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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
US Secretary of State, John Kerry, is often perceived as one of the “good ones” – the less hawkish of top American officials, who does not simply promote and defend his country’s military adventurism but reaches out to others, beyond polarizing rhetoric. His...
There is a possibility that you have heard of the famed British author, J K Rowling, writer of the popular fantasy series Harry Potter. While I knew of her books –through my teenage kids – I knew little about the author herself, until recently. Under an oblique title,...
Saeb Erekat is an enigmatic character. Despite minimal popularity among Palestinians, he is omnipresent, appears regularly on television and speaks with the moral authority of an accomplished leader whose legacy is rife with accolades and an astute, unwavering vision....
When my book Searching Jenin was published soon after the Israeli massacre in the Jenin refugee camp in 2002, I was quizzed repeatedly by the media and many readers for conferring the word “massacre” on what Israel has depicted as a legitimate battle against...
Imagine the Syrian war from the point of view of ordinary Syrians from a variety of backgrounds. They are most likely to offer a different perspective and to hold entirely different expectations than most other parties involved. A resident of Idlib, a villager from...
