Featured

Juan Cole: Israel, Gaza and Campus Protests, Part I on Sea Change Radio with Alex Wise. Transcript below. Or listen here: Pro-Palestinian student protests are erupting on college campuses all over the country, often resulting in aggressive responses from local law enforcement. This week on Sea Change Radio, the first half of our two-part discussion […]

Dissent

This Generation’s Vietnam: Students are Protesting Israeli Genocide, meeting Media and Political Vilification

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Pitching Pro-Palestine protest encampments on their campuses, students risk their futures and physical safety by putting their bodies on the line, demonstrating against their Universities fueling the Israeli war machine. Administrators have responded with consequences not imposed en masse for decades: suspensions, expulsions and arrests. These brave anti-genocide […]

Featured

Turkey Suspends Trade with Israel over Gaza: Solidarity or Politics?

Volkan Isbasaran

Turkey, Israel, boycott, Gaza

censorship

Israel Bans Al Jazeera Journalists, Network, Joining Syria and Iran as Repressive Regime

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Committee to Protect Journalists on Sunday condemned the Israeli cabinet’s decision to ban the Al Jazeera news network in Israel. The network’s office was closed and its equipment was confiscated. Israeli cable channels were forced to delete Al Jazeera from their offerings, and even its website has been blocked […]

Featured

Tens of Thousands of Israelis Demonstrate against Netanyahu, Demand Hostage Exchange Deal, New Elections

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that tens of thousands of Israelis rallied Saturday night against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and other cities, including Jerusalem, Beersheba and Haifa. The protesters were responding in part to dueling news releases about the possibility of a breakthrough […]

Children

Netanyahu as Lord of the Flies: He has wounded, sickened or starved all 600K Palestinian Children in Rafah

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Catherine Russell, the head of UNICEF, said this week that of the 600,000 children in Rafah, southern Gaza, all of them are either injured, or sick, or malnourished. Much of the Gaza population has been forced south to Rafah by the Israeli military, which had promised them it was a […]

Donald Trump

Top Ways MAGA and Right Wing Zionism Converge, and Why Smotrich is Embracing Trump

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Going back to the late nineteenth century, Zionism has had a complex and storied history, and there have been many strains of the ideology. Some early Zionists did not insist on colonizing Palestine, while others did (and colonizing it was the word they used). All agreed that the Jewish religion […]

Featured

This is Why the Students are Protesting: Eyes on Israel’s Killing Fields in Gaza

Janelle Carlson

Bayreuth, Germany (Special to Informed Comment- Feature) – Lisa Hajjar has compared what is happening in Gaza to the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Yet where she argues that “Unlike the Khmer Rouge, the Israeli government’s exterminationist policy is not fueled by an ideological vision to remake Gaza anew. Total destruction is the goal.” As has […]

Anti-intellectualism

“Intifada” in Arabic just means Uprising or Mass Protest; it is used for the Jewish Warsaw Uprising

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A key feature of American bigotry toward people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and toward Muslims more generally, has been the demonization by journalists, politicians and interest groups of ordinary, everyday Arabic words. Arabic words have a proud and positive history in the English language. Consider a […]