Author and analyst Hooman Majd traveled to Iran last month and has published an initial report from his travels, “Postcard from Tehran,” in ForeignPolicy.com. Hooman makes a number of important points in his article, which largely reinforce our analysis of Iranian politics since the Islamic Republic’s June 12, 2009 presidential election and of U.S/Western policy […]
Geography Archives: Israel
The Mural Speaks
The Rachel Corrie Foundation andBreak the Silence Mural Project co‐presentThe Mural Speaks Come celebrate the completion of this dynamic, interactive mural at a free event at 6:00 p.m., Saturday, May 8 at the Labor Temple building, corner of State and Capitol, downtown Olympia. The Mural Speaks event is more than a mural commemoration; it’s a […]
Israel’s Stasi Watch over Imams
Job interviews for the position of imam at mosques in Israel are conducted not by senior clerics but by the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, a labor tribunal has revealed. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajwa, 36, is fighting the Shin Bet’s refusal to approve his appointment as an imam in a case that has lifted the […]
Mohamed ElBaradei on the Iranian Nuclear Issue
As we follow the NPT Review Conference in New York and the enormous salience of the Iranian nuclear issue there, it is useful to consider some recent observations about the Iranian case by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s former Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei. Baradei was in the Boston area last week, where, among other things, […]
Iran’s Challenge to the Nuclear Order
Excerpt: Three nations in the Middle East dominate any present-day discussion of nuclear weapons, yet only one is subjected to an unprecedented degree of international scrutiny. Two have nuclear weapons; the third does not. Yet it is the third nation that is widely considered the threat to world peace and the target of ever increasing […]
Feeling the Hate in New York
Midtown Manhattan, 25 April 2010 Dov Hikind, NY State Assemblyman (D-Brooklyn): “From day one, this president proved that he was not Barack Obama, but Barack Hussein Obama.” Audience (carrying signs reading “Racism. Sexism. Apartheid. Stop Shariah Islam” among other signs): “Boo!” Demonstrator: “He’s a Nazi!” * * * Demonstrator: “This government is pressuring Israel right […]
Why Are the US and Israel Threatening Iran? And Who Really Rules the World?
Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 while at the same time sending more troops to the Afghanistan War. What has become of the promise of “change”? I am one of the few who are not disillusioned, because I had no expectations. I had written about Obama’s positions and prospects even before […]
The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. New Afrikaners
Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture, Palestine Center, Washington, D.C., 29 April 2010 It is a great honor to be here at the Palestine Center to give the Sharabi Memorial Lecture. I would like to thank Yousef Munnayer, the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund, for inviting me, and all of you for coming out […]
Obama’s Slippery Slope to Military Strikes on Iran
Today, POLITICO published our newest Op-Ed, “Obama’s Slippery Slope to Strikes on Iran” (excerpts below but also worth reading in full on POLITICO.com). Our piece was prompted by the partial leak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ January 2010 memo on Iran to the New York Times last week and subsequent statements by Gates and […]
Israel’s Big and Small Apartheids: The Meaning of a Jewish State
A talk delivered to the Fifth Bil’in International Conference for Palestinian Popular Resistance, held in the West Bank village of Bil’in on April 21 Israel’s apologists are very exercised about the idea that Israel has been singled out for special scrutiny and criticism. I wish to argue, however, that in most discussions of Israel it […]
Iraq Redux: “Conventional Wisdom” of Iran Analysts
The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler had an important story: “Even as Momentum for Iran Sanctions Grows, Containment Seems Only Viable Option.” Glenn states his thesis up front: After months of first attempting to engage Iran and then wooing Russia and China to support new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the Obama Administration appears within reach […]
Iran: What Is the Green Movement?
Caught in the intoxicating effects of a violent moment in the history of a nation, one is particularly susceptible to reactionary outbursts. But it is exactly during such moments that intellectual discourse must prevail over ideological cacophony. And the cacophony about the causes and consequences of the recent unrests in Iran has been deafening, exactly […]
Earth Day in Israel: Apartheid Showing through the Greenwash
On April 22, as part of the global Earth Day celebrations, homes, offices, and public buildings in 14 Israeli cities turned out the lights for one hour in an effort to “increase awareness of the vital need to reduce energy consumption.” The Earth Day celebrations included scenes of green fields, wind generators, and rainbows projected […]
Teabaggers = Hawks and Likudniks
By now it has been well established that the teabaggers are by and large rich white men who are implacably opposed to pro-working-class economic policy, real or imagined. It turns out that they are not even libertarians à la Ron Paul, Reason Magazine, or the Cato Institute — they are just a bunch of hawks […]
Why You Should Care about the Three Americans Held in Iran
Watching the news in August 2009, you may have heard about three U.S. citizens being detained in Iran. Arrested for allegedly crossing the Iran-Iraq border on July 31, 2009, they remain in detention nine months later in Iran’s Evin prison. Dubbed “the hikers” due to the fact that they were on a hiking trip in […]
Prisoners’ Day in Beit Ummar
“April 17, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, is an important commemoration for the Palestinian people. Over 30% of Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel, and there are more than 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners currently languishing in Israeli jails. Israeli abuses of power further include administrative detentions, i.e. those without charges or trial, juvenile incarceration, and torture and […]
General Jones at the Washington Institute: Still Getting the Iran-Palestine Connection Wrong
National Security Adviser James Jones was the headline speaker at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy‘s 25th-anniversary gala dinner in Washington last night. Substantively, General Jones’ speech focused on “two defining challenges” confronting the United States and its allies in the region: “preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, […]
Reason, Faith, and Revolution
Christianity Fair and Foul The Limits of Liberalism Faith and Reason Culture and Barbarism . . . Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God? Who would have expected theology to rear its head once more in the technocratic twenty-first century, almost as surprisingly as some mass revival of Zoroastrianism or […]
Speaking Out Against Israeli Apartheid
We asked queers in our city to tell us why they are against Israeli apartheid. Here’s what they said. Video by Alexis Mitchell * * * Editor’s Note: QuAIA has come under attack by the pro-Israel lobby and Toronto city bureaucrats: “An April 18, 2010 feature story in the Toronto Star revealed that City […]
Why Iran Won’t Attack Israel
Palestinians are in Israel today because they managed to survive the depopulation of 1948, the year the Jewish state was founded (Arabs constitute about 20% of Israel’s population). Ironically, while Benny Morris’ scholarship suggests that the mere existence of these Palestinians in Israel — and millions more in the occupied territories — irks him, Israel’s […]
