Middle East

By Golnaz Esfandiari | ( RFE/RL) | – – Minou Aslani, head of the Women’s Basij organization in Iran, has condemned efforts to increase the number of women in parliament and opposed campaigns to curb domestic violence as perceived assaults on Iranian society and traditional family values. Minou Aslani, head of the Women’s Basij organization […]

Israel/ Palestine

Amnesty International calls on Israel to drop ‘baseless’ charges against activists

contributors

Ma’an News Agency | – – BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Human rights organization Amnesty International released a statement Friday demanding Israel to drop the “baseless” charges against two Palestinian “human rights defenders” Farid al-Atrash and Issa Amro, who both currently face charges in an Israeli military court relating to their activism. Both locals of the southern […]

Children

2016 ‘One of worst Years in History for Children’: UNICEF

contributors

By Matthew Tempest | ( EurActiv.com ) | – – Syria: Abdulaziz (in red), 10, whose father was killed in the continuing conflict, spends time with his friends at the ‘Land of Childhood’ – two basements linked with a tunnel to create an underground playground that gives children a relatively safe place to have fun […]

Iraq

The Fate of Iraq’s Minorities After Mosul

contributors

By Tyler Fisher and Kamal Kolo | ( OpenDemocracy.net) | – – The liberation of Mosul offers the international community a unique opportunity to permit the region’s most vulnerable minorities to exercise self-preservation and self-determination. Prayer cloths on Mount Arafat in the Yezidi holy site of Lalish, Kurdistan Region. Picture by Levi Clancy. Creative Commons […]

Israel/ Palestine

Barghouthi: Israel’s Legitimizing Squatter Settlements a Declaration of War on Palestinians

contributors

By IMEMC | – – Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa al-Barghouthi, on Tuesday, said the legitimization of settlement outposts, by the Israeli Knesset, is “a war on the Palestinian people.” In a press statement, the leader of the Palestinian National Initiative said that the misappropriation of private Palestinian land in favor of illegal settlements amounts to “a […]

Featured

Syria unlikely to be Partitioned: The Resilience of Colonial Borders

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Whenever a country falls into civil war, there are always observers who suggest that the problem could be resolved by a partition of that country. It is as though they think the parties to the war are like squabbling children in the back seat of the […]

Israel/ Palestine

How Israel’s Blockade of Gaza Is Killing Women with Breast Cancer

contributors

TeleSur | – – Since Israel began its siege of Gaza in 2007, hundreds of people have died needlessly, various reports state. Hundreds of Palestinian women with breast cancer are being routinely blocked from seeking treatment by Israel officials, reports from Gaza’s health ministry state. “Israel is killing me slowly,” one woman told The Electronic […]

Featured

More districts of East Aleppo fall to Regime & Militia Allies

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Both regime sources and the Britain-based Syria Observatory said Tuesday that the Syrian Arab Army and its Shiite militia allies from Lebanon and Iraq had taken the district of Shaar in the East Aleppo pocket. In the past two weeks rebel forces have lost the northeast […]

Bashar al-Assad

Russia/Syria: War Crimes in Month of Bombing Aleppo

contributors

Human Rights Watch (New York) – The Russian-Syrian coalition committed war crimes during a month-long aerial bombing campaign of opposition-controlled territory in Aleppo in September and October 2016. The Violations Documentation Center, a Syrian civil monitoring organization, documented that the bombing campaign killed more than 440 civilians, including more than 90 children. Airstrikes often appeared […]