Not surprisingly, Egypt has deteriorated into chaos and violence once again. Last week, hundreds were killed and thousands injured as the post-coup Egyptian government mauled thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo. Usually when something like this happens anywhere in the world, the United States is either looked to for leadership, blamed for the bloodshed, … Read more
Turkey has woken up from its sleep during the AKP’s fascist regime. Founded in 1923, Turkey is a secular republic. Since 1946, it has maintained a multi-party democracy. The AKP (A.K.A. the Justice and Development Party) is an Islamist party elected in 2002 following the economic crisis the previous year. At first, its movements against … Read more
Soon after 9/11, the American media rediscovered the aesthetics of military deployment. Melancholy scenes of soldiers in fatigues waving to red-eyed wives and baffled-looking children are a common sight on CNN. The focus is on the emotion, but much less often do we hear what the soldiers have to say about their experiences. But a … Read more
America’s war in Afghanistan began in 1979 — not 2001 — when we supported the mujahedeen in resisting the Soviet invasion. When the Cold War ended in 1991, we left Afghanistan. We had successfully stopped communism’s spread, and the American public was understandably tired of spending lives and money in this faraway land. We are … Read more
When Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s now infamous 2010 remarks were widely published in January, the world questioned whether he still believed that Israelis were the “descendants of apes and pigs.” A more pertinent question, though, may be whether these statements represented the beliefs of the organization that helped bring Morsi to power. For if these … Read more
Dr. Tahirul Qadri, a Sufi cleric who had spent the past seven years in Canada after resigning from the Pakistani National Assembly, suddenly reappeared on the national scene in December at a rally of hundreds of thousands of his supporters in Lahore. After marching to Islamabad and speaking to a crowd of more than 50,000, … Read more
Sino-U.S. strategic interactions have played a critical role throughout the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. In particular, China’s continued economic engagement with Iran, despite increasingly stringent U.S. sanctions, has led to tension. Yet the Obama administration’s characterization of its relationship with China on this issue remains predominantly positive. Speaking at Harvard last November, U.S. National … Read more
One-state, two-state, three-state, or however else amateur final status negotiators envision the future political geography of Israel-Palestine, one pivotal element that few think to mention is that any arrangement will, by necessity, be extraordinarily high-density. On the eve of World War I, the Massachusetts-sized territory housed a modest population of 700,000 souls; by partition, that … Read more
Until the election-night surprise of Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party’s second-place finish, a different canonical story dominated the coverage of Israel’s 2013 election season. In late 2012, domestic and international outlets seized upon the rise of Naftali Bennett, whose clean-shaven, high-tech image recast national-religious annexationism as the new cool among young conservatives. Unfortunately, more … Read more
When grotesque, anti-Semitic remarks made by President Mohamed Morsi in September of 2010 were widely published earlier this week, they were met with appropriate outrage by the Western world. Calling Zionists the “descendants of apes and pigs” is completely unacceptable coming from anyone, let alone the president of a country, despite Morsi’s attempts to explain that his remarks were … Read more