Ramzy Baroud
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Articles by Ramzy Baroud
October 27, 2009
A Muslim writer begins an article with, 'who says the campaign for animal rights was started in the West ..' She goes on to argue that Islam provided the original treatise on the humane treatment of animals. Her case was poorly constructed, inadequately executed, although the essence of her idea was...
September 20, 2009
The anniversary of the infamous tragedy of 9/11, 2001, and the subsequent ramifications indeed induce, throughout the world, a plethora of feelings of sorrow.
The 9/11 event should have never taken place. Regardless of the situation, targeting civilians is unconditionally reviled. No matter ...
September 11, 2009
Left out of the options under consideration in "Obama's war" is the only one with any chance of success.
Despite assurances to the contrary in Washington and a major policy speech in London, one need not quibble with the obvious fact that the situation is deteriorating beyond repair in Afgha...
September 08, 2009
This is hardly the rational order of things. An overpowering military occupation was meant to be resisted by an equally determined, focused and unyielding national movement, hell-bent on liberation at any cost and by any means. This is the unwritten law that has governed and shielded successful nati...
September 08, 2009
When seen from a distance, kites in Gaza may look quite ordinary. But while Gazan children, in many respects, are just children, their kites are hardly ordinary. Often adorned by the red, black, green and white of the Palestinian flag, Gazan children´s kites are expressions of defiance, hope and the...
September 08, 2009
Israeli officials face a conundrum that may take more than military muscle-flexing to resolve: how to deal with Iran? The solution to this dilemma will require no less than sheer political genius.
It must be frustrating for Israeli policymakers and their friends and backers elsewhere to sta...
September 04, 2009
The US has decided to be ´flexible´ regarding its once touted call for a total Israeli freeze on the expansion of its occupied territories´ settlements, all illegal under international law.
A senior official spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity on August 27. "It wa...
September 04, 2009
Gaza´s troubles have somehow been relegated, if not completely dropped from the mainstream media´s radar, and subsequently the world´s conscience and consciousness. Weaning the public from the sadness there conveys the false impression that things are improving and that people are ...
July 28, 2009
Who killed Yasser Arafat? When the Palestinian leader was declared dead in a French hospital on Nov. 11, 2004, there was no way of knowing how questions related to his death should be phrased. Was he killed or did he die from old age? If he was killed, then who killed him and why? The "mysterious" n...
July 22, 2009
Nearly six months have passed since the Israeli army ceased pounding the tiny stretch of land that is the Gaza Strip. Since then, Gaza continues to appear on the news once in a while, as a recurring subject of human misery.
The tireless efforts of British MP George Galloway, and the courageo...
July 11, 2009
As US combat troops redeployed to the outskirts of Iraqi cities on June 30, well-staged celebrations commenced. The pro-US Iraqi government declared "independence day" as police vehicles roamed the streets of war-weary Iraq in an unpersuasive show of national rejoicing. US mainstream media joined th...
July 06, 2009
Much can be said to explain, or even justify Hamas´ recent political concessions, where its top leaders in Gaza and Damascus agreed in principle with a political settlement on the basis of the two-state solution.
On June 25, Damascus-based leader of the Islamic group´s political...
June 27, 2009
The election victory of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is likely to complicate US President Barack Obama´s new approach to his country´s conflict with Iran. The reason behind the foreseen obstacle is neither the US nor Iran´s refusal to engage in future dialogue but rather I...
June 27, 2009
One might be tempted to dismiss the recent findings of the US State Department on human trafficking as largely political. But do not be too hasty.
Criticism of the State Department's report on trafficked persons, issued on 16 June, should be rife. The language describing US allies' efforts t...
June 11, 2009
Among many major misconceptions pertaining to Arabs and Muslims is the common belief that they are a weak-willed, irrelevant collective, easily influenced and effortlessly manipulated. This mistaken assumption underscores the very ailment that has afflicted United States foreign policy in the Middle...
