Because selling deadly weapons is the best way to show America’s real commitment to democracy in the Arab world: On the same day President Obama pressed again for peace in the Middle East, the Associated Press reminded us that the United States cannot help itself from flooding the region with the instruments of war, reporting…
Showing all posts tagged Syria
Fisk on what Obama should say about the Middle East (but won’t)
Spot on: OK, so here’s what President Barack Obama should say today about the Middle East. We will leave Afghanistan tomorrow. We will leave Iraq tomorrow. We will stop giving unconditional, craven support to Israel. Americans will force the Israelis – and the European Union – to end their siege of Gaza. We will withhold…
America and Israel have lost control of the Middle East narrative (finally)
So the Arab Spring has arrived in Israel. And how does the Zionist state react? Blame Iran and Syria. It’s a futile tactic and will fail. Nobody serious believes it. Palestinians are calling to be free, free of occupation and free of enslavement. No amount of IDF propaganda (ably assisted by rabid Zionists in the…
Dramatic video shows Palestinians, Syrians entering Israeli-occupied Golan Heights
Moving times: A dramatic video published by the website baladee.net shows the moment when hundreds of Palestinian refugees and Syrians break through the border fence from Syria into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights (part of Syria occupied by Israel in 1967 and illegally annexed in… 1981). The video, which appears to be taken from the Israeli-occupied side…
Rumblings of a third intifada?
Perhaps: Israeli forces fired two tank shells and several rounds from machine guns as Gazans approached the heavily fortified border with Israel on Sunday, wounding at least 15 youths, a Palestinian health official said. One of the wounded was in a critical condition. The march near the Gaza-Israel border was part of Palestinian commemorations of…
Assad associate warns of chaos if he goes
Of course they would say this but note the warning to Israel. The essential Anthony Shadid in the New York Times: Syria’s ruling elite, a tight-knit circle at the nexus of absolute power, loyalty to family and a visceral instinct for survival, will fight to the end in a struggle that could cast the Middle…
The risk of implosion of the Syrian state
Robert Fisk paints a troubling picture of a nation that needs fundamental reform: According to historian Farouk Mardam-Bey, for example, Syria is “a tribal regime, which by being a kind of mafia clan and by exercising the cult of personality, can be compared to the Libyan regime”, which can never reform itself because reform will…
Just how genuine are Arab uprisings?
American government assistance for the purpose of “regime change” brings serious questions about what kind of Islamists are acceptable to the US (clearly some are, despite Washington being opposed to engaging, say, Hamas): The State Department has secretly financed Syrian political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming…
Where are the Arab voices in Aussie BDS debate?
My following story appears in today’s edition of Crikey: A few weeks after the start of the Iraq war in 2003, I talked to a senior editor at The Sydney Morning Herald and asked her why there were basically no Iraqi voices in the paper, either for or against the conflict. “I never thought of…
This is what passes for “serious” Mid-East commentary in NYT
Columnist Thomas Friedman – whose understanding of the Muslim world involves staying at very expensive hotels and then speaking to the doorman to sense the “Arab street” – writes yet another article that shows how little he gets about the region. Want to speak to people who aren’t just in the elites, Friedman? When I…