Category: The Middle East

A mere technocrat?

Obama’s Passover liberation theology By Anna Hartnell, Sunday 24 April 2011 14.00 BST … Issued on Friday 15 April, ahead of this week’s Passover celebrations, Obama’s quietly radical Passover message embraced the explosive mix of religion, Middle East politics and African American history that often fired, but also threatened to derail, his presidential bid. Obama’s …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2011/04/24/a-mere-technocrat/

If it bleeds it leads

Ghosts will haunt Libya for decades By Patrick Cogburn, Sunday, 24 April 2011 … In Baghdad at the end of last year, Waled Hamid brought a peculiar court case against a man who had sold him a house. Mr Hamid said the vendor failed to tell him that the house was haunted and was in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2011/04/23/if-it-bleeds-it-leads/

Megalomessianic meddling

300 Goats and Sheep, 20 Slaughterers, One Willful Rabbi By Nathan Jeffay, April 13, 2011 (issue of April 22, 2011) Jerusalem — Making Seder for the extended family seems like child’s play compared with Rabbi Yehudah Glick’s Passover preparations. The New York-born Glick is getting ready to lead world Jewry in a Paschal sacrifice April …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2011/04/23/messianic-meddling/

The Book of Khalid

In the Arab revolutions, echoes of a 100-year-old book By Todd Fine, Friday, April 15, 5:15 PM … A century before young men and women took to the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and other parts of the Arab world, demanding a new way of life and a new kind of politics, there was young …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2011/04/17/the-book-of-khalid/

Uprising in a bottle

The Power of Mockery By Nicholas D. Kristof, April 16, 2011 … The juiciest story behind the Middle East uprisings doesn’t concern Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s “voluptuous” Ukrainian nurse or C.I.A. bags of cash. Rather, it’s the tale of how a nonviolent revolutionary strategy crafted by Serbian students and an octogenarian American scholar came to challenge …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2011/04/17/uprising-in-a-bottle/

Paradigm shift in Palestine-Israel situation?

  Note: John Whitbeck is a Harvard-educated American lawyer, now resident in Paris, whose international practice has focused primarily on the Middle East. – Ray Close Finally, some hope for a game-changing turn of events in the Palestine-Israel situation TO: Distinguished Recipients FM: John Whitbeck … Today’s ARAB NEWS editorial, transmitted below, notes, with justified optimism, the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2011/04/17/paradigm-shift-in-palestine-israel-situation/

Patronizing myths die hard

Arabs Give Neocons a Reality Check By James Zogby, 04/16/11 09:44 AM ET … While much of what has come to be known as “the Arab Spring” remains a work in progress, there can be no doubt that a new dynamic has been unleashed across the region — one that will have a profound impact …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2011/04/16/patronizing-myths-die-hard/