Middle East

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – American humorist and, oddly, horror author, Ambrose Bierce (d. 1913), produced a serial, staccato newspaper column consisting of humorous and sardonic definitions of words, which he later published as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary. (He initially had to entitle it “The Cynic’s Wordbook,” which doesn’t have the same ring, because […]

Iran

Shadow War no more: With Direct Warfare between Israel and Iran, is there any going Back?

The Conversation

By Javed Ali, University of Michigan | – For decades, Iran and Israel have been engaged in a “shadow war.” Falling short of direct military confrontation, this conflict has been characterized by war through other means – through proxies, cyber attacks, economic sanctions and fiery rhetoric. Events over the last few weeks in the Middle […]

Anti-intellectualism

Protesting Columbia University’s Arbitrary Suspension and Eviction of Students

Committee on Academic Freedom

Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | – Minouche Shafik President, Columbia University officeofthepresident@columbia.edu Dennis Mitchell Provost, Columbia University dml48@cumc.columbia.edu . . . Dear President Shafik and colleagues: We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express […]

Featured

Israeli Massacres Continue in Gaza, as Returnees to North are Targeted and Refugee Camp is Bombed

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The brief interlude of the Iranian rocket attack on Israel, in which almost all the projectiles were shot down or intercepted, did nothing to slow the Israeli assault on Gaza. Unfortunately for the Palestinians, no helpful foreign power is intercepting Israeli rockets fired at dense urban neighborhoods with deadly effect. […]

Arms Sales

Gun Culture, Israeli Style

Waging Nonviolence

Mitchell Plitnick ( Waging Nonviolence ) -Firearms are not uncommon in Israel. Armed security guards have long been a routine sight at shopping malls, clubs, and other large gathering spaces that present potential targets for attacks by militants. Police are heavily armed, and off-duty soldiers are constantly seen with their weapons in public as they […]

Israel/ Palestine

Dead on Arrival: Israel’s Blowback Genocide

Tomdispatch

By Ellen Cantarow ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Words can’t express the horrors of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. To actually feel the nightmare, you would have to be there under the bombs, fleeing with Palestinians desperately seeking a safe place that doesn’t exist; seeing building after building destroyed; treading through blood in one of the few, […]

Featured

Netanyahu, Empowered by Biden’s Grant of Impunity, baits Iran into his genocidal Gaza War

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Despite all the hype about Iran’s largely symbolic barrage of over 200 drones and cruise and ballistic missiles, unleashed on the thinly populated Negev Desert (where it was mainly Palestinian Bedouins who were put in danger), the military significance of this action was minimal. An Israeli base was hit at […]

Children

Gaza: Israel’s Imposed Starvation deadly for Children

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut, April 9, 2024) – Children in Gaza have been dying from starvation-related complications since the Israeli government began using starvation as a weapon of war, Human Rights Watch said today. Doctors and families in Gaza described children, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, suffering from severe malnutrition and dehydration, […]

Featured

Cracks in Biden’s Zionist Wall: Warren, Powers admit “Genocide, Famine” in Gaza as Israeli Atrocities Continue

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Cracks are showing in the Iron Wall of the Biden administration knee-jerk support for the far-right, extremist Israeli government’s total war on Gaza. US AID Administrator Samantha Power admitted that Israel’s campaign in Gaza has produced a famine. And Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) admitted that Israel is committing a genocide […]