- January 23, 2025
Articles
Can Obama Work His Magic on Arabs?
By RAMZY BAROUD Among many major misconceptions pertaining to Arabs and Muslims is the common belief that they are a weak-willed, irrelevant collective, easily influenced and effortlessly manipulated. This mistaken assumption underscores the very ailment that has afflicted US foreign policy in the Middle East for generations. As media pundits and commentators began their drum-rolling in […]
Netanyahu’s New Quest: The Game is On
By RAMZY BAROUD "We’ve accomplished quite a few things, and I think the most important one is to cement the principle that the path to peace is through negotiations and not through violence." These were the ‘encouraging’ words modestly uttered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a joint press conference with the US president. […]
Gaza Disowned: The Pope, Israel and ‘Reconciliation’
By RAMZY BAROUD "Gaza is not on the Pope’s itinerary, nor will it be. There will be no change in these plans. But I’ll say it very clearly, the Pope is absolutely not going to Gaza." Such were the astounding comments made by the Pope’s spokesman in Israel, Wadie Abunasser, prior to Pope Benedict XVI […]
The Drones Are Coming: New War on Civilians
By RAMZY BAROUD US President Barack Obama took the podium in a White House press conference and stood with an all-embellished confidence that often accompanies new presidents. He was flanked by two leaders whose apparent grandeur barely reflected their embattled situations on the ground: Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari. The […]
War without Context: Fatah, Hamas and Flawed Language
By RAMZY BAROUD From a distance, the struggle between Hamas and Fatah appears commonplace, a typical third world country’s political scuffle over interpretation of democracy that went out of control, or simply a ‘power struggle’ between two political rivals vying for international aid and recognition. In fact, the conflict may appear as if it popped […]
Clinton’s Unpromising Start
By RAMZY BAROUD Incongruous. One can hardly think of a more suited term to describe the new US administration’s approach to peacemaking in the Middle East. Though there is little evidence that previous US administrations had genuinely attempted to play a balanced role in forging a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians, many hoped […]
Middle East ‘Spies’: A New Front for Gaza’s Conflict
By RAMZY BAROUD The reverberations of the Israeli war on Gaza are still felt throughout the Middle East. One could in fact speak of a silent war being waged in the region. Now that Israel’s clear intentions in Gaza – discrediting Hamas and ultimately ousting them from their democratically elected position – resulted in utter […]
Non-Violence in Palestine: Timing and Intentions
By RAMZY BAROUD When one speaks of or advocates non-violence, does he promote such an idea because he believes that historically it has been a more effective means of liberation, or is it purely because he thinks that it is a more self-respecting means of struggle? In recent history, many advocates of non-violence have been […]
Israel Investigated, But Will It Repent?
By RAMZY BAROUD Any variation of the words “Palestine” and “massacre” are sure to yield millions of results on major search engines on the World Wide Web. These results are largely in reference to hundreds of different dates and events in which numerous Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army or settlers. But references to […]
Netanyahu and the Future of the Peace Process
By RAMZY BAROUD It seems that the Palestinian-Israeli peace process is in serious jeopardy. This is the immediate impression one gleans from media reports from Israel. Unlike Israel’s Kadima and Labour party "moderates" prime minister-designate Benyamin Netanyahu is widely seen as an obstacle to negotiations aimed at facilitating a two-state solution. The media stories, however, […]
Not the Last Dispatch: Al-Zaidi Story Just Beginning
By RAMZY BAROUD On December 14, 2008, Iraqi journalist, Muntazer Al-Zaidi threw his shoes at then-US President George W. Bush. On February 20, 2009, Al-Zaidi received a short trial of 90-minutes by the Baghdad Central Criminal Court. On March 12, Al-Zaidi was sentenced to three-years in prison for assaulting a head of state during an […]
Intifada: A Third Chapter
By RAMZY BAROUD Though the dust has settled in Gaza, the rubble from the untold number of demolished buildings, homes and mosques is far from being cleared away. Graves continue to receive victims, young and old alike, from Israel’s most recent offensive. And in the midst of this, with the hopes of some respite and […]
Durban II: Politicizing Racism
By RAMZY BAROUD Many countries are set to participate in the Conference against Racism, scheduled to be held in Geneva, April 20-25. But the highly touted international meet is already marred with disagreement after Israel, the United States and other countries decided not to participate. Although the abstention of four or more countries is immaterial […]
Was Hamas the Work of the Israeli Mossad?
By RAMZY BAROUD While various Western governments are struggling to define a possible relationship with the Palestinian movement Hamas, some progressive and leftist circles are also uneasy regarding their own perception of the Islamic movement. Some have even made the claim that Hamas is, more or less, an Israeli concoction. In fact, the accusation that […]
Engaging Hamas: Will History Repeat Itself?
By RAMZY BAROUD The political outcomes of the Gaza war are yet to be entirely decided with any degree of certainty. However, the obvious political repositioning which was reported as soon as Israel declared its unilateral ceasefire promised that Israel’s deadly bombs would shape a new political reality in the region. In the aftermath, Hamas […]
A New Afghanistan Nightmare
By RAMZY BAROUD When US envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke met with Afghanistan’s ‘democratically’ installed President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on February 14, he may have just learned of the historic significance of the following day. February 15 commemorates the end of the bloody Russian campaign against Afghanistan (August 1978-February 1989). But it is unlikely […]
PLO: Why an Alternative and Why the Panic?
By RAMZY BAROUD When Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal declared before a cheering crowd in Doha, Qatar, on January 28, the need for a new leadership, his words generated panic amongst leaders of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority as well as traditional Palestinian leadership elites stationed in various Arab capitals. The reaction to Mashaal’s call was […]
Change the Lobby
By RAMZY BAROUD One cannot emphasize enough the stranglehold Israel’s lobbying infrastructure has on US foreign policy. The events of recent weeks undoubtedly attest to this. “The special relationship” that has been historically fostered between the US and Israel in fact, is often a relationship of leverage, manipulation and intimidation, and often leads to the […]
For Palestinians, Obama’s Message is Crystal Clear
By RAMZY BAROUD When former President George W. Bush departed for his final trip home, that very moment represented an end of a long and unbearable nightmare, one that Bush epitomized until his last day in office. Americans may decry what we can finally dub as the ‘Bush legacy’, for it brought economic ruin, but […]
Breaking Gaza’s Will: Israel’s Enduring Fantasy
By RAMZY BAROUD My three-year-old son Sammy walked into my room uninvited as I sorted through another batch of fresh photos from Gaza. I was looking for a specific image, one that would humanise Palestinians as living, breathing human beings, neither masked nor mutilated. But to no avail. All the photos I received spoke of […]
Gaza: A New Middle East Indeed
By RAMZY BAROUD As Israel unleashed its military fury against Lebanon for several weeks in July-August 2006, it had one major objective: to permanently ‘extract’ Hezbollah from the South as a fighting force, and to undermine it as a rising political movement, capable of disrupting, if not overshadowing the ‘friendly’ and ‘moderate’ political regime in […]
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 […]
