Arab World

By Giorgio Cafiero and Daniel Wagner | (Foreign Policy in Focus) | – To hear Saudi leaders tell it, the primary threat to the kingdom’s stability is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Worried over Washington and Tehran’s slowly improving relationship, Riyadh has projected an increasingly militarized and sectarian foreign policy aimed at countering Iran’s alleged […]

Bashar al-Assad

4 Million Syrian Displaced Abroad: ‘Biggest Refugee Population From a Single Conflict in a Generation’

contributors

By Kanya D’Almeida | – – UNITED NATIONS, (IPS) – Barely 10 months ago, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said the refugee population from Syria had reached the three million mark. Today, the latest data from the field show that the number has passed four million. “This is the biggest refugee population from a […]

Hamas

What is terrorism? The Charleston massacre and Palestinian resistance

contributors

By Heike Schotten | (Ma’an News Agency) | – Well before the advent of the US “War on Terror,” Edward Said wrote: “As a word and concept, ‘terrorism’ has acquired an extraordinary status in American public discourse.” Among other things, Said observed the ways in which “terrorism” functioned to deflect attention away from America’s misdeeds […]

Apartheid

Amira Hass: “Let me be blunt: Gaza is a Huge Concentration Camp”

contributors

By Amira Hass / Julie Poucher Harbin | ( ISLAMICommentary) | – – by JULIE POUCHER HARBIN, EDITOR, ISLAMiCommentary Amira Hass, Haaretz correspondent for the Occupied Territories This past Spring Amira Hass, correspondent for Haaretz, spoke at the Forum for Scholars and Publics at Duke University. Hass, an Israeli who has won numerous awards for […]

Alevis

Why defeating ISIL/ Daesh with military might is starry eyed idealism

contributors

By David Alpher | (The Conversation) | – – Just this past weekend of July 4, US-led coalition aircraft targeted the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa in Syria. It was one of the “largest deliberate engagements to date,” said a coalition spokesman, and it was executed “to deny [ISIS] the ability to move military capabilities throughout […]

Apartheid

No Fish for You! Israeli Navy arrests 6 Gazans for Fishing While Palestinian

contributors

By Palestinian Center For Human Rights – PCHR | Gaza Report | – – Israeli Naval Forces Continue Chasing Fishermen In The Gaza Strip Sea On Tuesday morning, 7 July 2015, Israeli gunboats chased and opened fire at a Palestinian fishing boats. They also arrested 6 fishermen, and confiscated 3 fishing boats. The Palestinian Center […]

Featured

Obama: No more US troops to fight Daesh/ ISIL, but more Training

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama on Monday went for a briefing at the Pentagon on the fight against Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). In remarks afterwards, he acknowledged that training of Iraqi troops has been going much slower than originally envisaged (about 5,000 have been trained in the past year, and […]

Human Rights

Daesh/ ISIL Marked Women and Children for Death in Syria’s Kobani

Juan Cole

Human Rights Watch | (New York) — Armed militants believed to be members of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, deliberately targeted people they knew were civilians in a June 25, 2015, attack in and around the northern Syrian city of Kobani. Syrian Kurdish authorities and local human rights groups said that 233 to 262 […]

Apartheid

Security Zones Being Used to Further Expand West Bank Settlements

contributors

By IMEMC | – – “Land confiscated from Palestinians for the purpose of security buffer zones around illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank is actually being utilized as “land reserves or for agriculture,” according to an investigation by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.” The buffer zones were originally created during the Second Intifada [Palestinian Uprising] reportedly […]