June 11, 2009
His room is ready; the walls have fresh paint and my kids prepared a basket of chocolates and other treats to place beside his bed. They hung a poster on his door that has been decorated with colored pens and glitter that says "Welcome Shobhi!" I have taught them that "Sobhi" actually means the "mor...
May 19, 2009
US President Barack Obama took the podium in a White House press conference and stood with an all-embellished confidence that often accompanies new presidents. He was flanked by two leaders whose apparent grandeur barely reflected their embattled situations on the ground: Afghan President Hamid Karz...
May 09, 2009
From a distance, the struggle between Hamas and Fatah appears commonplace, a typical third world country´s political scuffle over interpretation of democracy that went out of control, or simply a ´power struggle´ between two political rivals vying for international aid and recognit...
March 07, 2009
As Israel unleashed its military fury against Lebanon for several weeks in July-August 2006, it had one major objective: to permanently ´extract´ Hezbollah from the South as a fighting force, and to undermine it as a rising political movement, capable of disrupting, if not overshadowing ...
March 07, 2009
While various Western governments are struggling to define a possible relationship with the Palestinian movement Hamas, some progressive and leftist circles are also uneasy regarding their own perception of the Islamic movement.
Some have even made the claim that Hamas is, more or less, an ...
March 07, 2009
The political outcomes of the Gaza war are yet to be entirely decided with any degree of certainty. However, the obvious political repositioning which was reported as soon as Israel declared its unilateral ceasefire promised that Israel´s deadly bombs would shape a new political reality in the...
March 07, 2009
When US envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke met with Afghanistan´s ´democratically´ installed President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on February 14, he may have just learned of the historic significance of the following day. February 15 commemorates the end of the bloody Russian campa...
March 07, 2009
When Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal declared before a cheering crowd in Doha, Qatar, on January 28, the need for a new leadership, his words generated panic amongst leaders of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority as well as traditional Palestinian leadership elites stationed in various Arab capita...
March 07, 2009
One cannot emphasize enough the stranglehold Israel´s lobbying infrastructure has on US foreign policy. The events of recent weeks undoubtedly attest to this. "The special relationship" that has been historically fostered between the US and Israel in fact, is often a relationship of leverage, ...
March 07, 2009
My three-year-old son Sammy walked into my room uninvited as I sorted through another batch of fresh photos from Gaza.
I was looking for a specific image, one that would humanise Palestinians as living, breathing human beings, neither masked nor mutilated. But to no avail.
All the ...
March 07, 2009
When former President George W. Bush departed for his final trip home, that very moment represented an end of a long and unbearable nightmare, one that Bush epitomized until his last day in office.
Americans may decry what we can finally dub as the ´Bush legacy´, for it brought ...
January 13, 2009
"We are all Hamas," screamed a scrawny Mauritanian, repeatedly, as he determinedly drew his face closer to a TV camera. Behind him, thousands more tunefully chanted similar words, chants that were heard in different Arabic dialects, in fact in many different languages all across the globe.
...
January 13, 2009
In times of crisis, most Arabs tune in to Aljazeera television. Sometimes it´s comforting for the truth to be stated the way it is, with all of its gory and unsettling details, without blemishes and without censorship. When Israel carried out massive air strikes against Gaza on Saturday, Decem...
January 13, 2009
World media rashly celebrated the "historic" security pact that allows for US troops to stay in Iraq for three more years after the Iraqi parliament ratified the agreement on Thursday, 27 November. The approval came one week after the Iraqi cabinet did the same.
Thousands of headlines exuded...
January 13, 2009
The United States, Russia and China are sending a terrible message to the rest of the world by refusing to take part in the historic signing of a treaty that bans the production and use of cluster bombs. In a world that is plagued by war, military occupation and terrorism, the involvement of the gre...
January 13, 2009
It´s incomprehensible that a region such as the Gaza Strip, so rich with history, so saturated with defiance, can be reduced to a few blurbs, sound bites and reductionist assumptions, convenient but deceptive, vacant of any relevant meaning, or even true analytical value.
