “”That’s why it’s disheartening […]
The Court Trial of Bibi Netanyahu
By Juan Cole Dark Satire: Irony alert Prosecutor: “Justices of the International Criminal Court, I shall demonstrate to you that this man (points at detained Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu in orange jump suit and manacles at accused table) is guilty of serious breaches of international law and not just of war crimes but of a […]
Palestine 1896
First film footage taken of Ottoman Palestine (Lumiere Bros.), in 1896. Palestine 1896 h/t William Dalrymple Kemal Karpat wrote that according to the Ottoman Census of 1893, the population of most of what is now Palestine (excluding northern areas then attached to Beirut) was as follows: 371,959 Muslims 42,689 Christians 9,000 Jews This does not […]
The Map: A Palestinian Nation Thwarted & Speaking Truth to Power
By Juan Cole Reprint edn. … As part of my original posting, I mirrored a map of modern Palestinian history that has the virtue of showing graphically what has happened to the Palestinians politically and territorially in the past century. Andrew Sullivan then mirrored the map from my site, which set off a lot of […]
Top 7 Really Disturbing News from Iraq
1. Last Wednesday Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki angrily lashed out at the Kurds, accusing them of harboring the terrorists of the so-called ‘Islamic State.’ Since the Kurds have in fact fought the IS radicals, al-Maliki’s charge is hard to take seriously. Rather, it appears to be a sign of how angry he is that Kurdistan […]
Israel’s Groundhog Day: Reverse Snowballs and the Horror of Lawn-Mowing
by Juan Cole A horrible video is circulating on social media, of a Palestinian father in Gaza who is bringing a toy to his four year old son, only to find once he enters his home that his son’s head has been crushed by Israeli shrapnel. That is the face of Israel’s current military operation […]
Stop Saying ‘If X fired Rockets at U.S.’: It’s Racist, & assumes we’re Colonial
By Juan Cole Is anyone else disgusted by the propaganda trick of trying to get Americans to sympathize with Israel’s massive attack on the civilian habitations of Gaza by saying “if the US was subjected to rocket fire by X [usually Mexicans], what would it do?” This hope that Americans are racists and that their […]
The Fall of the New Year Throne (Complete Sword & Sorcery Novel of ancient Persia)
By Juan Cole The Fall of the New Year Throne Many, many thanks to everyone who followed the serialized sword and sorcery novel I have posted here since last January. I had written a version of it in the early 1990s. I wasn’t satisfied with it and ultimately got drawn into other projects. The book […]
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