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Palestinian Prime Minister to Israeli Audience: You Make Concessions, We Don't
February 4, 2010
Imagine this. You're prime minister of a regime that isn't yet a state. You are praised in the Western media as a great moderate man of peace. You represent a people who the U.S. president says is in an intolerable situation...
Keywords: Israel, Israel-Palestinian Issues, Media Coverage of the Middle East, Palestinians
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Suckered by Hamas and Hizballah: How the Media Interprets Radical Documents as Proof of Moderation
February 2, 2010
After writing my article on the new Fatah Charter (click on the link for a more detailed report and analysis of the charter), I saw that JTA has published a story positively glowing about Fatah's "moderation," under the title "New Fatah charter omits language on Israel's demise."...
Keywords: Media Coverage of the Middle East, Palestinians, Radical Movements
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Answering Readers' Questions and Updates: Fatah and Turkey
February 1, 2010
Question: You describe Fatah hardliners as seeking a Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Why don't they want to take over Jordan also? And why is a similar change of mind impossible about a permanent peace with Israel?...
Keywords: Jordan, Palestinians, Turkey
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Muslim Brotherhood Cleric versus Palestinian "President": A Case Study of Islamism versus Nationalism
January 21, 2010
Forget about the moderate mythology fed the Western public by its media. Forget the comforting nonsense about reasonable masses held back from being humanitarian democrats only by manipulative dictatorships...
Keywords: Middle East Politics, Palestinians, Radical Movements
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Muslim Brotherhood's New Leader Shows There's No Hope of Moderation
January 20, 2010
Muhammad Badie, a 66-year-old professor of veterinary medicine is the new head of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, barring any serious ill health he will probably run the Islamist group for the next ten to twenty years, foreclosing the possibility of...
Keywords: Egypt, Radical Movements
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Why Can't Western Policymakers Believe There are Actual Revolutionaries in the World?
January 13, 2010
A reader sent me an article asking me if it made me feel like laughing or crying. Neither. I just gasped in amazement. Studying the Middle East isn't really a matter of being a Democrat or Republican; liberal or conservative...
Keywords: Iran, Lebanon, Radical Movements, Syria, Understanding the Middle East
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It's Not al-Qaida the Obama Administration Doesn't Understand, It's Everything Else
January 11, 2010
A friend sent me an article written, in his usually witty style, by Mark Steyn in the conservative magazine, National Review, entitled "But We're Still Gonna Kill You." Steyn writes: "Barack Obama has spent the last year doing bigtime Islamoschmoozing...
Keywords: Radical Movements, U.S. Policy on the Middle East
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"Outsmarting" the Terrorists by Being Incredibly Stupid?
January 10, 2010
Here is my usual disclaimer: I would love to be able to stop criticizing the Obama Administration but it keeps saying and doing things that shock and surprise me or--if you want to put it this way--live up to my worst expectations.
Keywords: Radical Movements, U.S. Policy on the Middle East, Understanding the Middle East
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Boring Press Conference? No, Gold Mine for Understanding U.S. Middle East Policy
January 7, 2010
What could be more boring, you might ask, then a press conference following the meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr al-Thani? Well, a little document like this is a gold mine...
Keywords: Qatar, U.S. Policy on the Middle East
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The Suicidal Rules of Arab Political Debate: How Relatively Moderate Regimes are Robbed of Self-Defense
January 6, 2010
It is always interesting to analyze those little stories that show so clearly the rules of Arab politics and debate, themes which never quite find their way into the Western media, which only see these issues in a Western political and intellectual framework. Yet if you want...
Keywords: Egypt, Media Coverage of the Middle East, Palestinians, Radical Movements, Understanding the Middle East