Geography Archives: Middle East

Jamal Dajani: A war of words between the Egyptian government and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah has escalated after Egypt’s public prosecutor recently ordered 49 people held for plotting attacks on behalf of Hezbollah be kept in custody for an additional 15 days. The 49 suspects include Egyptians, Palestinians, and Lebanese.  They were reportedly arrested […]

Thousands of supporters of Shi’i leader Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in Baghdad to demand an end to the “US occupation,” on the sixth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. From early morning, a multitude of youths, waving Iraqi flags and upholding portraits of Muqtada al-Sadr, assembled, despite the relentless rain, in Firdos Square, where, […]

Obstacles to Israel’s Arab minority participating in higher education have resulted in a record number of Arab students taking up places at universities in neighboring Jordan, a new report reveals. Figures compiled by Dirasat, a Nazareth-based organization monitoring education issues, show 5,400 Arab students from Israel are at Jordanian universities — half the number of […]

Sonya Huber.   Opa Nobody.   Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.  xvi + 358 pp.  Illustrations.  ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6; $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6. In recent years, scholars have grappled with the specific manner in which recent generations of Germans and Austrians have confronted their own familial complicity in Nazism.  The narratives revealed by these studies […]

  2008 — Annus Horribilis for the world economy — produced successive food, energy, and financial crises, initially devastating particularly the global poor, but quickly extending to the commanding heights of the US and core economies and ushering in the sharpest downturn since the 1930s depression. As all nations strive to respond to the financial […]

Cf. Emine Özcan, “Thousands of People Say ‘Enough’ to 60 Years of Nato” (Bıa News Centre, 5 April 2009).

A decision by Israel’s state-owned railway company to sack 150 Arab workers because they have not served in the army has been denounced as “unlawful” and “racist” this week by Arab legal and workers’ rights groups. The new policy, which applies to guards at train crossing points, is being implemented even though the country’s Arab […]

Chilling testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law.  The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to come.  Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions.  While […]

The president of the new financial institution, Kurosh Parvizian, noted that this institution is a smart project in the face of the international economic crisis.  The creation of a bi-national fund, which will have a capital of 1.2 billion dollars, will strengthen Venezuela’s strategic alliance with Iran and South-South cooperation. The president of Venezuela, Hugo […]

The home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees for over half a century, Syria has since 2003 taken in over 1 million Iraqi refugees.  The International Crisis Group estimates that 57% of Iraqis in Syria are affected by chronic medical conditions and a late 2007 survey conducted by IPSOS found depression and anxiety highly […]

Washington, DC (April 2) — The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and allied organizations participating in a national boycott campaign against Motorola welcomed news that Motorola Israel Ltd. has sold its Government Electronics Department, which made several products that enable Israel’s military occupation of and human rights abuses against Palestinians. The reported sale […]

The extent of Israel’s brutality against Palestinian civilians in its 22-day pounding of the Gaza Strip is gradually surfacing.  Israeli soldiers are testifying to lax rules of engagement tantamount to a license to kill.  One soldier commented: “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a […]

The presidents of Venezuela and Iran met on Thursday at the presidential palace in Tehran, where they agreed on the need to make a systemic change that allows countries to break free from free trade and promote fair trade and complementary relations between countries. The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud […]

During his speech, the Venezuelan head of state insisted that “the agreements not remain on paper” as in previous years.  He condemned the arrest warrant on the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, issued by the International Criminal Court “by order of the United States” and stressed the need to create a currency to confront the […]

  The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement: Investigate the Israeli Missile Contract The Rs. 10,000 crore missile production deal with an Israeli company, the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), has now been exposed as a deal involving massive kickbacks besides being an unnecessary contract.  The Left parties […]

“Caracas: one of the most dangerous cities of the planet. . .” goes the blurb for the movie Express Kidnapping — the only Venezuelan film viewed internationally so far, and the top grossing movie here. Crime, according to the Latinobarometro 2008 report, is the biggest problem in Venezuela for 57% of its respondents.  So it […]

People in Cincinnati, like others around the country — either having lost their jobs or fearful of losing them — have been waiting anxiously, some desperately, for news that President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan would help them.  Now the news has arrived, and the news is that help is coming.  Help for the banks and […]

Background Raymond Deane, “A Public Stoning in Germany,” Electronic Intifada, 6 March 2009; and Yossi Bartal, “The German Left and Israel,” Alternative Information Center, 18 March 2009. We are peace activists of Jewish background.  Some of us typically identify in this way; others of us do not.  But we all object to those who claim […]

  On March 28, Palestinians and international activists gathered to protest the long-time closure of Shuhada Street in Hebron, leaving one arrested and five injured. The protest was attended by about 50 local and international activists, including MK Mohammad Barakeh of Hadash and Palestinian Legislative Council member Sahar Qawasmi.  Giving a passionate and fiery speech […]

Dear friends, Today was Land Day in Palestine and around the world.  Hundreds of events were being held in honor of our Land that so many trespassers now live on.  The first land day in 1976 set a trend of defiance and resistance.  Different groups mark the day differently.  Demonstrators in Hebron were attacked by […]