Middle East

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Former chief justice of the Iranian judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, won the presidential election, as expected, with over 60 percent of the votes. The problem was that less than half of eligible voters bothered to come out to the ballot box. The clerical establishment had so heavily vetted presidential contenders, barring […]

Israel/ Palestine

Imagine Thousands of Bigots Marching through Jewish Neighborhood chanting “Death to Jews” with Police, Political Support; Now substitute “Palestinians” for Jews

Asa Winstanley

( Middle East Monitor ) – Go along with me on a thought experiment for a few minutes. Imagine that British police forces permitted a crowd of thousands to march through an area of London with a high Jewish population chanting “Death to the Jews” and other similar violently bigoted obscenities. Imagine such a group […]

Featured

Iran’s Leading Candidate for President is a far right Notorious Hanging Judge

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Polling suggests that Ebrahim Raisi will likely win Iran’s presidential election. So who is he? An official Iranian point of view on Raisi goes this way: He was born in 1960 into a family of clerics claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad in the Nowghan district of Mashhad, the largest […]

Israel/ Palestine

As new Israeli Gov’t Bombs Gaza, Relations with Palestine are on a Knife Edge– and will Stay There

The Conversation

By Tony Walker | – ( The Conversation) – The Israel-Palestine conflict has experienced its first violent spasm in the term of a new Israeli government. However, hostilities have since been contained, for the time being. Provocative demonstrations this week in Arab East Jerusalem involving Israeli proto-nationalists chanting “death to Arabs” were met with a […]

Israel/ Palestine

Right Wing Americans Tell me to Go Back Home; as a Palestinian, I wish I Could

Middle East Monitor

By Layla Darwish | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – I was taking part in a recent protest in California, proudly waving my Palestinian flag, when a couple drove past in a white pick-up truck and shouted, “Go back to your country!” A light breeze grazed my arms, so I decided to retrieve my […]

Haredim

The Real Danger of Israel’s New Government

Phyllis Bennis

By Phyllis Bennis | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – The new Israeli government takes office already largely paralyzed. With eight diverse parties, they agree only on two things. One, they want to get rid of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Check — that’s done. Two, given the unlikeliness of reaching agreement on any major […]

Featured

If Hard Liner Raisi wins Iran’s Presidential Election, he has Trump to Thank

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – June 18 is election day in Iran. There are two main candidates for president, the arch-conservative Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s chief justice, and the centrist Abdolnaser Hemmati, an academic who served as chief of the national bank for the past three years. So it is sort of as though Chief Justice […]

Iran

Conservative hard-liner poised to be Iran’s next president – what that means for the West and the nuclear deal

The Conversation

By Nader Habibi | – ( The Conversation ) | – Iran’s conservative rulers’ effort to orchestrate the outcome of the June 18 presidential election triggered a voter boycott – but the result may still bode well for ongoing negotiations over the lapsed 2015 nuclear deal. The leading candidate is Ebrahim Raisi, chief of Iran’s […]

Antisemitism

5 ways to push antisemites and the Alt-Right out of the Palestinian solidarity movement

Waging Nonviolence

By Shane Burley | – With support for Palestinian freedom hitting a new level, intentional strategies are needed to stop white nationalists looking to hijack the movement. ( Waging Nonviolence ) – As Israel resumes its bombing of Gaza, and settlers attack Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line — the boundary between what […]