Middle East

By Halah Ahmad | – ( Al-Shabakah) – Tourism has been critical to the Zionist enterprise since the first Zionists settled Palestine. Al-Shabaka policy analyst Halah Ahmad explores the role of tourism, and especially religious tourism, in propagating the Zionist and Israeli-state narratives, focusing on the damaging impacts of Israeli settlement tourism in illegally occupied […]

Tunisia

Will Tunisia, the only Success of the Arab Spring, be Ruined by a Police Protection Bill?

Global Voices

By Rima Sghaier | – ( Global Voices ) – As the Tunisian parliament considers a controversial police protection bill, protests erupted in the city of Bardo to oppose it. On October 6 and 8, human rights groups and a youth-led citizen movement dubbed Hasebhom (translated as “hold them to account”) rallied outside the parliament […]

censorship

Khashoggi’s Ghost: World Resoundingly rejects Saudi membership on UN Human Rights Council

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sulayman Hajj Ibrahim writes in the London pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-`Arabi [Arab Jerusalem] that Saudi Arabia’s bid to join the 47-member Human Rights Council of the United Nations was rejected resoundingly by the General Assembly. Human Rights Watch waged a campaign against allowing China and Saudi Arabia onto the council. […]

Arms Sales

Trump’s Art of the Arms Deal: Filling up the Volatile Middle East with High-Tech Weapons

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com) – The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the endlessly war-torn Middle East. There, believe it or not, the U.S. controls nearly half the arms market. From Yemen […]

Saudi Arabia

Saudis now Boycott, Oppose Turkey, but once Sought its Security Umbrella: Clinton Files

Middle East Monitor

By Daud Abdullah | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – This is one of the uncomfortable questions raised by the newly declassified Clinton files. A diplomatic dispatch to the former Secretary of State dated 12 October 2011 revealed that the Saudis actually considered Turkey to be a possible security guarantor after the discovery of […]

Israel/ Palestine

Despite ambiguity in international law, Palestinians are winning the ‘legitimacy war’

Ramzy Baroud

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Israel/ Palestine

Israel’s Systematic Repression of Palestinians Continues during Pandemic: UN

Human Rights Watch

Item 7, General Debate – UN Human Rights Council 45 Israeli authorities have continued to systematically repress and discriminate against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Between March and August, Israeli authorities demolished 389 Palestinian homes and other structures in the West Bank, the majority for lacking building permits that Israeli authorities make virtually impossible […]

Armenia

Where does Iran stand on Armenia’s conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh?

Middle East Monitor

By Marwan Kabalan | – ( Middle East Monitor) – While most attention is focused on the positions of Russia and Turkey in the ongoing conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Iran receives less attention. The former are the direct regional sponsors of the Armenian and Azeri parties to the crisis, but Iran is likely to […]

Donald Trump

With Crushing sanctions on 18 Iranian Banks, is Trump trying to leave a War behind for Biden?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – As the dying Trump administration, literally on a sickbed, contemplates losing power, its hawks are lashing out at Iran in an attempt to ensure that the 2015 international nuclear deal is dead and buried, and that the US and Iran remain on a war footing. Trump’s two main allies in […]