Middle East

By William R. Polk At the outbreak of World War II, both Palestinians and Zionists enlisted in large numbers — 21,000 Jews and 8,000 Palestinians — to help the British in their hour of need. But both kept their long term objectives firmly in mind: both continued to regard British imperialism as the long-term enemy […]

Featured

The Long Knives Come out in Baghdad

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole The coup-like atmosphere created by Nouri al-Maliki’s stationing of his troops at the Green Zone, checkpoints and bridges in Baghdad on late Sunday backfired on him with Iraq’s parliamentarians. Nearly half of the members of his Islamic Da`wa Party (Islamic Call or Mission Party) in parliament defected from him. Most of the […]

Iraq

Nightmare in Iraq

contributors

Joe Stork via Human Rights Watch Fearing for their lives, more than 150,000 Yezidis fled Sinjar and surrounding villages to mountains north of the city on August 3, 2014 when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attacked the area. Some young and elderly are dying from the harsh conditions. I visited a Yezidi […]

Colonialism

Gaza and the struggle for Palestine: the 1930s

contributors

By William R. Polk Annoyed but not deterred, the British Colonial Office decided in the 1930s, as it was then also doing in India, to crack down hard on the “troublemakers.” It put Palestine under martial law and brought in 20,000 regular soldiers to be quartered on rebel villages, blew up houses of suspected insurgents […]

Apartheid

Palestinian Education: another victim of Israel’s Gaza War

contributors

By Aimee Shalan and Samer Abdelnour Al-Shabaka is an independent non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the framework of international law. This policy brief is authored by Aimee Shalan and Samer Abdelnour. Aimee Shalan is the director of the Friends of Birzeit University, […]

Featured

Iraq: Is al-Maliki Preparing to Make a Coup?

Juan Cole

Nouri al-Maliki, who is seeking a third term as prime minister of Iraq in the teeth of widespread opposition, abruptly began acting like a strongman on Sunday night. He went on television to denounce President Fuad Masoum for not having appointed a prime minister yet, even though Sunday was the constitutional deadline for him to […]

Israel

Israel can’t Afford to Lose Jews Like Me

contributors

by DAVID H. SCHANZER for ISLAMiCommentary David Schanzer Writing in the New York Times . . . , columnist Shmuel Rosner labeled non-Israeli liberal Jews that are becoming more estranged from modern day Israel, as “fair weather fans” that Israel both can and should ignore. He is dead wrong on both counts. I am far […]

Apartheid

The Israeli assault has caused $150 million damage to Gaza food industry

contributors

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The Israeli offensive on Gaza has caused “huge losses” for the already-struggling food industry in the coastal enclave, a national industry association said . . . [last week]. A delegation of the Palestinian Food Industries Union that visited factories that sustained damage in the month-long military assault estimated that around $150 […]

Iraq

The US intervened again in Iraq in Part to Save the Yazidis: Who are They?

contributors

By Petr Kubalek via RFE/RL Islamic militants this week encircled thousands of members of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq, prompting the Obama administration to carry out humanitarian air drops to the refugees who fled their homes to Mount Sinjar. Here are answers to six questions about the Yazidi people, religion, and history. Who Are […]