Middle East

“Is it because we missed one?”

Hamas doesn’t want to step on Hezbollah’s feet.

So far, editors have chosen either to ignore the anti-Hamas protests, or to relegate them to brief mentions.

“We will never be invited to address the UN wearing a sidearm, as Arafat was.”

Dramatic images of locals clinging to departing American aircraft, only to fall to their inevitable deaths, will not form a part of the story.

“The Nazis also poisoned their victims in the gas chambers, but they didn’t kill nearly as many.”

The 5,783rd consecutive year of documented human history that not a single person has been killed at a Palestinian Pride event.

An earlier phenomenon saw Iranians inquiring about finding passage out of the country in shipments to Russia of attack drones.

“Will the reporters believe what they see in the dry streets, or their need to amplify our cause?”

One of the central criticisms of European Union bureaucracy is its built-in inefficiencies.

Israel aims to broadcast its interest in stability and humiliate the two main Palestinian factions.

“Those Zionists still do not know what hit them.”

Sucking the goodness out of the land for the sake of the foreign home country where they really belong, which presumably means Iraq? Yemen?

“The defensiveness born of the whole world knowing you have a small penis.”

Hope that his own descendants will carry on the family and community tradition of nurturing the pointless, destructive fantasy of reversing the shameful defeat of Arab Liberation Army forces in 1948. Beirut, April 4 – A third-generation resident of the Ein-al-Hilweh Camp in southern Lebanon wants his children, grandchildren, and, if at all possible, his …

With special venom reserved for Jews reasserting their claim to the land. Ramallah, March 23 – Staff at an institution dedicated to displaying indigenous artifacts of the Arab people of this part of the Levant struggled again today to articulate the difference in tone the exhibits take toward two different periods in which a colonizing …

Despite the apparent contradiction in the sentiments, the Palestinian cause has attracted no small amount of support.

The native population remained anchored to the land through thick and thin and defining themselves as the children of it so thoroughly that the term “Palestine” never passed their lips. Jerusalem, February 23 – Since time immemorial, the indigenous people of Palestine have lived in their native land, bound on the west by the Mediterranean …

“Otherwise, we would expect to see media reports mention the longstanding antisemitism in the region as a factor in the conflict, but they invariably do not.” Amman, February 26 – Antipathy across the region for Jews going back at least as far as the sixth century CE can be explained as caused by Zionism in …

“I daresay that’s a major passion of nearly every international rights group: singling out Israel for vitriol at the drop of a hat.” New York, February 15 – NGOs working to highlight abuses and hold repressive regimes to account voiced their frustration today with the government of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose murderous crackdown on months-long protests …

“It would be a powerful statement of Islamic solidarity for the victims of this disaster to show they still think of Palestine even in their lowest moments.” Tehran, February 6 – Leaders of the Islamic Republic reacted to this morning’s deadly tremor along the Syrian-Turkish border by admonishing the thousands of injured, homeless, and displaced victims …

Obama sent the first documents in 2015 with pallets of cash. Washington, January 26 – A former president whose vice president, successor, and successor’s vice president had secret materials in their private possession after leaving the White House voiced his relief today that he escaped the same problematic scrutiny, having already removed such materials long ago for …

“…the Palestinian issue, which is the main source of Arab antisemitism going back to the seventh century.” Washington, January 17 – Critics of the Trump administration’s most enduring international achievement, a peace agreement between Israel and several once-hostile Arab states on the Persian Gulf, continued to challenge it this week with the observation that in …

The tension between ancient and modern exists throughout the developing world. Doha, January 5 – The recent World Cup contests and festivities in Qatar highlighted a salient long-term issue for the dictatorships and monarchies in the region, observers note, where the tension between old and new features at the fore of social, financial, political, and …

Iran would forge the Middle East into an independent region free of interference from those outsiders, controlled from Tehran instead of Washington, New York, London, or Tel Aviv. Tehran, December 28 – Leaders of the Islamic Republic formalized an initiative this week in the mold of a Japanese plan before and during the Second World …

Pro-Palestine advocates cited their forebears’ generosity and contrasted it with what they called Zionist xenophobia and racism. Gaza City, December 19 – Descendants of the people who attacked British and Jewish interests in Palestine before and during the Second World War in an effort to bar Jewish immigration to the territory even as the Third …

“Respect our culture! Tolerant Westerners, my butthole.” Doha, December 8 – Fans and officials from around the region reacted to the surprise over their expressions of animus toward Jews at the World Cup by bashing Westerners for the “racist” characterization of that hatred as wrong, and accused Westerners of hating Muslims by harboring such opinions. …

