Featured

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – As Peter Beinart correctly argues, anti-Palestinianism is not a word in American English. I can tell since the internet helpfully underlines it in red to mark it for correction whenever I write it. Of course, it ought to be a word. It can become a word. It needs to become […]

Featured

The Gaza Crisis has Exposed the Bankruptcy of the UN and International Humanitarian Law, Threatening a Rules-Based Order

Hilal Cibik

Gaza has been enduring one of the most devastating massacres in this century. The Strip has been under blockade for two decades, and the world has recently witnessed some of the bloodiest days in the region’s history. On October 7th, following a horrific terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel that took some 1200 lives and […]

Featured

President Biden needs to Dump his War Hawks and Turn to Peace Work if he wants to Salvage his Presidency

Omer Abid

Grand Blanc, Mi. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – It has been clear since the horrid terror attack of October 7 by Hamas that President Joe Biden has been getting dreadful advice from his top officials, whether at the State Department, the CIA or the National Security Council. The president’s refusal to draw any red […]

Christianity

Juan Cole: Infidel or Pagan? Understanding Kufr (كفر) in the Qur’an | Muhammad the Prophet of Peace

Juan Cole

Gabriel Said Reynolds of Notre Dame writes: “In this video I interview Professor Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. We discuss the historicity of Muhammad’s raids as well as the picture of the messenger that is obtained when one focuses on the Qur’an alone. The bulk […]

Featured

How Long will Palestinians go on being Scapegoats for the West’s Atrocities in WWII?

Sara Jamshidi

Seattle, Wa. (Special to Informed Comment; Featured) – If an Arab writer would create a Palestinian version of Schindler’s List, and if an Arab, or a filmmaker sympathetic to Arabs, would create the movie, I wonder what the story would look like. I wonder what the writer would write. I wonder what the filmmaker would […]

Colonialism

That Time when Napoleon Bonaparte’s Army in Palestine Burned Crops, Pounded Houses with Artillery, and Cut off Water to Cities

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On 24 June 1799 General Louis-Alexandre Berthier wrote a dispatch from Ottoman Palestine back to the French Ministry of War (people were more honest back then) about the French retreat from their failed attempt to take Ottoman Palestine. Since the army ravaged the Palestinian countryside with retaliatory attacks, given their […]

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Israelis and Palestinians: It will be Worse Next Time

Jeremy Pressman

Storrs, CT (Special to Informed Comment) – Israelis and Palestinians have already entered hell. The casualties, the wounded, the hostages, the displacement of people and emptying of communities, the widespread trauma, the fear, the complete disruption of normal life, the intense suffering. But even at this moment we should all remember something: Barring a strategic […]

Featured

50 Israeli Hostages to be exchanged for 150 Palestinian “Prisoners” — Why the Prisoners are also Hostages

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Al Jazeera reports that Qatar successfully brokered the exchange of 50 Israeli hostages held by Hamas for 150 Palestinians held in Israeli jails (who are also hostages, as I will explain). The deal, which was approved by Israel’s national unity cabinet on Tuesday evening, also provides for a four-day humanitarian […]

Featured

The Israeli Right Wing’s Genocidal Dream of the “River to the Sea”

Mark Karlin

(Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – While the US mainstream media and most political leaders have condemned ceasefire rallies for embracing the cry “from the river to the sea” as being anti-Semitic, the government of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has been openly championing an Israel “from the river to the sea.” And while ceasefire rallies […]