Category Archives: Middle East

Israel’s Violence Will Never Bring “Safety” to Anyone, Including Jews

Posted on 11/18/2023 by Sarah Lazare and Maya Schenwar

This article was published in Truthout on October 18, 2023. It has been updated to reflect numbers as of November 2, and lightly edited for style. The horror and heartbreak in Gaza reaches new proportions each minute: Israel’s siege has … Continue reading →

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Frozen Conflicts, Flashmob Militants, and the End of the Gunpowder State

Posted on 07/18/2023 by Janice Jayes

Syria, Libya, Yemen . . . and now Sudan. Sudan has the unhappy potential to become the next of the intractable conflicts that have unfolded over the past decade. These multisided struggles involving a cocktail of militaries, militias, and mercenaries … Continue reading →

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Silence and the Continuing Legacy of the US Invasion of Iraq

Posted on 05/01/2023 by Janice Jayes

The twentieth anniversary of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq slid by with an encore performance of the arrogance that characterized the invasion itself. In 2003 that arrogance disregarded inconvenient international norms as easily as it disregarded the Iraqi victims … Continue reading →

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Labor Abuse as Product Placement at the World Cup

Posted on 12/31/2022 by Janice Jayes

The 2022 soccer World Cup began its takeover of global sports channels on November 20, transmitting endless images of cosmopolitan crowds enjoying the sparkling new stadiums of Qatar to audiences around the world. The country that hosts the World Cup … Continue reading →

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The Great De-Centering: The World after Ukraine

Posted on 05/13/2022 by Janice Jayes

The Ukraine war is a turning point in history, but not the one you might be expecting. It won’t revive the Cold War. It won’t determine the survival of the Liberal World Order (whatever that is). And most decidedly, it … Continue reading →

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Yemen: A War of Many Fronts

Posted on 08/04/2021 by Valerie Hoffman

Journalists describe the conflict in Yemen as a sectarian proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but that fails to capture the complexity of the war: in October, 2020, Human Rights Watch reported more than thirty battle fronts between various … Continue reading →

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Black Lives Matter in the Middle East

Posted on 10/26/2020 by Janice Jayes

George Floyd’s murder horrified people of the Middle East just as it did many in the US and, just as in America, the outrage that followed exposed cultural fault lines, forced uncomfortable introspection, and was sometimes exploited for political purposes. … Continue reading →

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Homewrecker: Trump, the Kurds, and the Grand Strategy We Have Been Waiting For

Posted on 12/24/2019 by Janice Jayes

Donald Trump’s October decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria took his own advisors by surprise, not to mention the Kurdish military units that were U.S. partners in the war on ISIS during the past five years. Perhaps the only … Continue reading →

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Bolton is Out! But Imperialist Aggression Against Iran is Still In

Posted on 11/02/2019 by Nick Goodell

On September 10, National Security Advisor John Bolton was fired from his post at the White House. With one of the staunchest advocates for US imperialism now out of the Trump administration, some were optimistic that the warmongering and the … Continue reading →

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Anti-Semitism: Still the “Socialism of Fools”?

Posted on 06/13/2019 by Richard Esbenshade

Scandals over alleged anti-Semitism have recently ensnared leftist British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn; the populist Yellow Vest movement, which leans both Left and Right (and neither, rejecting both); and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), critic of Israel and supporter of … Continue reading →

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Congress must end American support for Saudi war in Yemen

Posted on 12/07/2017 by Mark Weisbrot

By Mark Weisbrot The New York Times editorial board recently took an unusual position of denouncing what it called “war crimes” by a U.S. ally, in a war in which the United States is actively participating militarily. “Saudis try to starve … Continue reading →

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The 2018 U.S. Militarized Budget

Posted on 09/09/2017 by Mort Brussel

The 2018 U.S. Militarized Budget My premise is that the military budget, as proposed by the current administration, is a principal reason for the strangling of our civil society. This article explains why it is unnecessary, why it is promoted, … Continue reading →

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OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND, THE HIDDEN COSTS OF WAR

Posted on 09/09/2017 by David Johnson

“War is a racket!” This was a famous quote from retired U.S. Marine Corp General Smedley Butler in 1934. Butler stated that “I spent 33 years in the Marine Corp, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for … Continue reading →

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The Politics of Looking at Women’s Rights in the Middle East

Posted on 04/01/2017 by Janice Jayes

As someone who has lived in and studies the Middle East I am often asked my opinion on the situation of women in that region. Of course it’s impossible to comment on “women” anywhere, even in Champaign or Urbana, without … Continue reading →

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Battling ISIS and Other Distractions from the Bigger Picture

Posted on 11/18/2016 by Janice Jayes

Current operations to scrub out Islamic State (ISIS) bases have restored American confidence in state-of-the-art military solutions for complex problems, but unfortunately these battles (and the undefined relationship with Russia, Turkey or the Assad regime in the post-ISIS era) also … Continue reading →

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The Syrian Refugee Crisis and the Problem of Categories

Posted on 08/17/2016 by Janice Jayes

The Syrian refugee crisis is ultimately a problem about categories, not numbers. Yes, the numbers are overwhelming. But, unfortunately, after years of tragic stories about the 11 million displaced by the Syrian war, international sympathy is waning even as the … Continue reading →

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The Syrian Stage: The Globalization of the Syrian War

Posted on 07/13/2016 by Janice Jayes

Just as the Arab Spring showcased the political possibilities of new forms of communication—empowering political dissenters by allowing them to rapidly share developments and warnings with each other and the world, and breaking the dominance the state had enjoyed over … Continue reading →

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