Editorial

Israel on the one side and Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the other have announced an open-ended cease-fire brokered by Egypt, the terms of which are similar to those of 2012. Mass celebrations broke out among war-weary Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians could argue that they have won some concessions. New checkpoints will … Continued

For those of us with family in Gaza, the past couple of months have been a blur — of phone calls, news, tweets and waking to check for names we recognize on the health ministry’s list of deaths, one eye open, one eye closed. And for Palestinians everywhere, it has been agony to watch again, … Continued

Was Facebook responsible for the Arab spring? Lawrence Rosen comments on the transformative power of the young generation. Best known for his wide-ranging blog on Middle Eastern developments, Juan Cole argues that the new generation of Arab youth – sometimes called “Gen Y”, sometimes “the millennials” – is quite unlike its failed predecessors and that … Continued

Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal points to the overwhelming bias in US media against the Palestinians, calling NBC to account for having tried to remove an Arab-American reporter from Gaza after he reported the Israeli navy’s deliberate killing of children on the beach. She also points to the stranglehold the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby … Continued

Americans are commemorating the Fourth of July today, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The grievances that the four million inhabitants of British North America had in 1776 were not felt by them to be narrow or specific but rather universal, and so too was the remedy. They laid against the government of King … Continued

The mayor of a Jewish suburb of Nazareth sparked outrage on Wednesday after refusing to allow Christmas trees to be placed in town squares, calling them provocative. Predominantly Jewish Nazareth Illit, or Upper Nazareth, is adjacent to Nazareth, where Jesus is said to have spent much of his life. It has a sizable Arab Christian … Continued

Nazareth, Jesus’s hometown, is today a bustling city of over 70,000 people. The people of Nazareth are termed “Arab citizens of Israel” or “1948 Palestinians,”depending on one’s politics. About a third of Nazarenes are Christians, the rest are Muslim. On the hill rising above the dense town and its imposing Basilica of the Annunciation, lies … Continued

Back in the early 1990’s, at the end of Lebanon’s civil war, together with a few other Arab American organizations, we requested and secured a meeting with then Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to discuss both the situation in Lebanon and some unhelpful positions taken by the Senate that we felt might adversely impact the … Continued

Ypres and Palestine, the Jewish Holocaust and Iraqi Kurdistan. Spot the connection? As a schoolboy, Belgian author Erwin Mortier and his friends would play in the fields near his home on the old First World War Western Front. One day, Erwin and his best chum heaved from the earth two helmets, one with a bullet … Continued

The talk of Helen Thomas’ alleged anti-Semitism has often been marked by an unforgivable sloppiness. Contrary to what people have said about her statements, she has criticized “Zionists,” not the Jewish people. The charge of anti-Semitism is of course deeply serious. Indeed, the “Jewish Question” — agonized over by the likes of Bruno Bauer, Karl … Continued

Oh, Helen, Behave Helen, don’t you know that you can’t say the Jews should get the hell out of Palestine? Don’t you know it’s not even called Palestine? Don’t you know that there never was a Palestine? C’mon, Helen… Don’t you know you can’t talk about the extreme bias in American media in favor of … Continued