A short interview broadcast by CNN late last week featuring two participants — a Palestinian in Gaza and an Israeli within range of the rocket attacks — did not follow the usual script. For once, a media outlet dropped its role as gatekeeper, there to mediate and...
How did it start? Stupid question. Conflagrations along the Gaza Strip don’t start. They are just a continuous chain of events, each claimed to be in “retaliation” for the previous one. Action is followed by reaction, which is followed by retaliation, which is...
The world economy would bear substantial costs if the United States took steps to significantly escalate the conflict with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, according to the findings of a Federation of American Scientists’ (FAS) special report released...
When the late Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), was engaged in a heavily one-sided battle against a robustly-armed Israel in 2000, he admitted the Palestinians were completely outgunned by the Israelis. As the the U.S.-supplied...
Following Barack Obama’s significant electoral victory, the ways in which the President will interpret his new “mandate” are still very much up for debate. While pundits, many of whom got the election seriously wrong, fumble to come up with new predictions, an...
War is hell. It’s a statement we’ve heard so many times we tend to take it now as an axiom, a truism that is so obvious it serves as a giant, bolded period in any conversation. It’s all that needs to be said - war is hell. But in the ensuing silence lies what I feel...
Part of a slogan from my hometown past sticks in my mind. “Build we must,” it went. Such an American phrase, really. Evidence of a can-do spirit from another country in another age. Now, in can’t-do America with its...
