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Mouin Rabbani
Reflections on a Lifetime of Engagement with Zionism, the Palestine Question, and American Empire: An Interview with Noam Chomsky
![[Noam Chomsky. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_800px-Noam_Chomsky_Toronto_2011.jpg "[Noam Chomsky. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]")
In the following interview conducted for the Journal of Palestine Studies by Jadaliyya Co-Editor Mouin Rabbani, Noam Chomsky reflects on a lifetime of engagement with the Palestine Question. He reflects on his early engagement, and how it developed over the course of his lifetime. He also considers how things have –and have not—changed, and where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could and should be heading. The interview was conducted in Lexington, MA in 2009 and 2010, ...
Keep Reading »Introduction to Roundtable on Iran Crisis
![[Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_754px-Grand_Ayatollah_Ali_Khamenei,.jpg "[Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]")
The cacophony of voices discussing and debating the merits of sanctions against, negotiations with, and war on Iran has been deafening. For two years the expanding sanctions regime has been presented as an alternative to conflict, while it threatens to be a mere prelude to war. The only remaining question being who would attack Iran on account of its purported nuclear weapons program. Largely absent from this debate has been analysis based on knowledge of Iranian ...
Keep Reading »United States Should Step Aside as Mideast Broker
![[Left to right: Hillary Clinton, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_netanyahu-Clinton-Abbas.jpg "[Left to right: Hillary Clinton, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas. Image from unknown archive.]")
When it comes to Arab-Israeli diplomacy the American monopoly on mediation needs to be terminated. The reason is simple. Washington’s systematic failure over several decades has disqualified it from acting without adult supervision. Rather than the marriage counselor who must be balanced because both spouses are angry, the US is the arbitrator who sleeps with and solicits bribes from the more powerful disputant, and fixes outcomes accordingly. Given the US mantra that it ...
Keep Reading »Prisoner Exchange Levels Hamas, Fatah Playing Fields
![[Image from 972mag.com]](/content_images/3/sm_Prisoners-families-large1.jpg "[Image from 972mag.com]")
News that Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) had reached agreement on a prisoner exchange instantaneously displaced the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) bid for full United Nations membership from the headlines in mid-October. Arguably, Hamas and Israel had a common interest in this regard. More importantly, the Palestinian Islamists, no longer relegated to the margins of the Palestinian UN initiative by the rival leadership in Ramallah, can now resume ...
Keep Reading »Hate Speech Finds a Mainstream Platform
![[Image from Washington Post]](/content_images/3/sm_WashingtonPostCupofCoffee.png "[Image from Washington Post]")
It is not often that major international publications respond to crackpot opinion pieces in other newspapers. Yet Robert L. Bernstein’s latest tantrum against the Palestinians, which the Washington Post published instead of steering the author to an extremist website, was so far beyond the pale that The Economist felt compelled to issue a ...
Keep Reading »Abbas's Next Move
![[Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_chess.jpg "[Image from unknown archive]")
Mahmoud Abbas’s address to the United Nations General Assembly on 23 September fell considerably short of Yasir Arafat’s electrifying 1974 speech from the same podium. Nor did it compare with Haidar Abdul Shafi’s dignified – and unanswerable – call for justice at the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference. Yet it may come to be seen as a historic turning point in the fortunes of the Palestinian people. Abbas’s agenda was transparent. He was sending the Americans a message: grow a ...
Keep Reading »A Long Season of Change Ahead for Every Arab Nation
![[Map of Arab world using national flags. Image from unknown source.]](/content_images/3/sm_arabworldflags.jpg "[Map of Arab world using national flags. Image from unknown source.]")
In the six months since Mohammed Bouazizi immolated himself and set an entire region alight, analysts and observers have swung from issuing death certificates for the established Arab order to concluding that it has managed to withstand the challenge of mass insurrection. Both judgements are premature, and neither is correct. The fundamental reality that is all too often overlooked is that the Arab Spring is a dynamic process, rather than a single season. It will continue ...
Keep Reading »The Year of the Citizen
![[From Google Images.]](/content_images/3/sm_egypt-victory.jpg "[From Google Images.]")
During the Spring of the so-called Arab Spring, the euphoria that characterized the Winter of 2010/2011 has increasingly given way to more somber attitudes associated with Winter. For those who were expecting a linear progression towards freedom, in which vain autocrats and sclerotic regimes would fall with growing ease and rapidity, despondency is an appropriate response to the increasing ferocity with which ruling elites seek to remain in power. Yet in the life of peoples, ...
Keep Reading »Review Roundtable Part III: Goldstone in Political Context
The political dymamics surrounding the report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (commonly known as the Goldstone Report) provide a number of interesting insights into the recent evolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It bears recollection that the report was produced during a period when the Palestinian leadership was engaged in what has been characterized as serious permanent status negotiations with Israel. Yet the vast majority of ...
Keep Reading »The Securitisation of Political Rule: Security Domination of Arab Regimes and the Prospects for Democratisation
![[Graph of number of successful coups by Arab states. Image from moorenextdoor.wordpress.com]]](/content_images/3/sm_coups_by_year_and_state.jpg "[Graph of number of successful coups by Arab states. Image from moorenextdoor.wordpress.com]]")
Among the more interesting features of the current wave of uprisings and protests sweeping the Arab world is the general absence of the armed forces from regime efforts to defeat popular challenges to autocratic rule. Even in Libya, where the revolt has taken an unambiguously military character and the Qaddafi regime is additionally confronted with foreign intervention, the regular army has not emerged as a prominent actor. Where senior officers have played a significant ...
Keep Reading »Bio
Mouin Rabbani is a Contributing Editor of Middle East Report and has published and commented widely on Palestinian affairs and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was a Senior Analyst of the Middle East with the International Crisis Group. Previously he worked as Palestine Director of the Palestinian American Research Centre. He is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine.
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