Egyptian novelist Youssef Ziedan While we see few occasions of consciousness–and certainly few publicly expressed–from Arab and Muslim intellectuals of what is really going on, they still do take place. For example, in a December 30, 2013, interview that aired on CBC TV, Egyptian novelist Youssef Ziedan said: “We should reconsider our notions regarding the […]
After Secretary of State John Kerry made a statement that was critical of Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Ya’alon issued a statement implying that Kerry should just get his Nobel Peace Prize and find something better to do. Ya’alon suggested that the proposed peace plan set too narrow parameters for Israel. Ya’alon’s statement gained widespread, […]
Around 2007, I gave a lecture at the Defense Department. One of the attendees presented a scenario suggesting that the “problem of Islam” was not political but a problem of verbiage. There was a secret debate happening in the Defense Department and the CIA in which some people thought that all Muslims were a problem, […]
“The fire-breathing Rebels arrive at the party early, Their khaki coats are hung in the closet near the fur. Asking handouts from the ladies, while they criticize the lords. Boasting of the murder of the very hands that pour. And the victims learn to giggle, for at least they are not bored. And my shoulders […]
It makes sense that the Israel-Palestinian agreement is being made with Obama and Kerry in charge. The deal offers a kind of neo-mandate, with an American presence entrenched in the Jordan Valley for the next 10 years. That’s no joke. Let’s look at a different but parallel “pacification” effort and see what happened there. The […]
Incidentally, Syria’s Ba’th dictatorship is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The best Syrian analyst I can think of, a very honest guy, is Ammar Abdulhamid. I recently read an article he wrote and was struck by how sad the situation in Syria is. He wrote: Re-legitimating the Assad regime today, after all it had done, will […]
“Remember the war against Franco? That’s the kind where each of us belongs. Though he may have won all the battles, We had all the good songs!” –”The Folk Song Army,” Tom Lehrer The United States is depending on a partner that denies to the UN that Syria even carried out a chemical attack (See: […]