Suppose that we agree that the two atrocities can or may be mentioned in the same breath. Why should we do so? I wrote at the time (The Nation, October 5, 1998) that Osama bin...

…British appeasement of the Palestinian Arabs led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews [in the Holocaust] who might otherwise have found refuge in Palestine.

Shalom is the medicine I’d prescribe for Jerusalem—a deep, God-breathed indwelling of peace and prosperity and blessing. An end to the unrest and a sense of wholeness is what the Holy City needs. It’s what...

But not all Gaza residents were committed to the war. A reporter asked one of the Arabs what he most wanted. He was a taxi driver, father of ten. All he wanted was ‘to eat...

I know of no one who would be a good High Commissioner of Palestine except God.

I am not one of those who believes—as Obama is said to believe—that a solution to the Palestinian statehood question would bring an end to Muslim resentment against the United States. (Incidentally, if he really...

The Zionists accepted the partition plan. The AHC and the Arab states rejected any proposal to share the land and vowed to drown the fledging Jewish state in rivers of blood.

I believe that people are holy because they’re made in the image of God, and a place can be holy when God is present—but no place is so holy that it’s worth shedding the blood...

Paradoxically, the more Michael kept me at a distance, the more I trusted him – perhaps because he was always willing to help me with tips and introductions even though he wanted absolutely nothing from...

Women in Jesus’ day were less than second-class citizens.

I was taken to a villa to meet Sabri al-Banna, known as ‘Abu Nidal’ (‘father of struggle’), who was at the time emerging as one of Yasser Arafat’s main enemies. The meeting began inauspiciously when...

While the Arab guerrillas were moving in, the Arab civilian population was moving out. —I.F. Stone reporting from Israel during 1948 War of Independence

The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one...

It’s bewildering to me how you can just start chatting with a complete stranger on Facebook, and – next thing you know – it seems as if there’s some intense connection with the person –...

The pioneer and harbinger of irreconcilable enmity (with Iran) was the American government and its Zionist appendix in the Middle East,

I turn on the TV and watch Bewitched. Is life in America really the way it’s portrayed on these television shows? Are people so superficial? Do men really walk around in their suits at home?...

Control over the production and distribution of oil is the decisive factor in defining who rules whom in the Middle East.

This war will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades. —by Arab League Secretary General Abdul Rahman Azzam

Palestinian and Israeli leaders finally recover the Road Map to Peace, only to discover that, while they were looking for it, the Lug Nuts of Mutual Interest came off the Front Left Wheel of Accommodation,...

That could also be because at one point during the film, our hands found each other. And when I felt Michael’s middle finger caress the inside of my palm, it sent a tickle up my...

People whose lives were determined for them by a group of politicians whose severing, dissecting and reattaching of their lands has turned their world into a monster that not even its creator can control.

The Americans were understandably on hair triggers. There was a good reason for all of this security. For despite TV images of quick victory, much of Baghdad certainly had not fallen and firefights with die-hard...

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the...

…all necessary measures should be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale. —joint statement signed by both Chaim Weizmann and Prince Faisal

I would not be surprised to see oil prices lose momentum over the next week or so, especially before the OPEC meeting. My hunch here is that as part of the agreement to ease tension...

When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out...

There is a world of difference between a leadership that is based on love and respect, and one that is based on fear.

Edward genially enough did not disagree with what I said, but he didn’t seem to admit my point, either. I wanted to press him harder so I veered close enough to the ad hominem to...

We’re in a bear phase here, and certainly any kind of negative news out of the Middle East that affects oil prices is going to be another issue that the market is going to have...

We don’t want to have a child that has many illnesses, and that will pass away after a few months. A child must have a good environment, and parents that will take care of it....

As politicians weigh courses of action against their political agendas the death toll weighs heavy on the conscience of the world. The once vibrant Syrian streets are now haunted by the souls of the innocent...

The pens sharpen – Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions (and most others) are much the same – Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust for women’s bodies.

As he defended the book one evening in the early 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment in New York, I knew that some of what he said was true enough, just as some of it was...

Is life less thrilling if your neighbors are rational, if they don’t bomb your power stations whenever they feel you need to be admonished? Is it less rousing if they don’t rattle your windows and...

New political systems and philosophies were imported into the Near East under the general term democracy and grafted artificially into a society which was feudal in nature and theocratic in spirit. The results were not...

The Arab Spring whose seeds failed to bloom anything other than a chaotic mess that requires only blood to grow has contributed immensely to the rising numbers of these migrants.

Israelis are a mix of North African, Levantine, and Eastern European, which inflames the politics but does amazing things for the women.

blaming the West” as some readers might rush to suggest here. I argue that deeper geopolitical factors have created numerous confrontational factors between the East and the West that predate Islam, continued with Islam and...

It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.

By the time of the arrival of Islam in the early seventeenth century CE, what we now call the Middle East was divided between the Persian and Byzantine empires. But with the spread of this...

I got a call froma cynical young American journalist…You know the sort. He’s lived in the Middle East for a little over five minutes so assumes he knows us natives well. I sip at a...

If the Palestinian people really suffered a nakba, it was largely of their own making — and that of their grand mufti.

immaculate conception” theory of crises abroad. That is, we believe we are essentially out there, just minding our own business, trying to help make the world right, only to be endlessly faced with a series...

Behind every act in Israel’s identity politics stretches, like a long black shadow, the idea of an eternal power and race.

And your neihjbour is sitting next door weeping as she watches her child facing a crowd of Palestiniankids armed with rocks which could take your boy’s eye out or give him brain damage if god...

If God’s love encompasses the whole world and if everyone who does not believe in him will perish, then surely this question needs to be asked: When, after two thousand years, does God’s plan kick...

Zionist willingness to compromise met by Palestinian rejection and Jew hatred.

One of the outstanding sources of resistance to imperial power in the Muslim world came from Sufi groups. While Sufi brotherhoods are generally known for a more quietist and mystic approach to Islam, they traditionally...

We identified Russia and the Middle East as very important for development.

What makes the Arabs suitable candidates for democracy is their heritage as human beings, not their specific cultural or historical antecedents.