Amman, an essay
“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” TS Eliot Amman today is a peculiar...
Category: Middle East
For many American Jews protesting for Palestinians, activism is a journey rooted in their Jewish values
Atalia Omer, University of Notre Dame In April 2024, during Passover, a group of American rabbis approached a border crossing in Israel. Affiliated with Rabbis for Ceasefire, the group joined Jewish...
The caged bird sings of peace: Marwan Barghouti
Speaking in his first interview from behind the walls of the Israeli maximum security Megiddo prison in 2007, Marwan Hasib Ibrahim Barghouti’s spirit does not seem to have aged a day. He is defiant...
First contours of an Israeli plan for Gaza: what options does Biden have?
A one-page document submitted by Prime Minister Netanyahu to his cabinet in February provides no answers to the question of when Israel would consider its military objectives in Gaza met. It does,...
Defunding aid to Palestine is an unconscionable collective punishment
The genocide we are all witnessing in Palestine is horrifying and devastating. Palestinians are being forced out of their homes and are injured and starving, and even though much of the mainstream...
Symmetry and asymmetry of power: Gaza in its global and historical context
Though pundits are heavily engaged in analyzing the unfolding events in Gaza, historians have yet to reflect on its true magnitude. Someone, someday, may look back at the events with some degree of...
Can Russia really benefit from the Israel-Hamas war?
While the world remains focused on the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, the Russian military is attempting to make tactical gains in Ukraine. At the same time, some political circles in the...
The long goodbye to the “rules-based” West
Arab countries have long accused the West of a double standard when it comes to them. They cry foul every time the rules-based order has been violated. When a caricature that negatively depicts...
Self-belief is fueled by national ambition
Ambitious development plans such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 have been the subject of regular media attention. Much of that attention centers on the massive financial resources earmarked to...
An all-too-familiar story: Jordan’s experience with globalization
Like many lower-middle-income countries, Jordan embraced the ideals of free market capitalism that characterized the globalization era of the 1990s and first decade of the 2000s. Jordan was the first...