War

Israeli Arms Sales to Rwandan Genocidaires Should Not Be Surprising

A 24 June 2012 article in Maariv brought to light some new information about arms shipments from Israel to Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Most of the basics about these transactions have been publicly available since 1999 when Brian Wood and Johan Peleman published The Arms Fixers. They reported, “Seven large cargoes of small arms worth $6.5 million were flown from Tirana [Albania] and Tel Aviv between mid-April and mid-July 1994 to the [Interahamwe] forces as they carried out the genocide, even during ...

Hafez Al-Assad in 1976

People of my generation cannot (and should not) forgive and forget. What happened in 1976 changed the course of contemporary Lebanese history and prolonged the agonizing years of the civil war. In 1976, the PLO-Lebanese National Movement (LNM) coalition was on its way to defeat the pro-Israeli Phalanges militias in Lebanon, after they were the ones who started the civil war on behalf of Israel and the US. According to Newsweek magazine at the time, the PLO-LNM joint forces controlled more than 80 ...

Syrian Refugee in Wadi Khaled (In both Arabic and English)

هذا الشريط ضمن سلسة من الأفلام تنشرها ”جدلية“ بالإتفاق مع موقع ”العربي الحر“ ومن انتاجه. توثق هذه الأفلام الوثائقية القصيرة التي تتراوح مدتها بين دقيقتين إلى ثلاث دقائق لجوانب في الحياة اليومية لهؤلاء الذين تتحدث عنهم، وتبعات الثورات العربية سلباً وايجاباً على حياتهم. تتبع الكاميرات حيوات أفراد من أجيال وطبقات مختلفة، سواء كانوا من المدينة أو الريف، أغنياء أو فقراء. كما تحاول تتبع نشاطاتهم في مختلف المناطق العربية والتي يصعب عبور حدودها لأسباب معروفة.    الشريط التالي  تحت عنوان ...

Protests in Tahrir; Drones in Turkey's Skies

This week we talk to Egyptian journalist Ahmad Shokr about the political landscape in his country after the pivotal verdict on Hosni Mubarak and members of his regime announced on Saturday, 2 June 2012. We’ll also discuss Turkey’s plans to purchase US armed drones with University of Indiana researcher, Burhan Althuran. Last year, the United States had moved four of its Predator drones from Iraq to Turkey, and now that country is trying to acquire armed drones of its own---the kind used by the US in ...

Houla: Not a Game Changer

Confession: the images of the carnage in Houla did not move me like they seem to have moved the rest of the world. Yes, they were tragic, horrific acts of violence against the most innocent of victims. But they didn’t break anything inside of me that was not already broken, nor did they raise the level of outrage or sorrow I feel everyday over what is happening in Syria. Maybe it was because in the twenty-fours hours before hearing about the Houla massacre, I had heard that a friend’s relative had been ...

The Elevation of Jeffrey Feltman

A blog visited mainly by UN insiders announces that US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman is up for a very important UN job. Former UN Assistant Secretary General for Public Information Samir Sanbar’s blog, UN Forum, notes that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is set to replace B. Lynn Pascoe with Feltman in the post of UN Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs. The office was created in 1992 to help identify and resolve political conflicts around the world. ...

Sanctions Against Iran: A Duplicitous "Alternative" to War

Media reports on Iran oscillate wildly between threats of imminent military action and hopeful reports of diplomatic progress. Amidst this confusing din, there is a constant truth: the United States has not ceased its economic bullying of Iran, nor has the threat of war receded. As Dennis B. Ross, the Obama Administration’s former Iran advisor, told the New York Times, “now you have a focus on the negotiations...It doesn't mean the threat of using force goes away, but it lies behind the diplomacy.” This ...

Palestinian Hunger Strikers: Fighting Ingrained Duplicity

On his seventy-third day of hunger strike, Thaer Halahleh was vomiting blood and bleeding from his lips and gums, while his body weighs in at 121 pounds—a fraction of its pre-hunger strike size. The thirty-three-year-old Palestinian follows the still-palpable footsteps of Adnan Khader and Hana Shalabi, whose hunger strikes resulted in release. He also stands alongside Bilal Diab, who is also entering his seventy-third day of visceral protest. Together, they inspired nearly 2,500 Palestinian political ...

Love Bomb: How Deep Is Israel's Love for Iran?

If you follow the news in the Middle East, you have probably come across the online sensation known as the “Israel-Loves-Iran” campaign. The campaign, launched by Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry and his wife Michal Tamir, emerges amidst rising tensions between Iran and the West over the country’s nuclear program, as well as months of sabre-rattling between the leaders of Israel, the United States, and Iran. What started out as a campaign to upload colourful posters with the slogan “Iranians, we ...

A Barbarian in Rome

[The following are excerpts from a longer text in the form of a diary kept during the war] “ I have freed millions from barbarism.” George W. Bush, The Guardian, Sunday, June 15, 2008. i. “Are you going home for the holidays?” asked a colleague of mine some years ago in the elevator. It is a typical and legitimate question, but if you happen to be from Baghdad, as I am, formulating an answer is not a simple task. The immediate one that came to mind was: have you watched the news in the last four ...

US Military in Afghanistan

Syria Media Roundup (February 23)

Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, killed in Syria on Wednesday reminds us all of the importance of front line reporting (1) along with a French photographer, Remi Ochlik and, on the previous day a Syrian citizen journalist Rami Al-Sayed (2) ‘Phone Calls to Hell’: Syria’s citizen journalists, including Rami Al-Sayed ‘Damascus Launching the Syrian Journalists Association after Decades of Oppression’ ‘Syrian Security Forces Target Doctors’, in The Guardian ‘Red Cross tries to broker ...