The fact is ...
December 31, 2008
The plot, so unexpectedly, thickened in Iraq on a Sunday like no other. The two main actors - US President George W. Bush, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki – took to the stage to perform another well-rehearsed press conference. The scripts were ever so predictable: Bush to tout the ´pro...
December 01, 2008
When Gaza's electricity is in working order, most Palestinians in the impoverished and overcrowded Strip huddle around their television screens. It's neither "American Idol" nor "Dancing with the Stars" that brings them together. It's the news.
Gazans' relationship to news media is both comp...
December 01, 2008
Qurban-Bibi and Nahil Abu-Rada are two women, one Afghan and the other Palestinian, who made news with similar tragedies. But their losses also helped further delineate the plight of millions of women in war zones and poor countries.
The United Nations news service reported on the troubles o...
December 01, 2008
There are a few buzzwords that every American politician, aiming for high office must utilize, even if disingenuously, to have a reasonable chance at getting elected.
President-elect, Barak Obama´s constant use of terms like ´hope´ and ´change´ contributed grea...
December 01, 2008
The sovereignty of an independent, stable country that has carried out many constructive moves in recent months and weeks, which could have surely contributed to the stabilization of the Middle East, has been violated, its borders breached and its civilians killed.
But when the country targe...
December 01, 2008
My right knee is wrapped. My left ankle is iced. I lost the nail on my right big toe, and have about 20 blisters and a similar number of bruises on both of my feet. This doesn´t even begin to convey half of the story of the punishment that my body has been subjected to in recent months. Why, y...
December 01, 2008
At a recent conference I was repeatedly asked about the prospects for a third Palestinian uprising, or Intifada. The question, although seemingly uncomplicated, is both loaded and important, and cannot be answered in a mere two minutes or less.
A 'third Intifada' would imply that the second has ...
October 29, 2008
One should rightly assume that the weight of the US financial crisis, the full impact of which is just beginning to unravel, and the widening military debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, would compel new thinking amongst leading US politicians. And then again, maybe not.
Aside from tactical and rhe...
October 29, 2008
The 25th annual World Food Day, marked on 16 October, was an occasion whose arrival and passing received little media attention or governmental fanfare. Evidently, much of the world media and governments are consumed with an economic crisis of epic proportions, which is perceived in the US as the wo...
October 29, 2008
Europe has showed greater willingness in recent months to play a larger part in the Middle East's most protracted conflict, that of Israel and Palestine. But willingness doesn't necessarily indicate readiness.
For the European Union (EU) to be truly ready to take on a conflict of such magnitude, ...
October 10, 2008
President Bush sounded much less uncertain of his peace "vision" when he received Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas in Washington on Sept. 25. Certainly much has changed since the Nov. 2007 conference in Annapolis, Maryland, where Bush and his secretary of state Condoleezza Rice exhorted that a ...
September 29, 2008
I was ecstatic as I read an email sent by a manager at a Canadian toy company. The company donates a large number of toys each year to inner city kids throughout North America, using various NGOs. A few years ago, they decided to ship several thousand toys to Palestinian children. They asked for my ...
September 29, 2008
The numbers are grim, whether in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian economy is in one of its most wretched states, and the disaster is mostly, if not entirely manmade, thus reversible.
The World Bank made no secret of the fact that Israeli restrictions are largely to blame, as pove...
September 28, 2008
I was ecstatic as I read an email sent by a manager at a Canadian toy company. The company donates a large number of toys each year to inner city kids throughout North America, using various NGOs. A few years ago, they decided to ship several thousand toys to Palestinian children. They asked for my ...
September 22, 2008
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa used exceptionally tough language during a Cairo news conference 9 September, when he lashed out at Palestinian factionalism, saying that the League is going as far as studying the possibility of imposing sanctions on quarrelling Palestinians.
"I am extre...
