Ramzy Baroud

Palestinians all over the world will commemorate the tragic occasion, known as the "Catastrophe," when nearly 800,000 Palestinians were made refugees and nearly 500 towns and villages were ethnically cleansed of their inhabitants in historic Palestine between late 1947 and mid-1948. The depopulation of Palestine carried on for months; in fact, years after the Nakba … Continue reading “Erasure vs. Sumud: How the Nakba Came To Define the Collective Palestinian Identity”

When Israel launched a war against the Gaza Strip in August 2022, it declared that its target was the Islamic Jihad only. Indeed, neither Hamas nor the other Gaza-based groups engaged directly in the fighting. The war then raised more questions than answers. Israel rarely distinguishes between one Palestinian group and another. For Tel Aviv, … Continue reading “Losing ‘Deterrence’: How Palestinian, Arab Resistance Changed Rules of War With Israel”

By ordering a brutal attack against Palestinian worshipers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque on the 14th day of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew very well that the Palestinians would retaliate. Netanyahu’s motive should be clear. He wanted to generate a distraction from the mass protests that have rocked Israel, starting … Continue reading “Quest for Religious War: How Israel Is Unifying Arabs and Muslims Around Palestine”

By his own admission, Israel’s new Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is a "fascist homophobe." This declaration, which he made on January 16, should be enough to accentuate the violent nature of the new political concoction created by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last December. Though Smotrich is not the only politician in Netanyahu’s cabinet with … Continue reading “Selective Outrage in Palestine: The Problem Is Not Just Smotrich but Zionism”

The following text tells the whole story of what pro-Palestinian communities around the world are fighting for, and what pro-Israelis are fighting against: "We are delighted to report that Chelsea and Westminster Hospital has removed a display of artwork designed by children from Gaza." That was the summary of a news report published on the … Continue reading “Victory Is Defeat: Palestinian Children’s Art Exposes Israel’s Cultural Genocide”

Rarely does the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations make an official remark expressing happiness over any UN proceeding concerning the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Indeed, the Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour is “very happy that there was a very strong united message from the Security Council against the illegal, unilateral measure” undertaken by the Israeli … Continue reading “On False Hopes and Broken Promises: Behind the Scenes of the UN Statement on Palestine”

Though it was clear that Burkina Faso was eventually going to follow in the footsteps of Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR), Ouagadougou’s decision to break military ties with France was not as simple as media sound bites want us to believe. The conventional wisdom is that these countries are walking away from their … Continue reading “A Month’s Notice: Why Burkina Faso Ordered French Troops Out of the Country”

Though Israel’s past wars on Gaza have often been justified by Tel Aviv as a response to Palestinian rockets or, generally, as acts of self-defense, the truth is different. Historically, Israel’s relationship with Gaza has been defined by Tel Aviv’s need to create distractions from its own fractious politics, to flex its muscles against its … Continue reading “How the ‘Gaza Experiment’ Resulted in the Downfall of Israeli Politicians”

On January 19, during one of its raids in the Occupied West Bank, the Israeli military arrested a Palestinian journalist, Abdul Muhsen Shalaldeh, near the town of Al-Khalil (Hebron). This is just the latest of a staggering number of violations against Palestinian journalists, and against freedom of expression. A few days earlier, the head of … Continue reading “Palestinians Are Not Liars: Confronting the Violence of Media Delegitimization”

In a self-congratulatory article published in the Atlantic in 2017, Yossi Klein Halevi describes Israeli behavior at the just-conquered holy Muslim shrines in Occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 as "an astonishing moment of religious restraint." "The Jewish people had just returned to its holiest site, from which it had been denied access for centuries, only … Continue reading “It Has Always Been a ‘Religious War’: On Ben Gvir and the Adaptability of Zionism”