John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, has been harshly and unfairly criticized by two right-wing Israeli cabinet ministers for having stated an obvious and compelling truth. Their tendentious comments reflect badly on their understanding of fundamental realities in the Middle East. Speaking at the State Department the other day, Kerry called for a […]
The Middle East is invariably in flux, changing before our eyes. The following books may clarify issues, deepen understanding or simply outrage some readers. In Shifting Sands: The United States in the Middle East (Columbia University Press), Joel Migdal, a professor of international studies at the University of Washington, argues that Washington’s policy in this […]
In recent months, some media outlets have launched a smear campaign against Turkey by publishing and broadcasting news claiming that Turkey hosted and supported elements of Al Qaeda- linked terrorist groups in Syria. The slander went as far as accusing Turkey of training and allowing passage of those groups into Iraq and Syria through […]
Ebola, that terrible disease ravaging western Africa and threatening the United States, inspires dread, but it’s nothing compared to the natural disaster looming large in Zac Hilditch’s science fiction thriller, These Final Hours, which opens in Canada on Oct. 17. Set in the suburbs of Perth, Australia, as a cataclysmic force devours cities and continents in […]
Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po in Paris, is absolutely right. “The word ‘Gaza,”‘ he writes in Gaza: A History (Oxford University Press), “arouses passions and emotions whenever it is uttered.” Last July and August, when Israel and Hamas clashed in a 50-day war, their third in six years, Gaza […]
Although they were tried and executed more than half a century ago, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg’s names remain familiar to most Americans. Executed on June 19, 1953, after their conviction for conspiracy to pass atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during and after World War II, the Rosenbergs were at the center of one […]
The international donors conference held in Cairo on Oct. 12 sent out an unmistakable message: Rebuilding the Gaza Strip after last summer’s 50-day war between Israel and radical Palestinian factions is a necessity, but the Aug. 26 ceasefire that ended the fighting may not endure unless Israel and the Palestinians reach a broader political agreement to […]
Several days before five Arab armies attacked the new-born state of Israel on May 15, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s future prime minister, asked his generals if Israel could win the war. Fifty/fifty, he was told. One of the reasons for the uncertainty was that Israel lacked one of the basics of a modern fighting machine […]
The soul of Varanasi, a holy Hindu city in northern India, is defined by its ghats, the stone stairways marching down to the water’s edge of the mighty Ganges River. There are about 100 ghats in Varanasi, and all of them are connected to a warren of dirt lanes, crumbling buildings and hole-in-the-wall shops of […]
Odessa, the Ukrainian port on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea, lives on its reputation as an infamous city. A den of iniquity in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it attracted adventurers seeking wealth and pleasures. Much like storied Shanghai and New Orleans, it was a haven for criminals, smugglers, pimps and prostitutes. […]