September 22, 2008
Few would argue that the indirect Israel-Syria talks through Turkish mediation, which were first announced 21 May, were a sign of political maturity and readiness for peace. In fact, while the discussions seemed concerned with the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Israel's desire for security at its...
September 08, 2008
The series of unfortunate and costly decisions made during the two terms of the Bush administration, combined with economic decline at home, might devastate the US's world standing much sooner than most analysts predict. What was difficult to foresee was that the weakening of US global dominance, sp...
September 08, 2008
To run a full marathon experts suggest that the aspiring athlete requires at least six months of rigorous training, proper gear, a particular diet, regular check-ups, mental focus and preparation, and a variety of gadgets depending on one's budget. Ironically, the poorest countries in Africa have al...
August 25, 2008
Ahmed Moussa was a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from the West Bank village of Nilin, near Ramallah. Mohamed Bahloul is a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from Gaza City. The former was shot and killed 29 July by Israeli forces following a peaceful protest against the Israeli apartheid wall. The latter is ...
August 25, 2008
Yet more haunting images of blindfolded, stripped down Palestinian men being contemptuously dragged by soldiers in uniform from one place to another. Yet more footage of bloodied men lying on hospital beds describing their ordeals to television reporters who have heard this story all too often. Yet ...
August 25, 2008
Just as the world's attention was focussed on China's Beijing Olympics, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, on 7 August, invaded the tiny breakaway province of South Ossetia. The initial attack on the South Ossetian capital, Tskninvali, soon extended to an all out war, which eventually invited R...
August 07, 2008
The crimes committed against innocent people in Darfur represent a shameful episode in the history of Sudan and its neighbours, including Chad, which has played a dubious role in sustaining the seething conflict. Equally disgraceful is the politicising of the bloody conflict in ways that will ensure...
August 07, 2008
For some folks interested in genealogy, tracing one's roots is a stimulating activity. It's immensely interesting and meaningful to learn where one's life started. DNA testing has made it possible to trace one's roots back many generations and there are even free web sites that can help users trace ...
July 15, 2008
Most people would not have even realised that the 23rd congress of the Socialist International was being held near Athens were it not for the moment when Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak shook the hand of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
An Associated Press report, published in the Israeli dail...
July 08, 2008
The world of journalism, like any other profession, can be muddled with a plethora of distractions, self-interests and agendas that certainly do not serve the cause of a free press. Outside as well as inside pressures and interests often compromise the very essence of the journalist's mission.
In...
July 02, 2008
The recent uproar surrounding Pastor John Hagee is only remarkable in the sense that it took so long in coming. The fundamentalist pastor of the 19,000-member Cornerstone "mega-church" in San Antonio, Texas has long shown himself to be not just anti-Semitic, but also anti-Islamic and anti-Catholic.
...
July 02, 2008
A six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza was killed by Israeli fire on 12 June. "Medics say the girl was decapitated by a [tank] shell," Associated Press (AP) reported the next day. The Israeli military said the soldiers opened fire in retaliation against "militants launching rockets into Israel". ...
June 18, 2008
When US forces descended on Baghdad five years ago, they seemed unstoppable. Military arrogance had reached an all time high, and it seemed only a matter of time before the same frenzied scenario took place in Teheran, Damascus, and elsewhere.
As it turned out, festivities began dwindling almost ...
June 10, 2008
On 15 May, President Bush gave a speech before the Israeli Knesset decrying "radicals and terrorists" (basically anyone who opposes the United States and Israel). His archaic references to the "promised land" and "chosen people" certainly appealed to the equally outdated and exclusivist views of man...
May 26, 2008
Don't ask for what you never had,' is the underlying message made by supporters of Israel when they claim Palestine was never a state to begin with.
The contention is, of course, easily refutable. Following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th Century, colonial powers plotte...
May 26, 2008
For the last 60 years, all those who have sought a genuinely peaceful and fair solution for Israel and Palestine have faced the same obstacle — Israel's sense of invincibility and military arrogance, abetted by the US and other Western governments' unwavering support.
