- October 26, 2026
AUTHOR DETAILS
Is Israel Winning the ‘Media War’ over Gaza?
By RAMZY BAROUD "We are all Hamas," screamed a scrawny Mauritanian, repeatedly, as he determinedly drew his face closer to a TV camera. Behind him, thousands more tunefully chanted similar words, chants that were heard in different Arabic dialects, in fact in many different languages all across the globe. Yet, Israel, somehow is claiming victory […]
Gaza and the World: Will Things Ever Change?
By RAMZY BAROUD In times of crisis, most Arabs tune in to Aljazeera television. Sometimes it’s comforting for the truth to be stated the way it is, with all of its gory and unsettling details, without blemishes and without censorship. When Israel carried out massive air strikes against Gaza on Saturday, December 27, terrorizing an […]
Unscripted: Green Zone Theater and the Shoe Drama
By RAMZY BAROUD The plot, so unexpectedly, thickened in Iraq on a Sunday like no other. The two main actors – US President George W. Bush, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki – took to the stage to perform another well-rehearsed press conference. The scripts were ever so predictable: Bush to tout the ‘progress’ achieved […]
Gaza: The Untold Story
By RAMZY BAROUD It’s incomprehensible that a region such as the Gaza Strip, so rich with history, so saturated with defiance, can be reduced to a few blurbs, sound bites and reductionist assumptions, convenient but deceptive, vacant of any relevant meaning, or even true analytical value. The fact is that there is more to the […]
Cluster Bomb Treaty and the World’s Unfinished Business
By RAMZY BAROUD The United States, Russia and China are sending a terrible message to the rest of the world by refusing to take part in the historic signing of a treaty that bans the production and use of cluster bombs. In a world that is plagued by war, military occupation and terrorism, the involvement […]
Iraq’s ‘Remarkable’ Security Charade
By RAMZY BAROUD World media rashly celebrated the ‘historic’ security pact that allows for US troops to stay in Iraq for three more years right after the Iraqi parliament ratified the agreement on Thursday, November 27. The approval came one week after the Iraqi cabinet did the same. Thousands of headlines invaded media outlets, largely […]
Gaza: Salvation in a News Broadcast
By RAMZY BAROUD When Gaza’s electricity is in working order, most Palestinians in the impoverished and overcrowded Strip huddle around their television screens. It’s neither "American Idol" nor "Dancing with the Stars" that brings them together. It’s the news. Gazans’ relationship to news media is both complex and unique. Like most Palestinians everywhere, they intently […]
The Rights of Women as Casualties of War
By RAMZY BAROUD Qurban-Bibi and Nahil Abu-Rada are two women, one Afghan and the other Palestinian, who made news with similar tragedies. But their losses also helped further delineate the plight of millions of women in war zones and poor countries. The United Nations news service reported on the troubles of Qurban-Bibi, a pregnant woman […]
Unsettling Signs: Buzzwords, Politics and US Elections
By RAMZY BAROUD There are a few buzzwords that every American politician, aiming for high office must utilize, even if disingenuously, to have a reasonable chance at getting elected. President-elect, Barak Obama’s constant use of terms like ‘hope’ and ‘change’ contributed greatly to the overwhelming support he has experienced by the American public. Many, admiringly […]
Bush’s Last Bullet: Why the US Attacked Syria
By RAMZY BAROUD The sovereignty of an independent, stable country that has carried out many constructive moves in recent months and weeks, which could have surely contributed to the stabilization of the Middle East, has been violated, its borders breached and its civilians killed. But when the country targeted is Syria, an Arab country, and […]
Playgrounds for Palestine: One Marathon at a Time
By RAMZY BAROUD My right knee is wrapped. My left ankle is iced. I lost the nail on my right big toe, and have about 20 blisters and a similar number of bruises on both of my feet. This doesn’t even begin to convey half of the story of the punishment that my body has […]
A Third Palestinian Intifada in the Making
By RAMZY BAROUD At a recent conference I was repeatedly asked about the prospects for a third Palestinian uprising, or Intifada. The question, although seemingly uncomplicated, is both loaded and important, and cannot be answered in a mere two minutes or less. A ‘third Intifada’ would imply that the second has already ended. But has […]
World Food Day: Global Crises’ Double Standards
By RAMZY BAROUD The 25th annual World Food Day, marked on 16 October, was an occasion whose arrival and passing received little media attention or governmental fanfare. Evidently, much of the world media and governments are consumed with an economic crisis of epic proportions, which is perceived in the US as the worst such upheaval […]
The Palin- Biden Debate: High Time to Move Beyond Clichés
By RAMZY BAROUD One should rightly assume that the weight of the US financial crisis, the full impact of which is just beginning to unravel, and the widening military debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, would compel new thinking amongst leading US politicians. And then again, maybe not. Aside from tactical and rhetorical differences, presidential candidates […]
Europe and the Middle East: Will EU Be a More Just Mediator?
By RAMZY BAROUD Europe has showed greater willingness in recent months to play a larger part in the Middle East’s most protracted conflict, that of Israel and Palestine. But willingness doesn’t necessarily indicate readiness. For the European Union (EU) to be truly ready to take on a conflict of such magnitude, it must fully and […]
Life after Bush: Forecasting Peace in Palestine
By RAMZY BAROUD President Bush sounded much less uncertain of his peace "vision" when he received Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas in Washington on Sept. 25. Certainly much has changed since the Nov. 2007 conference in Annapolis, Maryland, where Bush and his secretary of state Condoleezza Rice exhorted that a Palestinian state can only be created […]
Marathon for Children: Running for the Right to Play
By RAMZY BAROUD I was ecstatic as I read an email sent by a manager at a Canadian toy company. The company donates a large number of toys each year to inner city kids throughout North America, using various NGOs. A few years ago, they decided to ship several thousand toys to Palestinian children. They […]
Palestinian Economy: From Bad to Wretched
By RAMZY BAROUD The numbers are grim, whether in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian economy is in one of its most wretched states, and the disaster is mostly, if not entirely manmade, thus reversible. The World Bank made no secret of the fact that Israeli restrictions are largely to blame, as […]
Palestinian Unity: Goal or Mantra?
By RAMZY BAROUD Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa used exceptionally tough language during a Cairo news conference 9 September, when he lashed out at Palestinian factionalism, saying that the League is going as far as studying the possibility of imposing sanctions on quarrelling Palestinians. "I am extremely angry with the Palestinian organisations… We are studying […]
The Syria-Israel Peace Gambit
By RAMZY BAROUD Few would argue that the indirect Israel-Syria talks through Turkish mediation, which were first announced 21 May, were a sign of political maturity and readiness for peace. In fact, while the discussions seemed concerned with the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Israel’s desire for security at its northern borders, the true objective […]