The time is ripe for a pogrom or something, given the way things are going. Tehran, November 29 – Months’ worth of popular uprising against the repressive Islamist regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has one religious and ethnic minority hopeful for change along with many of their compatriots, tinged with resignation toward the inevitability that …

The groups presented their report at a press conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, currently serving the 95th year of his four-year term. Paris, November 17 – Human Rights groups again leveled the charge today against the Jewish State that the latter engages in the quasi-cannibalistic, quasi-murderous practice of manufacturing the likeness of Arab children’s …

Kristallnacht-like events in the Arab world occurred at various scales over the course of the centuries, most infamously the 1941 Farhud. Damascus, November 9 – The 84th anniversary of a pogrom across the Third Reich that destroyed synagogues, destroyed Jewish enterprises, killed dozens, and saw the deportation to concentration camps of hundreds of Jews passed in the …

The regime that Tadmor Prison regular accuses Israel of torturing Palestinians, with scant evidence, while it also tortures and kills Palestinians in its own facilities all over Syria. Damascus, October 31 – A regime still officially at war with the Jewish State since the latter’s establishment in 1948 has shown a fondness for analogies that …

A tiny handful of mosquito species just happen to like human blood, when literally hundreds of millions of other animals are out there, and in much greater numbers? Sus. Cairo, October 20 – Egyptian scientists claimed today to have blown the lid off a longtime operation through which Zionists have conducted a clandestine project to gather, process, and exploit …

“Palestinians could not perform the roof-throwing of a gay man properly, and had no choice but to kidnap the Palestinian man from inside Israel, drag him back to Palestinian-controlled territory, and behead him.” Ramallah, October 9 – Human rights groups and Palestinian officials lashed out today at a longstanding Israeli policy of destroying the houses of …

The regime’s killing of a woman who refused to wear the face- and head-covering that Iran’s modesty laws mandate sparked the unrest. Tehran, September 25 – Officials in the Islamic Republic apologized today to Russian President Vladimir Putin, explaining that they must renege on an agreement to supply the Russian military with explosive unmanned aerial vehicles, now …

The exception to Syria’s job-related woes in the booming, so to speak, field of runway repair. Damascus, September 15 – Employment prospects under the rule of Basher Assad have seen better days since a civil war broke out in the country ten years ago, with one outlying profession in high demand: people skilled at rapidly …

“At least Hezbollah will be able to kill Israelis as indiscriminately as they kill Lebanese. Some important things will come out of it.” Tehran, September 6 – Citizens of the Islamic Republic who have lived under political, religious, and cultural repression for decades, and whose leadership has displayed disastrous incompetence on everything from employment to …

“It just isn’t fair.” Amman, August 25 – A controversial, discriminatory proposal by a far-right Israeli lawmaker piqued interest in the wider region this week, and caused many to wonder why only disloyal Arabs living under Israeli rule would get deported to an area with one of the highest standards of living in the world, …

The incident marks the quickest inducement of a yawn on the subject of Palestine since the Abraham Accords. Riyadh, August 17 – A diplomatic official from one of several Persian Gulf countries to establish formal ties with Israel began to express lack of interest in the subject of Palestinian violence while you had only gotten halfway …

It was time to bring back the troops tasked with that mission. Washington, August 8 – A White House representative disclosed Monday a heretofore undiscussed factor behind the hasty American departure from Taliban-held Afghanistan last year, one that the administration believes received insufficient attention at the time of the operation and that might help the …

The process ended up costing him over eighty thousand dollars of other people’s money. Ramallah, July 28 – A senior official in President Mahmoud Abbas’s government fell prey to a common internet ruse to bilk unsuspecting users of their money today, in this case money that the official had misappropriated from United Nations allocations intended …

Experts estimate the total amount will exceed eight billion dollars, which accounts for the bulk of the Palestinian Authority’s annual budget, itself largely underwritten by foreign donors. Ramallah, July 19 – The contents of a 1957 interview with the chief architect of Nazi Germany’s genocide against Jews emerged two weeks ago, to the effect that …

“It’s definitely been a challenge.” Ramallah, July 7 – The sea change underway in the Middle East involving the acceptance and integration of Israel into a region once uniformly hostile to the Jewish State continues among numerous avenues, such as the reworking of educational materials in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia no longer to include antipathy for …

The staff had to travel to the Tel Aviv Pride Parade several weeks ago to participate in the more familiar, Western methods of celebrating. Ramallah, June 29 – The Biden administration’s senior representative to the Palestinian Authority spent this morning in the company of his official hosts observing the final workday of the thirty-day span …

The vast majority of such content winds up with that caption or comment anyway, and that users now can save themselves the trouble of doing it themselves. San Francisco, June 20 – One of the world’s leading social media platforms has begun to roll out new efficiency features, including the time- and labor-saving measure of …