Despite recent setback...
May 26, 2008
The data provided in the US State Department's annual terrorism report for 2007 points to some interesting if puzzling conclusions. The much publicised document, made available 30 April via the State Department's website, makes no secret of the fact that Al-Qaeda is back, strong as ever. It also sug...
May 09, 2008
On February 12, 2008, Arab League information ministers issued a communique outlining 'tough' guidelines for Arab satellite channels. The new guidelines specifically prohibited the broadcasting of negative reporting of heads of state, religious or national figures.
In following days, a massive c...
May 09, 2008
The following are excerpts from Baroud´s upcoming book, "101 Ways to Survive a Refugee Camp."
We waited breathless. Breathing heavily was hazardous under these somewhat exceptional circumstances. The army, my father often advised, was sensitive to the slightest movements or sounds, includin...
May 09, 2008
A memorable quote in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) still carries a wealth of relevance. He writes, "They own the [holy] land, just the mere land, and that's all they do own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defilin...
May 09, 2008
Just days after the Hamas-Fatah clash last June in Gaza, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas looked firm and composed as he shook hands with members of his new emergency government. He made sure his move appeared as legitimate as possible, issuing decrees that outlawed the armed militias o...
May 09, 2008
I still vividly remember my father´s face - wrinkled, apprehensive, warm - as he last wished me farewell fourteen years ago. He stood outside the rusty door of my family´s home in a Gaza refugee camp wearing old yellow pyjamas and a seemingly ancient robe. As I hauled my one small suitca...
May 09, 2008
When it comes to Iraq, reporters appear intent on omitting or fabricating news.
The latest battles in Basra, Iraq's second largest city and a vital oil seaport, furnished ample instances of misleading and manipulative practice in corporate journalism today. One commonly used tactic is to describ...
May 09, 2008
Five years after the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, mainstream media is once more making the topic an object of intense scrutiny. The costs and implications of the war are endlessly covered from all possible angles, with one notable exception -- the cost to the Iraqi people themselves.
Throu...
March 26, 2008
When Admiral William J "Fox" Fallon was chosen to replace General John Abizaid as chief of US Central Command (CENTCOM) in March 2007, many analysts didn't shy from reaching a seemingly clear-cut conclusion: the Bush administration was preparing for war with Iran and had selected the most suitable m...
March 20, 2008
Why did Israel attack Gaza with such brutality? Did Israeli officials think, even for a fleeting moment, that their army's attacks could halt, as opposed to intensify, Palestinian rockets or retaliatory violence? Indeed, was Palestinian violence at all relevant to the Israeli action? Was the Israeli...
March 20, 2008
Death hovered over Gaza long before locally-made Palestinian rockets struck near the Israeli southern town of Sderot on February 27, killing Roni Yechiah and sparking an Israeli ´retaliation´ that has already claimed over 120 Palestinian lives.
Yechiah´s death was actually the f...
March 04, 2008
Time is running out for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Although both men are still committed to their risky venture of marginalising Hamas at any cost, the latter´s obduracy and recent events in Gaza point to the inescapable conclusion &md...
March 04, 2008
We know well who killed the top Hezbollah commander, Imad Mugniyah on Feb 12th in Damascus.
While in the US media, only journalists like Seymour Hersh will have the nerve to point out the obvious, the Israeli media has not shied away from evidence of the Israeli intelligence´s involvement i...
March 04, 2008
As the race for the United States presidential nominations progresses, the stances of and attitudes towards both Republican and Democratic candidates continue to bring up causes for concern, in terms of their past behaviour, current appeal and general trustworthiness.
Republican Mitt Romney's exi...
February 24, 2008
We know well who killed the top Hezbollah commander, Imad Mugniyah on Feb 12th in Damascus.
While in the US media, only journalists like Seymour Hersh will have the nerve to point out the obvious, the Israeli media has not shied away from evidence of the Israeli intelligence´s involvement i...
