Middle East

Yemen: Will talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran offer hopes for an end to bitter seven-year civil war?

By Simon Mabon | – Recent statements from Iran and Saudi Arabia have provided hope that a pathway might be emerging to an end to the bitter seven-year civil war in Yemen which has killed an estimated quarter of a million people and left millions more homeless. On September 21, officials from Saudi Arabia and […]

Featured

Is Sec. of State Antony Blinken as bad as Mike Pompeo? Silent on Israeli theft of Palestinian Land, Promoting Phony Abraham Accords

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Secretary of State Antony Blinken is shaping up to be as much of a disaster as secretary of state as Mike Pompeo. He appears to have nothing to say about Israel’s outrageous new plans to steal more Palestinian land and to further divide Palestinians into Bantustans as was done by […]

Antisemitism

Bogus charges of Antisemitism and the Case of Rashida Tlaib

David Rubenstein

By David Rubenstein | – ( Southside Pride) – You have to wonder how many people actually listened to the allegedly antisemitic comments made by Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib in a speech to a Socialist convention earlier this year. Not many, you can be sure of that. For days those comments were a lead news […]

Joe Biden

A Yemen Catastrophe that America helped Make (Pearson Inst. Video with Juan Cole)

Juan Cole

Pearson Institute Panel on Catastrophe in Yemen from October 13, with Juan Cole among the panelists. Pearson Institute: Yemen in Neglect My (much more expert-on-Yemen than I) colleagues in this panel: Afrah Nasser is Yemen Researcher, Human Rights Watch. Shadi Abu Sneida is a humanitarian working with UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Yemen. Stacy […]

Israel/ Palestine

The Pain of Palestinians in Gaza

Middle East Monitor

By Hamada Fara’na | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Even the Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, couldn’t bear the tragic scene of thousands of Gazans scrambling to reach the window to apply for work in the territories it occupied in 1948. He wrote in Haaretz newspaper on 10 October: “This image should haunt every […]

Featured

Progressives in Congress: Biden must do More to End Saudi War on Yemen, as Starvation Stalks its Children

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Biden says he wants to end the Yemen war, but eight months in, he has not made a dent in it. The Saudi-led war on Yemen has involved the dropping thousands of pounds of bombs on that country, with up to a third of the buildings hit having been […]

Israel/ Palestine

‘Sindyanna of Galilee’: Extending the olive branch between Arabs and Israelis

Global Voices

By Coco Cresswell | – ( Globalvoices.org) – In 1996 Hadas Lahav, a Jewish Israeli social activist, had a vision: a future of Arab-Israeli coexistence. That same year, through co-founding Sindyanna of Galilee, a female-led social enterprise producing olive oil and other local products, she began to put this dream into practice. Sindyana of Galilee […]

Inequality

Could Lebanon, Looted and mismanaged by its Plutocrats, become a Failed State?

The Conversation

By Tony Walker | – In the midst of a pandemic that has wrenched the world off its axis, Lebanon’s precipitous decline has not received the attention it deserves given the country’s strategic importance. Bordering Syria to its north and east, and Israel to its south, Lebanon occupies a critical space in the Eastern Mediterranean. […]

Featured

Epitaph for a Failed US Occupation: The Late Gen. Odierno’s Arch-Nemesis Muqtada al-Sadr wins Iraq

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The elections in Iraq have brought it briefly back into U.S. headlines, though it is a long time since Americans have given the mess they made there any thought. The late Gen. Ray Odierno, the former head of the 8.5-year-long occupation of Iraq who died on Saturday, once fingered a […]