Coffee, perhaps the most common word on the planet, is a lucrative cash crop that provides employment for more than 25 million people in over 7o countries. Originally gathered from wild plants in Ethiopia in the 15th century, it was first cultivated commercially in Yemen, its supply strictly controlled by a clique of Arab merchants who […]
As a graduate of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, I was distressed to learn that one of its students dropped out of a postgraduate program due to what he claimed was a “toxic antisemitic environment” on campus. I studied at SOAS, a world-renowned institution, from 1969 to 1970, completing an […]
An eight-minute music video starring an Israeli and a Tunisian has caused a backlash in Tunisia. Peace Between Neighbors was released last week by the Arab Council for Regional Integration, an organization dedicated to promoting a culture of coexistence and a spirit of partnership between Israelis and Arabs in the Middle East. The video, featuring […]
Israel and Iran are the worst of enemies. Iran regularly call for Israel’s destruction and supports its most implacable enemies. Israel, in turn, works ceaselessly to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program and undermine its regional proxies. Their conflict is an existential battle tailor-made for the big screen or television. Tehran, the new eight-part Apple TV miniseries, […]
With just a few days remaining in the year, I think it’s safe to say that absolutely no one on this beautiful planet will miss 2020, which forever will be synonymous with the dread, burden and grief of the coronavirus pandemic. This contagion started in the Chinese city of Wuhan last December or January and […]
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born Islamic fundamentalist charged with masterminding the abduction of American newspaper correspondent Daniel Pearl in 2002, was released from prison by a court in Pakistan several days ago. It’s a disappointing, morally repellant verdict that the international community should not accept with indifference or silence. Understandably enough, the judgment stunned and […]
Franck Salameh describes his bitter-sweet book, Lebanon’s Jewish Community: Fragments of Lives Arrested (Palgrave Macmillan), as a “memorial” and “act of remembrance” to commemorate what was arguably the oldest and most indigenous community in Lebanon. Fourteen thousand strong at its height in the 1940s, it was the smallest of Lebanon’s 20 legally recognized ethnic-religious groups, […]
It was a short-lived, shaky marriage of convenience both sides disliked yet endured until they could no longer stomach it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s expedient partnership with Benny Gantz collapsed on December 22 after seven months of mutual distrust and constant backstabbing and infighting. With the collapse of their national unity government, Israel was propelled […]
Measured against centuries of recorded human history, the concept of human rights is quite new, having emerged only after World War II as a response to the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust. Within two years of these unprecedented atrocities, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention, which were […]
The American historian Robert Gellately asks and answers an important question in his magisterial work, Hitler’s True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis (Oxford University Press): What impelled tens of millions of Germans to accept or accommodate themselves to a doctrine laced with racial hatred and laden with murderous implications? The reasons are clear. Germany’s […]