U.S. President Barack Obama finds himself on the sharp horns of a dilemma following the barbaric beheading of James Foley, an American freelance journalist, on Aug. 19. Foley was the second American reporter since Daniel Pearl to be killed by crazed Islamic radicals. Foley was murdered by Islamic State, an extremist, bloodthirsty outfit bent on […]
Israel and Hamas have resumed fighting, having rejected each other’s irreconcilable demands at fruitless talks in Cairo under the auspices of Egypt. On Aug. 19, eight hours before the latest truce was to have expired, gunmen in the Gaza Strip fired rockets into Israel. In response, the Israeli and Palestinian delegations left Cairo, while Israel […]
Since 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a body supported by the international community, has spent billions of dollars tending to the humanitarian needs of more than one million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. The refugees, having been displaced from their homes in 1948 and 1967, certainly require assistance. But should the […]
In what was an epic failure of intelligence during its most recent war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israel stumbled upon a cross-border tunnel network of frightening proportions of which it had scant knowledge. The discovery prompted Israeli pundits to speculate whether Hezbollah, Israel’s Shiite enemy to the north, possesses the same array of […]
Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is America’s Frankenstein. The United States empowered him, and now it is trying to get rid of him. Plucked from obscurity by Washington in 2006 to succeed Ibrahim al-Jaafari as Iraq’s next prime minister, Maliki, a Shiite, has been a thorn in its side ever since. Volatile and mercurial, Maliki is currently […]
I‘ve voted for the Green Party of Canada in the last two federal elections, even as I realized that its chances of forming a government were realistically nil. I cast my ballot for the Greens because, as a tree hugger, I liked its sincere and earnest approach to politics and its fresh and progressive ideas […]
The guns have finally fallen silent in the Gaza Strip. After a 29-day war, the fourth pitting Israel against Hamas in eight years, Israel has unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza and repositioned its army along the border in case of a flareup. Both sides are observing a 72-hour truce and have sent delegations to Cairo in […]
If nothing else, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is consistent. On Aug. 3, in his latest anti-Israel rant since the war in the Gaza Strip erupted, he compared Israel to Hitler and accused Israel of deliberately killing Palestinian mothers. Speaking to supporters at a rally in Istanbul about a week before the Aug. 10 […]
Spanish movie stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem may be fine actors, but their understanding of current events in the Middle East is nothing short of abysmal. Recently, they added their names to a vitriolic open letter, signed by dozens of artists in Spain, denouncing Israel’s just military campaign in the Gaza Strip. Calling the […]
A few hours before a 72-hour humanitarian truce in the Gaza war was supposed to start, followed immediately by talks in Cairo with the aim of achieving a more durable ceasefire, White House spokesman Josh Earnest scolded Israel. An Israeli artillery strike that had mistakenly hit a United Nations school in Gaza, causing 15 fatalities, […]