Featured

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The extremist, fascist government of Binyamin Netanyahu continues to press its monstrous, illegal and most of all completely implausible plan to push the 2.2 million Palestinians of Gaza out of the Strip into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula or into other Arab countries. Netanyahu also pledged to continue the high-intensity campaign against […]

Christianity

Pope and Pastor: “Prince of Peace rejected by the futile Logic of War;” “Christ in the Rubble”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – My mother was a Lutheran and the Coles were Catholics, though my grandfather fell away when he married a woman from the Brethren peace church. So it was striking to me that on this Christmas a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, Munther Isaac, and Pope Francis both made headlines with their […]

Christianity

A Merry Muslim Christmas from India’s Hyderabad, c. 1630: Jesus, the Dutch, and Diamonds

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The nativity of the Christ child is not solely an occasion of Christian spirituality, but has been celebrated through the ages by Muslim writers and painters, as well. As I have pointed out, the story of the Annunciation and the birth of Jesus is told in the Qur’an: Verses 19:17-35: […]

Featured

Israelis have killed the same Percentage of Gazans in 11 Weeks as Allies did Italians in all of WW II

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The UN reports figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health as of Friday: “between 7 October and 7:00 on 22 December, at least 20,057 Palestinians were killed in Gaza. About 70 per cent of those killed are said to be women and children. As of then, 53,320 Palestinians have been […]

Anti-War Movement

Just Say No: Biden Must Create Peace out of the Gaza Crisis and Rein in the Israeli Right

Lior Sternfeld

Take a Leaf from the Book of George H. W. Bush

Featured

If you Prick us, do We not Bleed? – Shakespeare in Gaza

Mark Karlin

(Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Is there a scale that can measure the value of 7,000 dead Palestinian children vs. 1200 dead Israelis? What is to be measured, the weight of their souls? Can such a scale ascribe the worth of one group of the dead as being of greater value than the other […]

Climate Crisis

How Big Oil is Taking us for a Fossil-Fuelized Ride: With the World the Hottest in 125,000 Years, we’re being Gaslighted

Juan Cole

Here is my latest column for The Nation Institute’s must-read Tomdispatch.com site. Make sure to check out the original for legendary journalist Tom Engelhardt’s fantastic introduction. And spread some of the joy by supporting his site, too. As for the dastardly greenwashing of Big Oil, by all means get mad but also get even, and […]

Featured

Bloodbath: Israel’s War on Gaza’s Hospitals and their Patients

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Back in mid-October, a controversy broke out about a blast on the grounds of the al-Ahli Arab (Baptist) Hospital in Gaza City. Some quarters blamed it on Israel, but the latter’s defenders took the stance that Israel wouldn’t hit a hospital. It appears that it probably didn’t on that occasion, […]

Featured

What the World needs Now is another Winter Truce

Arnold Oliver

Tiffin, Oh. (Special to Informed Comment) – An iconic song back in the 1960’s addressed the causes of war, and what leads young people to fight in them. Buffy Saint Marie’s Universal Soldier advised that we could end war if soldiers refused to fight. So what if we gave her idea a test this Winter? […]