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By Juan Cole UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on Wednesday that Israel’s military actions are responsible for the death of a child every hour in recent days and observed, “Respect for the right to life of civilians, including children, should be a foremost consideration. Not abiding by these principles may amount […]

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Gaza War Devastates Israeli Tourism Revenue, Points to Fragile Apartheid Future

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole A Hamas rocket hit and destroyed a house in Yahoud, a town only a mile from Ben Gurion Airport in Israel on Tuesday, raising severe alarm in among the international airlines and leading most of them to cancel flights to Tel Aviv. The US Federal Aviation Administration called for a 24 hour […]

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Is Rula Jebreal right about US Media Bias against Palestinians?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal points to the overwhelming bias in US media against the Palestinians, calling NBC to account for having tried to remove an Arab-American reporter from Gaza after he reported the Israeli navy’s deliberate killing of children on the beach. She also points to the stranglehold the American Israel Public […]

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From Kerry to Selena Gomez & Rihanna, Israel’s Claims of Precision, Compassion are Dissed

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole You always wonder where John Kerry the anti-Vietnam War activist went, who compared the US campaigns in Southeast Asia to the predations of the Mongols. It turns out he is still in there somewhere, just not allowed to appear before the cameras. But in a ‘hot-mic’ moment on Fox on Sunday, Kerry […]

Christianity

Mosul w/out Christians for First time in 1,900 Years as Radical Fundamentalists Threaten Minorities

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole For the first time in nearly 2000 years, there are virtually no Christians in the city of Mosul in northern Iraq. The community is reported to have fled en masse after the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) of radical fundamentalists warned them that they faced the choice of converting to Islam, paying a […]

Egypt

Gaza meets the New Politics of the Middle East: “Islamic State,” Egypt, Turkey

Juan Cole

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 […]

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Falluja and Gaza: Why Counter-Terrorism fails when the Problem is Political

Juan Cole

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 […]

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Gaza: 4 Dead Boys on the Beach & Israel’s Precision War

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole NBC.com caught the Israeli shelling of children on the beach on film. Apparently some of the children had been playing soccer with the journalists before the barrages began! There was no warning (contrary to what Euronews suggested) and there were no military targets on the beach. There were just little boys who […]

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Israel, Gaza and the Fatal Spirit of Versailles

Juan Cole

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 […]