Arab Spring
Antisemitism: Obsession or Logic?Thursday, January 24, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Robert Wistrich’s new book, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel, does much to demonstrate that anti-Semitism was and is a fixture of the Left—but stops short of that conclusion.
Iranian Jewry TodayThursday, August 16, 2012 by Shai Secunda | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In late June 2012, the Vice President of the Islamic Republic of Iran addressed an international conference on the proliferation of illicit drugs. He acknowledged his country’s extensive border with Afghanistan, the largest producer of illegal opium in the world. But he also blamed the crisis on the Babylonian Talmud.
Editors' Picks
Archeology on the Battlefield Jesse Casana, ASOR Blog. From the Iraqi Revolt of 1920 to the upheavals of the Arab Spring, war and revolution have dictated the focus of archeological research in the Arab and Muslim Middle East.
No End to Elections , BBC. Hours after polls closed in Israel, Jordan is holding its first parliamentary elections under a reformed electoral system—in the hope of preventing another Islamist revolution.
Raised on Hatred Ayaan Hirsi Ali, New York Times. "As a child growing up in a Muslim family, I constantly heard my mother, other relatives and neighbors wish for the death of Jews, who were considered our darkest enemy."
The Use and Misuse of American Influence Shoshana Bryen, Gatestone Institute. "It is a specifically American conceit that people in other countries and other societies want our social and governmental blueprint as well as our money, medicine, and weapons."
Wardrobe Malfunction Shimon Peres, Spiegel. "I see it as a 'world spring' rather than an Arab spring," muses the Israeli President. "And you can't come to a world spring dressed for winter." (Interview by Hans Hoyng & Juliane von Mittelstaedt)
Meet the New Boss Gary C. Gambill, National Post. As Israel’s neighbors react to the Israeli-Palestinian hostilities, Israel will get its first clear sense of whether the Arab Spring has yielded more hostile regimes, or just more of the same.
The Age of Islamism Hussein Agha, Robert Malley, New York Review of Books. Far from being a democratic revolution, the fall of autocracies across the Arab world represents Islamism’s final victory over Arab nationalism—and the beginning of a project to restore the caliphate.
The Middle East’s “Big Men” Elliott Abrams, Commentary. "Some months after the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, I sat at lunch with the aging Hosni Mubarak . . ."
Start-Up Ummah? Schumpeter, Economist. A new book argues that amid political instability and the threat of war, the Arab world has seen a rise in entrepreneurship, supported by a large and expanding market.
Dividing the Druse Isabel Kershner, New York Times. With Syria entrenched in civil war, tensions are rising in the Syrian Druse villages on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights, as opponents of Assad square up against loyalists.