Middle East

Written byArzu Geybullayeva ( Globalvoices.org ) – The results from the May 14 general elections in Turkey were a surprise for some, a disappointment for others, and for those who rallied behind President Erdoğan and his coalition, a victory. These elections also showed how the main opposition coalition underestimated the societal split and the priorities […]

Featured

Smotrich Plans to Send 500k further Israeli Squatters in to Steal More Palestinian Land in West Bank

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Yaniv Kubovich and Ben Samuels at Haaretz report that far-right extremist Bezalel Smotrich is preparing to send in another half-million Israeli squatters to steal Palestinian land in the West Bank. Smotrich is the leader of the Religious Zionism bloc in parliament and the finance minister in the Netanyahu cabinet, who […]

Featured

Is Israel Over-Hyping the Supposed Iran Threat?

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Jonathan G. Leslie, Fear and Insecurity: Israel and the Iran Threat Narrative (London: Hurst and Co., 2022). Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – “Words have consequences,” writes Jonathan G. Leslie on the last page of his book “Fear and Insecurity: Israel and the Iran Threat Narrative.” He argues that the predominant Israeli […]

Israel/ Palestine

The Symbolic Nakba Commemoration at the UN Showed Discomfort with the Truth that Israel Expelled the Palestinians

Ramona Wadi

Ramona Wadi walzerscent ( Middle East Monitor ) – “The thought that an international organisation could mark the establishment of one of its member states as a catastrophe or disaster is both appalling and repulsive,” wrote Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan when asking UN diplomats to refrain from attending the unprecedented UN General […]

Democracy

On its 75th birthday, Israel still can’t Agree on What it means to be a Jewish State and a Democracy

The Conversation

By Eran Kaplan, San Francisco State University | – As Israel celebrates the 75th anniversary of its founding, and nearly a century and a half after the first Zionists came to Palestine from Europe, the core tension behind the country’s establishment – whether a Jewish state could be a democratic state, whether Zionism could accommodate […]

China

China and the Axis of the Sanctioned: How America’s Divide-and-Rule Strategy in the Middle East Backfired

Juan Cole

( Tomdispatch.com) – A photo Beijing released on March 6th of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s foreign minister Wang Yi* delivered a seismic shock in Washington. There he was, standing between Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, and Saudi National Security Adviser Musaad bin Mohammed al-Aiban. They were awkwardly shaking hands on an […]

Authoritarianism

Turkey’s presidential Election – how Erdoğan defied the Polls to head into Runoff as Favorite

The Conversation

By Salih Yasun, Indiana University | – Turkey is heading toward a presidential runoff election on May 28, 2023, after no candidate won more than half the votes in the first round – the barrier needed to be declared an outright winner. Incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has ruled the country for two decades, defied […]

Food Insecurity

Poor Iranians Sell Their Organs Amid Deepening Economic Crisis

Golnaz Esfandiari

One-third of Iran’s population reportedly lives in extreme poverty. Some people are so poor that they have resorted to selling their organs on the black market to make ends meet. (file photo) Share (RFE/RL ) – I’m RFE/RL correspondent Golnaz Esfandiari. Here’s what I’ve been following during the past week and what I’m […]

Featured

United Nations for First Time Recognizes 1948 Israeli Ethnic Cleansing (Nakbah) of Palestinians

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Today, May 15, for the first time a commemoration will be held at the United Nations HQ in New York City of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of about half of all the Palestinians, the bulk of which was carried out by Jewish military forces, as Israeli intelligence admitted at the […]