February 12, 2008
In the competitive world of media today, swift and conveniently selective reporting is of prime importance. Google News, for example, claim to scan 4,500 news sources, of which only a few are highlighted as main stories. There are thousands of similar services, all competing to produce a story in th...
February 05, 2008
In a radio interview prior to the US invasion of Iraq, David Barsamian asked Noam Chomsky what ordinary Americans could do to stop the war. Chomsky answered, "In some parts of the world people never ask, ´what can we do?´ They simply do it."
For someone who was born and raised in a r...
January 30, 2008
Israelis and their supporters tend to depict Israel as a country of miracles. What else could explain the country's astonishing "birth" and subsequent survival against all sorts of "existential threats"? How else would Israel develop at such a phenomenal pace, making the "desert bloom" and continual...
January 30, 2008
The United States political process bears an uncanny resemblance to mainstream filmmaking. Elections and speeches are scripted to the letter, politicians put on a tirelessly rehearsed act, catering endlessly to the whims of the target audience. A successful Hollywood filmmaker can't afford to risk r...
January 30, 2008
11 January marked the sixth year anniversary of the establishment of the Guantanamo detention camp. Mere months after the start of the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan, a large cargo plane landed in a US military base in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, bringing in a group of hunchbacked, orange-cla...
January 10, 2008
In recent months, we have been inundated by media reports bringing good news from Iraq, with countless testimonials to the great improvement in security enjoyed by the country in general and the Baghdad area in particular.
This progress is attributed solely to the judicious ‘surge’ of US military...
December 30, 2007
The 42-day drama in Pakistan is far from over; the declaration of emergency and the lifting of emergency are part of a charade, behind which exists a complex power play between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, various camps within the military elite, and the US government. The Pakistani people ...
December 20, 2007
Intense debate over Gaza is subsiding as the status quo is delineated -- predictably -- by those with the bigger guns. But to what extent can human suffering be politicised, turned into an intellectual polemic that fails to affect the simplest change in people's lives?
Hamas's political advent i...
December 17, 2007
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s speech on December 6th - in which he tried to ‘explain’ his Mormon faith - was met with a mostly sympathetic reception at George Bush Library in Texas.
The speech has been long anticipated, not so much for its relevance to the pressing debate on th...
December 05, 2007
The people of Somalia are enduring yet another round of suffering as Ethiopian forces wreck havoc in the capital, Mogadishu. Apparently in response to an attack on one of its units, and the dragging of a soldier’s mutilated body through the city’s streets, an Ethiopian mortar reportedly exploded in ...
December 03, 2007
What do an organic farmer from Spain, a union worker activist from Brazil and a human rights scholar living in London have in common? They are all individuals who affect substantive change in their communities and they are also individuals who are overlooked by the corporate media.
The latter has...
December 03, 2007
A once profound and widely read commentator recently claimed he no longer writes about the Palestine/Israel conflict because "Palestinians are killing each other". Feeling his words have ceased to carry weight he simply decided not "to take sides".
What should be made of such a reaction? Granted,...
November 11, 2007
After years of marked absence, the Bush administration has finally decided to upgrade its involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The announcement of a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland has raised red flags for anyone who has learned from past experience how unbalanced and...
November 05, 2007
The ongoing socio-economic and political ills that mar potential progress in Middle Eastern countries can largely be attributed to the ill-defined foreign policy of the United States. Utterly desperate situations have arisen whereby US clients rule with an iron fist, making prospects for a meaningfu...
October 24, 2007
The last time I spoke publicly in the United States before my current tour was nearly four years ago. During this time I had travelled the world, passing my message to people in nearly 20 countries. Wherever I went, my calls for justice for the Palestinian people and for global alternatives to racis...
October 12, 2007
The 2003 invasion of Iraq has enabled two important realisations. First, that imperial powers act only to preserve their interests, and second, that humanitarian intervention -- i.e. humanitarian imperialism -- is touted and encouraged by the media and official circles mostly to circumvent the true ...
