Review of Hil Aked, Friends of Israel: The Backlash against Palestine Solidarity (London: Verso, 2023). Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Amid Israel’s assault on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank in early July, the House of the Commons passed a bill with significant implications for the United Kingdom’s relations with Israel/Palestine. […]
How Lebanon was shaped by its Great Famine in WW I
Brand, Tylor. Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon’s Great War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023. Review of Tylor Brand, Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon’s Great War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023). Munich (Special to Informed Comment) – Suez, Gallipoli, Kut al-Amara, and Jerusalem saw […]
The Existential Crisis of the Muslim Brotherhood
Review of Abdelrahman Ayyash, Amr ElAfifi, and Noha Ezzat, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013-22 (Washington, DC: The Century Foundation, 2023). Munich (Special to Informed Comment) – July 3, 2023, marked the tenth anniversary of the military coup that removed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi from power, paving the way for the […]
A One-State Democracy for Palestine-Israel? A Review Essay
Review of Ghada Karmi, One State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel (London: Pluto Press, 2023). Munich (Special to Informed Comment) – Following the inauguration of a far-right government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December 2022, the Israeli occupation machinery in Palestine has been turbocharged. In February 2023, the Israeli government approved the […]
How did Turkish President Erdoğan Survive the Strongest Challenge Yet?
Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won the elections in Türkiye. Again. In power for two decades, first as prime minister and then as president, Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) secured a relatively comfortable victory over Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in the runoff election held on May 28. Kılıçdaroğlu, the […]
Is Israel Over-Hyping the Supposed Iran Threat?
Review of Jonathan G. Leslie, Fear and Insecurity: Israel and the Iran Threat Narrative (London: Hurst and Co., 2022). Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – “Words have consequences,” writes Jonathan G. Leslie on the last page of his book “Fear and Insecurity: Israel and the Iran Threat Narrative.” He argues that the predominant Israeli […]
Crossing a Line: Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to Palestinian Political Expression (Review)
Review of Amahl A. Bishara, Crossing A Line: Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to Palestinian Political Expression (Stanford: University of Stanford Press, 2022). Barcelona (Special to Informed Comment) – In 2003, Amahl A. Bishara, currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Tufts University, arrived in Palestine as a PhD student to conduct fieldwork. After […]
The Decline and Fall of Republican Afghanistan (Review)
Review of Ahmad Shuja Jamal and William Maley, The Decline and Fall of Republican Afghanistan (London: Hurst and Co., 2023). Munich, Germany (Special to Informed Comment) – The Republic of Afghanistan unraveled quickly after May 2021 when US-led foreign troops prepared to abandon the country. This defied the forecasts of most experts on the capacity […]
A Crucial Year: Turkey at a Turning Point
Reviews of Gönül Tol, Erdoğan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria (London: Hurst and Co., 2022) and Dimitar Bechev, Turkey Under Erdoğan: How a Country Turned from Democracy and the West (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2022). Augsburg, Germany (Feature: Special to Informed Comment) – At the beginning of […]
© 2024 All Rights Reserved