By 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 […]
Palestinian Author and Journalist Dr. Ramzy Baroud will be speaking at the MARXISM 2016 Conference in Victorian College of the Arts – Melbourne, Australia March 26, 2016. For more information visit: http://marxismconference.org/front.php
By Ramzy Baroud The 12 million Syrian refugees may differ regarding the reasons why they had to flee their homes and country in the last five years. Yet, they are united in their plight and in the collective trauma of the violent dislocation they have all experienced. Half of those refugees are estimated to be […]
By Ramzy Baroud (With reporting from Yousef Aljamal in Gaza) 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 […]
By Ramzy Baroud When ISIS militias swept into Mosel, Iraq, in June 2014, Ibrahim Mahmoud plotted his flight, along with his whole family, which included 11 children. Once upon a time, Ibrahim was himself a child escaping another violent campaign carried out by equally angry militias. In his life-time, Ibrahim became a refugee twice, once […]
By Ramzy Baroud Ali Abumghasib knows little about the current intrigues of the Fatah Movement, or, perhaps, he is just not interested. Although he has dedicated most of his life fighting within its ranks, he never saw his membership in Fatah as his defining identity. For him, it was, and will always remain, about Palestine […]
By Ramzy Baroud 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 […]
By Ramzy Baroud 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, […]
By Ramzy Baroud 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 […]
By Ramzy Baroud Taghreed has never been outside Gaza. Her family were exiled to the impoverished Gaza Strip when Palestine was ethnically cleansed, to make room for the state of Israel in 1948. She was born in Gaza City 30 years ago, where she dreamed of a world beyond the confines of sand, water and […]
With two widely differing coalitions and one very complex Civil War, it would appear there is little room for compromise in Syria today. While Russia has called for a united front to fight terrorism in the country, Washington and its allies have very different and often contradictory plans. CrossTalking with Ramzy Baroud, Mehmet Solmaz, and Gareth […]
By Ramzy Baroud 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 […]
By Ramzy Baroud 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 […]
By Ramzy Baroud 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, […]
By Ramzy Baroud 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 […]
By Ramzy Baroud Writing in the New York Times in an article entitled “Myanmar generals set the stage for their own exit,” Thomas Fuller expressed his and the media’s failure to recognise the total fraud that is Myanma democracy. “The official results are still being tabulated,” he wrote, “but all signs so far point to […]
By Ramzy Baroud US Secretary of State John Kerry is often perceived as one of the “good guys”, 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 unremitting efforts culminated partly in the Iran nuclear framework agreement […]
By Ramzy Baroud 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. Using generalised, ambiguous terminology that offered little by […]
In Arabic – Palestinian Author and journalist Dr. Ramzy Baroud addresses the question of the ‘Third Intifada’, its historical origins, political and social context, in addition to the issue of collective identity in modern Palestinian history.
By Ramzy Baroud 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 Palestinians were polled by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (JMCC) in […]