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 […]
The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam and the Security State, by Rizwaan Sabir (Review)
Review of Rizwaan Sabir, The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam, and The Security State (London: Pluto Press, 2022.) Greifswald, Germany (Special to Informed Comment) – In May 2008, a post-graduate student of International Relations was arrested for six days after downloading a 140-page document on Al-Qaeda from the US Justice Department website. A copy of the document […]
Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War (Review)
Review of Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War (London: Hurst and Co., 2022). Greifswald, Germany (Special to Informed Comment) – In a context of war, do accountability and justice need to wait until the end of the conflict? In her well-researched and original book Yemen in the Shadow […]
The Making of the Modern Middle East: A Personal History (Review)
Review of Jeremy Bowen, The Making of the Modern Middle East: A Personal History (London: Picador, 2022). Greifswald, Germany (Special to Informed Comment) – Ali Abdullah Saleh, Bashar al-Assad, Hassan Nasrallah, and Muammar Gaddafi are just some of the prominent figures in contemporary Middle Eastern history that Jeremy Bowen has had the opportunity to interview […]
Mehran Kamrava, ‘Triumph and Despair: in Search of Iran’s Islamic Republic’ (Review)
Review of Mehran Kamrava, Triumph and Despair: In Search of Iran’s Islamic Republic (London: Hurst and Co., 2022). Barcelona (Special to Informed Comment) – During the last three months, Iran has been a main focus of international media attention due to the ongoing anti-government protests that erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old […]
Yemen: ‘What Have we Left Behind’ by Bushra Al-Maqtari – “Only victims are real in this war”
Barcelona (Special to Informed Comment) – Review of Bushra Al-Maqtari, What Have You Left Behind? (London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2022.) “Only victims are real in this war, victims crushed by violence.”[1] The writer behind this sentence is Bushra Al-Maqtari, a human rights activist, journalist, and novelist. The war she refers to is the ongoing conflict in […]
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