History

Montréal (Special to Informed Comment) – Eighty years ago, on January 27, 1944, people in the street were hugging each other and weeping with joy. They were celebrating the end of a nearly 900 days brutal siege. Soviet forces lifted the siege of Leningrad after ferocious battles. Exactly a year later they liberated Auschwitz. Even […]

Archaeology

Gaza’s Oldest Mosque, Destroyed in Israeli Airstrike, was once a Pagan Temple, a Church and had Jewish Engravings

The Conversation

Stephennie Mulder, The University of Texas at Austin The Omari Mosque in Gaza was largely destroyed by Israeli bombardment on Dec. 8, 2023. It was one of the most ancient mosques in the region and a beloved Gazan landmark. The mosque was first built in the early seventh century and named after Islam’s second caliph, […]

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: […]

Archaeology

The History of Gaza: On Conquerors, Resurgence and Rebirth

Middle East Monitor

( Middle East Monitor ) – Those unfamiliar with Gaza and its history are likely to always associate Gaza with destruction, rubble and Israeli genocide. And they can hardly be blamed. On 3 November, the UN Development Programme and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) announced that 45 per cent of […]

Cambodia

How War Criminal Kissinger paved the Way for a Genocidal Total War on Gaza’s Civilians

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Henry Kissinger’s death at 100 is an opportunity to consider the ways in which his lawlessness helped undermine International Humanitarian Law, the laws of war that responsible leaders attempted to erect to prevent the horrors of WW II from recurring. In his single-minded calculation of supposed “national” interest, which he […]

Authoritarianism

Kissinger and Walt Disney v. Salvador Allende: Who will win our Souls?

Tomdispatch

By Ariel Dorfman | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – This year marks the anniversaries of two drastically different events that loomed all too large in my life. The first occurred a century ago in Hollywood: on October 16, 1923, Walt Disney signed into being the corporation that bears his name. The second took place in […]

Colonialism

Juan Cole on Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” (StayTunedNBC)

Juan Cole

Here is the interview Alex Greaney of StayTunedNBC did with Juan Cole about the Egypt scenes in Ridley Scott’s film, “Napoleon.” StayTunedNBC: “Juan Cole on Ridley Scott’s depiction of Napoleon in Egypt” I wrote a book about Bonaparte in Egypt for those of you who want to know more about the first major Western colonial […]

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 […]

Featured

Axis War Crimes against Hospitals in the 1930s and 1940s led to our Int’l Humanitarian Law, which Israel Ignores

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Rome Statute underpinning the International Criminal Court, which went into effect in 2002, lists among “War Crimes” “ix) Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military […]