October 11, 2007
The recent death of Haider Abdul-Shafi could not have come at a worse time.
Bearing in mind the grim shortcomings of the Palestinian leadership and the lack of any serious attempt to rectify the situation, the loss of this unique and iconic leader feels all the more acute.
Here was someone who ...
October 03, 2007
The assassination of Lebanese politician Antoine Ghanem on September 19 is likely to be used, predictably, to further US and Israeli interests in the region. Most Western and some Arab media have industriously argued that Syria is the greatest beneficiary from the death of Ghanem, a member of the P...
October 01, 2007
When one commits to the life of an active citizen, spending their hours days and years reading and writing about current events, it becomes a daily struggle to overcome the cynicism that chases after you with the despairing headlines marking each newspaper or magazine. Rare is it when someone or som...
September 25, 2007
Osama bin Laden has once again managed to occupy the stage and to insist on his relevance to the story of September 11, 2001. In his most recent video message, released by Reuters a few days before the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, bin Laden voiced some typ...
September 25, 2007
Racism is, among many things, convenient. It provides simplified, definite and ready-to-serve answers to complex and compounded questions. Racists, in turn, come from all walks of life; their motivation and the root causes behind their contemptible views of others may differ, but the outcome of thes...
September 11, 2007
The decision made by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to halt his Mahdi Army’s attacks on occupation forces and Iraqi security is likely to be considered the single most promising breakthrough for the US military in Iraq. Although the move comes ahead of several reports to be presented to the US Congre...
September 04, 2007
As the security check line began moving slowly at Washington Dulles airport, one passenger standing a few steps ahead of me appeared particularly uneasy.
His dark skin, long beard, trimmed moustache, prayer spot centered on his forehead, and overall demeanor quickly gave away his identity, though ...
August 27, 2007
It is Edward Bernays who fine-tuned the art of public relations in the 20th century. Using many of the psychoanalytic theories put forward by his uncle Sigmund Freud, he developed a mastery of public manipulation, suggesting that such manipulation was essential to democracy itself. Bernays strongly ...
August 27, 2007
The rash and self-defeatist behaviour emanating from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his close circle in the West Bank cannot possibly be intended for the benefit of the Palestinian people or for their internationally sanctioned struggle for human rights, freedom and equality.
Ab...
August 13, 2007
Since the foundation of the United Nations' Security Council, the Palestinians did not manage to have any kind of sway that would allow them to block or amend a proposed resolution in any meaningful way.
But miracles do indeed happen, as, for the first time, and after days of intense lobbying, a ...
August 03, 2007
The name of Alberto Gonzales is rapidly becoming synonymous with all that has gone wrong under the Bush administration. Repeated media discussions of the US Secretary of State in the most contentious tones have served to lay the blame for all the ailments that infected American democracy under Bush ...
July 28, 2007
The Hamas government crackdown on Mohamed Dahlan's corrupt security forces and affiliated gangs in the Gaza Strip in June appears to mark a turning point in the Bush administration's foreign policy regarding Palestine and Israel. The supposed shift, however, is nothing but a continuation of Washingt...
July 23, 2007
The news of recent weeks emanating from Washington and Baghdad point to one clear, if not final, conclusion: The Bush administration's adventures in Iraq have been a complete failure.
What the media have eagerly dubbed as the Republican Revolt is now reinforced by two of the most distinguished Re...
July 16, 2007
To speak of an alternative media is to acknowledge the deficiency of the prevailing media, the mainstream, in addressing the issues, catering to the concerns, and responding to the woes of the general public, the overwhelming majority of people who are almost completely disregarded by the corporate ...
July 08, 2007
When Hamas members were elected as the majority bloc of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and as it became apparent that a US-led international embargo would be an adjoining price to that victory, I contacted many intellectuals and writers in Palestine, mostly those who often positioned themselve...
