Middle East

Muslim cleric’s interview tells of radical’s frustration with other Muslims

By Barry Rubin HERZLIYA, Israel — An Egyptian Islamist cleric named Ibrahim al-Khouli is interviewed on television, with translation by MEMRI. What can we learn from his words? A lot. “What is the nature of our relations with [the West]? They are relations of Crusader aggression against the land of Islam–in Afghanistan, in Iraq, which […]

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Middle East

U.S. media’s Middle East reporting is naive. Ya think?

By Barry Rubin HERZLIYA, Israel –If you’ve lost faith in the current administration’s ability and mass media’s ability to respond to Middle East developments, here’s more evidence. There’s a relatively new American idiomatic expression, “Ya [you] think?” Said sarcastically, it means: Wow, duh, the answer to that question is really obvious! So consider how hidden,

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Middle East, USA

One Palestinian cartoon shows why there isn’t peace

By Barry Rubin HERZLIYA, Israel — After fifteen years of following the Palestinian Authority (PA) media on a daily basis, I’ve never seen anything that sums up the problem of why there’s no peace better than this cartoon in al-Hayat al-Jadida, the official PA newspaper. If only the Western mass media ran this cartoon the situation

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Middle East, Science, Medicine, & Education

Lighter side: Austria, Cuba and other ‘Middle Eastern’ players

By Barry Rubin HERZLIYA, Israel — What could be more routine than those little notes countries send other countries to say Happy Birthday? Yet even here there’s a sort of strangeness about the current U.S. government’s approach to the Middle East . On October 25, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sent national day greetings to

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International, Middle East, USA

U.S. sponsors speech by Iranian apologist in Saudi Arabia

By Barry Rubin HERZLIYA, Israel (Press Release)– There are days when you think: No, this nightmare can’t be real! Is the Obama Administration really so bad? Have the policymakers really taken leave of their senses? And then you see this: The U.S. Consulate-General in Saudi Arabia “hosted Dr. Trita Parsi, founder and President of the

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Middle East, USA

Jewish Agency refines its plans to introduce young Diaspora Jewry to Israel

JERUSALEM (Press Release)– Providing teens and young adults from abroad with a continuum of experiences in Israel and creating social action opportunities in Israel for young Israelis and Jews from abroad will serve as the focus of the work of the Jewish Agency for Israel, its Board of Governors decided Monday, Oct. 25. These areas of

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Middle East

Pro-Palestinian cleric hijacks statement from Middle East bishops

By Bruce Kesler ENCINITAS, California– “Is ‘Palestinian-killer’ the new ‘Christ-killer’?” was the first question that occurred to me as I read news reports that a meeting of Catholic Bishops from the Middle East condemned Israel, called for withdrawal to 1967 borders, and asserted that Jews have no Biblical right to Israel. I just read the actual statement of

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Middle East

Bad news for Palestinians: Israel and U.S. focused on other matters

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Two items are front and center in the Israeli media. One is American and one Israeli. Both are important in their own right, and may spill over to what had been the principal issue of the peace process.  Palestinians should be worrying that Americans are concerned with their dirty laundry,

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Ira Sharkansky, Middle East

WikiLeaks disclosures prompt questions about kind of USA does Peres want Israel to support

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Two questions come to mind on reading about the latest release of secret material by WikiLeaks:  Will this provide the same push to anti-war activists as the Pentagon Papers in 1971? and will anyone notice that the ugliness associated with the Americans and their allies dwarfs the charges levied against

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Ira Sharkansky, Middle East

Palestinian negotiating tactics: give nothing, insist on everything

By Barry Rubin HERZLIYA, Israel–A reader asks: “You wrote, `But if Israel defined it’s final boundaries before negotiations, the Palestinian Authority [says it] would return to the talks. Israel won’t do that, of course.’ Why is that `of course’”? I first joked that it was because the article was getting to be too long. In

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Middle East

Political bedfellows: Communist North Korea and Islamist Iran

By Barry Rubin   HERZLIYA, Israel — Now appearing in Pyongyang: North Korean missile; Iranian nose cone. Ain’t international cooperation wonderful? Joshua Pollack, a very smart arms’ expert, has just published an article and a paper on cooperation between these two countries which is well worth reading. One point really caught my eye. Iran’s news agency

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International, Middle East

Is American Jewish community getting restive over Israel?

By Ira Sharkansky Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Is the sky falling? Or only part of that over the Jewish community of the United States? The signs appear in one New York Times article that takes seriously the prospect of a Palestinian state declared unilaterally, with the support of prominent international bodies and maybe even the acquiescence of

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Ira Sharkansky, Middle East