Ramzy Baroud

By Friday, January 29, Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeq had spent 66-days on hunger strike in Israeli jails. Just before he fell into his third coma, a day earlier, he sent a public message through his lawyers, the gist of which was: freedom or death. Al-Qeq is 33 years of age, married and a father of … Continue reading “The Logic of Hunger Striking Palestinians: When Starvation Is a Weapon”

Whenever Mariam Aljamal’s children hear the sound of thunder at night, they wet their beds. Their reaction is almost instinctive, and is shared by a large number of children throughout the Gaza Strip. Mariam’s three children – Jamal, Lina, and Sarah – were all born a few years after the Gaza siege was first imposed … Continue reading “Gaza Speaks: This Is What the Decade-Long Siege Has Done to Us”

Although intended to inspire his Fatah Party followers, a televised speech by Mahmoud Abbas on the 51st Anniversary of the group’s launch highlighted, instead, the unprecedented crisis that continues to wreak havoc on the Palestinian people. Not only did Abbas sound defensive and lacking in any serious or new initiatives, but his ultimate intention appeared … Continue reading “Palestine After Abbas: The Future of a People at Stake”

When I was a little boy, I used to dream of being reborn outside the hardship of the Refugee Camp in Gaza, in some other time and place where there were no soldiers, no military occupation, no concentration camps and no daily grind – where my father fought for our very survival, and my mother … Continue reading “An Open Letter to Young Muslims Everywhere: The Seed of Triumph in Every Adversity”

John Bolton is a tarnished character. The once United States Ambassador to the United Nations is now promoted as a “scholar” in the pro-Israel lobby group, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Bolton is not a peacemaker, nor, in his defense, did he ever try to appear as if one. When he was appointed as the … Continue reading “Beware ‘Sunni-Stan’: Neocons Are Back and Their ‘Vision’ Is Darker Than Ever”

Throughout her hunger strike, that of exactly 47 days, Hana Shalabi never slept consistently for a number of hours. In the first few days of her strike, she would doze off only to wake up with the sudden fear that someone was trying to hurt her. But after the first week of the hunger strike, … Continue reading “Hungry Warrior: The Untold Story of Hana Shalabi”

When Egypt decided to open the Rafah border crossing which separates it from Gaza for two days, December 3 and 4, a sense of guarded relief was felt in the impoverished Strip. True, 48 hours were hardly enough for the tens of thousands of patients, students and other travelers to leave or return to Gaza, … Continue reading “Open Rafah Now: Siege on Gaza Is a Cruel Failure”

Israeli commentators, Yaron Friedman, of "Ynet News" and Haviv Rettig Gur, of the "Times of Israel" are clueless about the driving force behind the Palestinian mobilization and collective struggle. In two recent articles, and with unmistakable conceit, they attempted to highlight what they perceive as the failure of the current Palestinian uprising, or "Intifada." Gur … Continue reading “Reclaiming Palestine: How Israeli Media Misread the Intifada”

I still remember that smug look on his face, followed by the matter-of-fact remarks that had western journalists laugh out loud. “I’m now going to show you a picture of the luckiest man in Iraq,” General Norman Schwarzkopf, known as “Stormin” Norman, said at a press conference sometime in 1991, as he showed a video … Continue reading “Forget ISIS: Humanity Is at Stake”

Writing in the New York Times in an article entitled, "Myanmar Generals Set the State for Their Own Exit", Thomas Fuller expressed his and the media’s failure to recognize the total fraud that is Burmese democracy. "The official results are still being tabulated," he wrote, "but all signs, so far, point to that rarest of … Continue reading “Rohingya and the Burmese Generals: How To Fake a Democracy”