Middle East

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Americans who are used to imagining Arab Muslim civilization as backward or barbaric might be surprised to hear that the United Arab Emirates, a country made up of seven Gulf Arab Principalities, has become only the fifth country to place a satellite in orbit around Mars. The science team behind […]

Authoritarianism

Mr. Erdogan: Cease Turkish Gov’t Campaign against Boğaziçi University, Students, Faculty and Institutions

Committee on Academic Freedom

Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America H.E. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan President of the Republic of Turkey T.C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı Genel Sekreterliği 06689 Çankaya, Ankara Turkey Dear President Erdoğan: We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) of North America and its Committee on Academic Freedom to […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Crisis and Water Conflict: How Saudi’s water insecurity led to war in Yemen

Adam Robertson Charlton

Stavanger, Norway (Special to Informed Comment) – In the early hours of 14 September 2019, a fleet of drones attacked the Abqaiq-Khurais oil refinery in Saudi Arabia, the largest oil stabilisation plant in the world. The attack came shortly before Saudi Aramco –the Kingdom’s state-owned oil company – was floated on the market, and Riyadh […]

Houthi

Biden is Right to end US involvement in Bloody Yemen Conflict, but he Needs to end the War itself

Daniel Martin Varisco

Glen Cove, N.Y. (Special to Informed Comment) – President Biden’s about face on Saudi support for the war in Yemen, including setting aside the disastrous idea of designating the Huthis as a unique set of “terrorists”, is a hopeful step, but the road to peace is a steep climb. As noted by a recent report […]

Israel/ Palestine

Governments mustn’t confuse Criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism: British-Israeli Academics

contributors

Via Israeli Academics UK Call to reject the IHRA’s ‘working definition of antisemitism’ To: Vice Chancellors, Members of Academic Senates, all other UK Academics and Students & Rt Hon Gavin Williamson CBE MP Secretary of State for Education RE: The IHRA ‘working definition of antisemitism’ We, British Academics who are also Israeli citizens, strongly oppose […]

Featured

In Game Changer, Int’l Criminal Court will take up Israeli War Crimes and Apartheid in Palestine

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Friday, the International Criminal Court found that it had jurisdiction to consider war crimes and crimes against humanity and the crime of Apartheid in the Palestinian territories. Israeli politician Abba Eban once quipped that Palestinians never lost the opportunity to lose an opportunity. But Palestinians have carefully, methodically created […]

Iran

Washington and Tehran: Who will make the first move?

Oraib AlRantawi

( Middle East Monitor) – From the outside, the heated debate between Tehran and Washington seems as though it could be summarised by the question: Which side will make the first move? Tehran wants Washington, which was responsible for violating its obligations and inflicting heavy losses on Iran, to start by lifting all additional sanctions […]

Archaeology

Were the Canaanites from Iran? Genomic History Shows that Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese have Zagros Ancestry

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – There are no races. Human beings are all mixed up, and genomic history demonstrates this principle better than any other approach. So much of Middle Eastern politics depends on a kind of “sleeping beauty” nationalism (in Ernest Gellner’s phrase) in which it is alleged that there was an ancient race […]

Israel/ Palestine

The Palestinian boycott of Israel is not racist, it is anti-racist

Ramzy Baroud

( Middle East Monitor ) – The claims made by Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang in a recent op-ed in the Jewish weekly The Forward, point to the prevailing ignorance that continues to dominate the US discourse on Palestine and Israel. Yang is a former Democratic Presidential candidate and is vying for […]