Arab World

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Helpers of God (Ansar Allah) or Houthis in Yemen are proving a bigger challenge for the Biden Administration’s attempt to run interference for the Israeli atrocities in Gaza than Washington had expected. Just Monday morning the Yemeni forces fired a ballistic missile at the US-owned and -operated M/V Torm […]

Hamas

Iran’s “Axis of Resistance:” Different Groups, Similar Goals

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty

By Kian Sharifi ( RFE/RL ) – Iran’s so-called axis of resistance is a loose network of proxies, Tehran-backed militant groups, and an allied state actor. The network is a key element of Tehran’s strategy of deterrence against perceived threats from the United States, regional rivals, and primarily Israel. Active in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, […]

Egypt

Microplastics found in Nile River Fish: Toxic Pollution threatens World’s Longest River

The Conversation

By Dalia Saad, University of the Witwatersrand | – The Nile is one of the world’s most famous rivers. It’s also Africa’s most important freshwater system. About 300 million people live in the 11 countries it flows through. Many rely on its waters for agriculture and fishing to make a living. The Nile’s two main […]

Lebanon

From Ukraine to Lebanon, a tale of two Marias

Ibrahim Al-Marashi

On a fateful day in February 2022, Ibrahim al-Marashi found himself praying in two religions for two Marias. In a world where narcissism and conflict cause immeasurable hurt, humanity can triumph over division, he writes. “On 24 February 2022, while travelling to Lebanon to visit his great-aunt Maria in Lebanon, Ibrahim al-Marashi’s thoughts were with […]

Counter-Terrorism

Bombing Muslims for Peace: Isn’t It Time to Put Our Toy Soldiers Away (Along with Our Illusions)?

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Like many American boys of the baby-boomer generation, I played “war” with those old, olive-drab, plastic toy soldiers meant to evoke our great victory over the Nazis and “the Japs” during World War II. At age 10, I also kept a scrapbook of the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and […]

Egypt

Egypt Threatens Netanyahu with End of Camp David Peace Accords if he Invades Rafah

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is being widely reported based on press leaks that the Egyptian government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has privately threatened Israel. Cairo is said to have warned that the 1978 Camp David Peace Treaty will be suspended “with immediate effect” if the government of Binyamin Netanyahu tries to take […]

Arab Spring

Why, Despite the Arab Spring and Mass Protests of the 2010s, People Got the Opposite of What they Wanted

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (New York: PublicAffairs, 2023). Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – At the end of 2019, there was no shortage of articles looking retrospectively at the events that had shaped the decade of the 2010s. One of them was aptly titled “A […]

Iraq

Washington Chooses Genocide over Diplomacy in the Middle East

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

( Code Pink ) – On February 7, 2024, a U.S. drone strike assassinated an Iraqi militia leader, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, in the heart of Baghdad. This was a further U.S. escalation in a major new front in the U.S.-Israeli war on the Middle East, centered on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but already also […]

Featured

Saudis Contradict Blinken: Want Actual Palestinian State now, not Vague ‘Peace Process’

Farhang Jahanpour

Oxford (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – On Tuesday afternoon (6 February 2024), U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took part in a joint press conference with Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Doha. The press conference was mainly about the war in Gaza and the possibility […]