Experts differ on when, if ever, the breach will gain the proprietors’ attention. Isfahan, Islamic Republic of Iran, June 7 – Online activists with skill in compromising the security of internet-connected remote computers celebrated a milestone today in the ongoing campaign to undo the Zionist project, now that they have succeeded in taking down the interface …

Obeisance to the sacred cow of Palestine First sparked resentment-tinged disdain for Palestinians whose cause always overshadowed the truly-important issues affecting the Middle East and the Arab world. Ramallah, May 25 – Shifting geopolitical considerations have wrought noticeable change in the priorities that Middle East nations and governments give to the issues they must address, …

“It’s just not fair that they get one and we don’t get all three.” Jerusalem, May 16 – A loose coalition of diverse ideological and political groups with collective access to a pair of sites central to the founding of their unifying ideology continues to express its bitterness over failing to maintain possession of a …

“I already have bids in for various ‘I love Israel’ tourist swag, and it looks like at least four or five big orders might be coming my way in the net month alone.” Gaza City, May 5 – The local Palestinian producer of white banners with two parallel, horizontal blue stripes on either side of …

The Haganah operation he helped support seemed “more like suicide,” Solo had told one of his erstwhile comrades. Tel Aviv, May 4 – A rogue pilot with a checkered history of questionably-legal activities has decided to throw his lot in with the forces defending the nascent Jewish State from numerically-superior enemies surrounding them, local sources reported today, …

Part of a phenomenon in which Al Jazeera tries to paint the most tolerant, free, and secure society in history, as the most oppressive, racist, corrupt, culture the world has ever seen even as Qatar pursues policies that would make an eighteenth-century conservative Westerner look woke. Doha, April 25 – Regime officials and prominent figures in a …

Ramadan TV series, often fertile ground for antisemitic programs, have cut back on Jews as satanic monsters, depicting them more often now as satanic humans. Riyadh, April 13 – Shifting geopolitical circumstances have prompted unmistakable changes in the Levant and the Persian Gulf region: the rising threat from Iran’s malign hegemonic ambitions has forced former …

“We Arabs wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow, let alone a sword, if Zionism weren’t so specifically Jewish.” Cairo, April 4 – Governments in the region and beyond are accusing the Jewish State of discriminatory behavior in offering escape and safety to Jews fleeing warfare in Eastern Europe, and not welcoming anyone in regardless of ethnicity, in …

“I think we have to rethink our approach, because if we’re really about helping Palestinians, we have to- hey, where is everybody going?” New York, March 24 – An activist campaigning for economic, cultural, diplomatic, and other measures against a Levantine country for its structurally-discriminatory policies against a significant minority within its borders, a minority …

Only by letting suffering dominate the physical and psychological landscape can the sacred mission approach fulfillment. Khan Yunis, March 15 – Hamas authorities in this autonomous coastal territory have begun harassing a local resident, witnesses report, because he fails to showcase the requisite level of misery the Islamist movement demands as part of its strategy …

They plan to spend the next several years gallivanting various places, because their services appear unneeded for at least that long. London, March 4 – Researchers from a prominent international human rights organization informed journalists today that now that their work determining the existence of a race-based system of discrimination in the Jewish State has concluded …

They refuse to take proper COVID mitigation measures while shoving broken bottles up the anuses of political detainees, which has terrible implications for public health. New York, February 23 – Progressive activists in Europe and the US voiced their shock and revulsion today upon learning that staff at the Islamic Republic’s various incarceration facilities have left …

“We glimpsed at least one note from a ‘Dr. Jill’ allowing the president to participate in a strategy session.” Vienna, February 14 – Negotiators on behalf of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed anxiety today in a message to Teheran that the US president’s mental decline might impair or undermine negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s pursuit of …

Activists acknowledged such treatment only accelerated the emigration of Jews. Cairo, February 3 – Opponents of Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland voiced frustration today that their ongoing efforts to demonstrate that Jews do not need that sovereignty, by means of harassing, attacking, and inciting against those Jews everywhere, has borne little practical fruit, …

“I’m sure there have been slurs by Israelis that preceded rockets from Gaza, and other terrorist attacks.” London, January 24 – The UK’s leading public journalism institution suggested today that the Nazi-inspired and Nazi-fomented riot in Iraq’s capital during World War II that killed hundreds of Jews and injured hundreds more occurred after the mob …

“How many Palestinians did IDF troops kill for throwing firebombs when maybe those Palestinians were just trying to initiate a friendly game of catch?” Kiryat Sh’monah, January 13 – NGOs decried Israel’s downing of an unmanned aircraft today that penetrated the country’s northern border, claiming that the IDF should have ascertained the device’s intentions before opening fire, …