July 07, 2007
The Hamas-Fatah clash that has culminated into a mini-civil war in recent weeks is both old and new, and while some of its elements are uniquely Palestinian, much of it was manufactured at the behest of US-Israeli intelligence and governments.
The tensions between Fatah and Hamas are decades old....
June 23, 2007
ll my forewarnings have suddenly been actualised, all at once: Gaza has descended into total and utter chaos; Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has capitulated to Israel and to the United States without a shred of reservation; and the Palestinian democratic experiment, which was until recently an ...
June 18, 2007
When I resorted to Mark Twain’s writings I attempted to escape, at least temporarily from my often distressing readings on war, politics and terror.
But his “The Mysterious Stranger”, although published 1916, still left me with an eerie feel. The imaginative story calls into question beliefs that ...
June 11, 2007
In a statement made available through the country’s Foreign Office, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri chastised the “international community” for the “abandonment” of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989. In his estimation, it was this attitude that create...
May 31, 2007
I stand at the southernmost corner of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. The grand mountains underneath and behind infuse a moment of spiritual reflection unmatched in its depth and meaning. Before me is an awe-inspiring
view: here the Atlantic’s frigid waters gently meet the warm waters of the Indian ...
May 13, 2007
The Darfur crisis in Sudan is perhaps the most politically convoluted conflict in the world today. Its underpinnings involve local, regional and international players, all selfishly vying for power and economic interests.
Alliances shift like quicksand, reminiscent of Lebanon. Neither the interest...
April 25, 2007
Conflicts in the Middle East are often orchestrated from afar, using proxies -- the least risky method to fight and win a war. Despite its geopolitical fragmentation, the Middle East is loosely united insofar as any major event in any given locale can subsequently be felt throughout the region. Thus...
April 25, 2007
In Trafalgar Square in London, dozens of journalists representing every major news organisation descended on a designated corner in the tourist infested area in support of Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent kidnapped in Gaza on March 12, 2006, one month after his ordeal began.
Awaiting the arri...
April 12, 2007
In a spacious yet fortified UN compound in Rome members of the Palestine committee at the General Assembly repeated old mantras; they vowed support for the Palestinians, issued a press release and then went to lunch.
The committee consisted of several UN ambassadors, all well-intended, sympatheti...
April 04, 2007
The rapid, almost hasty, developments on the Arab Israeli front, almost immediately following the Saudi sponsored Makkah Agreement on February 2, should be examined in their proper context, as a part and parcel of the regional shifts, exasperated by the US war in Iraq and the dramatic adjustment in ...
April 04, 2007
The Stockholm air was too cold, even for the most animated speaker to excite a crowd. But I had little choice: thousands of anti-war protesters had descended on the capital’s main square to show their support of the Iraqi people on the four-year anniversary of the US invasion, and to demand an immed...
March 19, 2007
It’s never easy, although a sure assertion, to maintain that the Palestinian front, at home as well as abroad remains as fragmented and self-consumed, thus ineffective, as ever before, but most notably during the disastrous post-Oslo period.
Such a realization wouldn’t mean much if the inference ...
March 14, 2007
The Makkah agreement, signed between rival Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah on February 8, under the auspices of the Saudi leadership, was welcomed by thousands of cheering Palestinians throughout the occupied territories, and seen as the closing of a chapter of a bloody and tumultuous period of ...
March 14, 2007
The configuration of the New Middle East — as envisaged by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the Israeli war against Lebanon in July-August 2006, most certainly has no place for more than one regional power broker, namely Israel.
Under such an arrangement — subservient Arabs and Iran ...
March 11, 2007
Years back, an old and astute professor at the University of Washington ended a fascinating lecture to a small group of freshmen with the following contention: "Our country might find itself in a position that could force it to deprive its citizens from certain freedoms to preserve basic rights."
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March 11, 2007
Growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, it was a very familiar encounter: Israeli soldiers storming our house accompanied by shouts of terror and a barrage of insults. Such recollections make me shudder to this day.
Just the mere summoning of those memories of my childhood in ...