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4 days ago | 
nationofchange.org | Juan Cole |Juan Cole
The Anadolu Agency reports that the humanitarian aid ship, the “Madeleine,” set out for Gaza on Sunday from Catania in Sicily, in a bid to break the food and aid blockade imposed on the Strip by Israel. A crowd of supporters gathered at the port with Palestinian flags to encourage the 12-person crew. The mission is sponsored by the Freedom Flotilla organization.
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1 month ago | 
nationofchange.org | Juan Cole |Juan Cole
Middle East Eye reports that Saudi Arabia pressured the Trump administration to cease bombing Yemen in advance of his planned trip to the Kingdom next week because such raids would be an embarrassment for him and his host. Trump said Tuesday that he was convinced that the Houthis were sincere in their new pledge to cease targeting shipping in the Red Sea.
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Mar 6, 2025 | 
countercurrents.org | Juan Cole |Phil Pasquini |Lawrence Wittner |Kim Petersen
The opening weeks of the second Trump administration have produced daily headlines that read — no, this is not hyperbole! — like science fiction. The spectacle of a South African tech billionaire and his cronies staging a twenty-first-century cybercoup with the acquiescence of an aging lunatic of a president beggars belief.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
nationofchange.org | Juan Cole
Gaza’s Ministry of Health today announced that 35-day-old Yousef Kalloub froze to death because of the lack of sufficient winter clothes and suitable living conditions in the enclave as a result of Israel’s genocidal war. Yousef became the eight baby to freeze to death in Gaza. In a statement yesterday, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) warned that “cold weather and lack of shelter are causing the death of newborns in Gaza, while 7,700 newborns lack life-saving care.
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Dec 20, 2024 | 
nationofchange.org | Juan Cole
Obeida Arnaout, the spokesman for the Sunni fundamentalist Levant Liberation Council (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or HTS) gave an interview on Wednesday with the Lebanese Al-Jadid channel that provoked a firestorm of protest among Syrian women and, well, non-fundamentalists.
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Dec 7, 2024 | 
znetwork.org | Juan Cole
The strategic situation in Syria is dire for the Baathist government of Bashar al-Assad. Typically in military history, if an invader takes the capital of the other country, it secures its victory. Damascus is the prize. Damascus has an Achilles heel. It is landlocked, deep in the south of the country, and far from the port of Latakia that supplies it. The other nearby port, Beirut in Lebanon, is a shadow of its former self, and the Lebanese government has closed the borders with Syria.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
nationofchange.org | Juan Cole
Amnesty International has just put out a detailed report based on its own fieldwork and masses of other evidence finding that Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The organization joins several other international bodies in coming to that conclusion, and it is one that I endorsed in my recent book, Gaza Yet Stands.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
nationofchange.org | Juan Cole
Muhannad Hadi, the special UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, addressed the ambassadors of the UN Security Council states on Monday, Nov. 25, on the “ongoing devastation in Gaza,” which, he said, “persists relentlessly, with no resolution in sight” as winter approaches with its drenching rains and chilly temperatures, endangering lives.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
znetwork.org | Juan Cole
Muhannad Hadi, the special UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, addressed the ambassadors of the UN Security Council states on Monday, Nov. 25, on the “ongoing devastation in Gaza,” which, he said, “persists relentlessly, with no resolution in sight” as winter approaches with its drenching rains and chilly temperatures, endangering lives.
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Nov 22, 2024 | 
smirkingchimp.com | Juan Cole
— from TomDispatch President Joe Biden has now joined the ranks of Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush as a president whose Middle East policy crashed and burned spectacularly. Unlike Carter, who was stymied by the Iranian hostage crisis, or Bush, who faced a popular Iraqi resistance movement, Biden’s woes weren’t inflicted by an enemy.
