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Creating new perspectives since 2009

 

Dr Ramzy Baroud

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’ (Clarity Press). Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

 

Items by Dr Ramzy Baroud

  • The People vs. COP26: Our Fate is in Our Hands

    Of all the speeches and political grandstanding at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26), the words of Mexican President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, were the most profound and least hypocritical. Lopez Obrador raged against the “technocrats and neoliberals”—world leaders who hold the future of humanity in...

  • Bill Gates should know better: Israel ravages the environment in Palestine

    Those who are not familiar with how Israel, particularly with its military occupation of Palestine, is actively and irreversibly damaging the environment might conclude erroneously that Tel Aviv is at the forefront of the global fight against climate change. The reality is the exact opposite. In his speech at the...

  • Words without action expose the West’s role in Israel’s illegal settlement expansion

    The international uproar in response to Israel’s approval of a massive expansion of its illegal settlement enterprise in the occupied Palestinian West Bank may give the impression that such a reaction could, in theory, force Israel to abandon its plans. It won’t because the “concerns”, “regrets” and “disappointment” —...

  • The West’s China Complex: Beijing as the enemy and the saviour

    “Could China’s economy collapse?” was the title of a 15 October article published by QUARTZ magazine. The article makes an ominous case of a Chinese economic crash and its impact on China’s and global economies. This is one of numerous reports appearing in recent weeks in Western mainstream media, all...

  • Is Biden any different from Trump on Palestine?

    When Joe Biden was declared the winner in the US presidential election last November, expectations in Ramallah were high. A Biden administration, compared with the brazenly pro-Israel Donald Trump administration, would surely be much fairer to Palestinians. That was the conventional wisdom at the time. Unsurprisingly, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud...

  • Political Islam and Democracy Crisis in North Africa

    When the news circulated that Morocco’s leading political group, the Development and Justice Party (PJD), had been trounced in the latest elections held in September, official media mouthpieces in Egypt celebrated the news as if the PJD’s defeat was, in itself, a blow to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement....

  • The cultural genocide in Palestine: On Sally Rooney’s decision to boycott Israel

    The pro-Israel crowd on social media was quick to pounce on award-winning Irish novelist, Sally Rooney, as soon as she declared that she had “chosen not to sell … translation rights of her best-selling novel, ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’ to an Israeli-based publishing house”. Expectedly, the accusations centered on...

  • Empty gestures or substantive change? On the Nobel Prize in Literature and its discontents

    The fact that Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature is welcome news, especially as the Swedish Academy is historically known for lacking in diversity, as if intellectual creativity is largely confined to Western intellectual circles. It is premature to suggest that the Academy has finally decided to...

  • Heroes or parasites: Europe’s self-serving politics on refugees

    Language is politics and politics is power. This is why the misuse of language is particularly disturbing, especially when the innocent and vulnerable pay the price. The wars in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern, Asian and African countries in recent years have resulted in one of the greatest...

  • Racial justice vs. the Israel Lobby: when being pro-Palestine becomes the new normal

    There is an unmistakable shift in American politics regarding Palestine and Israel, one that is inspired by the way in which many Americans, especially young people, view the Palestinian struggle and the Israeli occupation. While this shift is yet to translate into reducing Israel’s stranglehold over the US Congress...

  • Trudeau's parliamentary 'victory' may cost him the next elections

    Canada’s unpopular general election of 20 September is increasingly recognised as a mistake by the country’s leading political analysts. However, this mistake could potentially prove to be the very undoing of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party in future elections. Sixty-nine per cent of Canadians did not think that holding an election...

  • The untold story of why the Palestinians are divided

    The political division in Palestinian society is deep-rooted, and should not be reduced to convenient claims about the “Hamas-Fatah split”, elections, the Oslo accords, and subsequent disagreements. The division is linked to events that preceded all of these, and not even the death or incapacitation of the octogenarian Mahmoud...

  • Legitimate resistance: should Hamas and Hezbollah learn from the Taliban?

    An urgent task is awaiting us: given the progression of events, we must liberate ourselves quickly from the limits and confines placed on the Afghanistan discourse, which have been imposed by US-centred Western propaganda for over 20 years and counting. For a start, we must not allow the future...

  • ​​Who represents Afghanistan: Genuine activists vs ‘native informants’ 

    Scenes of thousands of Afghans flooding the Kabul international airport to flee the country as Taliban fighters were quickly consolidating their control over the capital, raised many questions, leading amongst them: who are these people and why are they running away? In the US and other Western media, answers were...

  • The unfinished war of Zakaria Zubeidi

    Zakaria Zubeidi is one of the six Palestinian prisoners who, on 6 September, tunnelled their way out of Gilboa, a notorious, high-security Israeli prison. He was recaptured a few days later. The large bruises on his face told a harrowing story of a daring escape and a violent arrest....

  • From the ‘Iron Wall’ to the ‘Villa in the Jungle’, Palestinians demolish Israel’s security myths

    Twenty-five years before Israel was established on the ruins of historic Palestine, a Russian Jewish Zionist leader, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, argued that a Jewish state in Palestine could only survive if it exists “behind an iron wall” of defence. Jabotinsky was speaking figuratively, but Zionist leaders after him who embraced...

  • Post-Afghanistan defeat, can the EU win its own ‘independence’ from the US?

    Suddenly, the idea put forward by French President Emmanuel Macron late last year does not seem so far-fetched or untenable after all. Following the hurried US-NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, European countries are now forced to think the once unthinkable: their own gradual dismantling of US dominance. “We, some countries more...

  • How many more Palestinians must die for the sake of Israel’s ‘security’?

    A major Israeli army campaign is taking social media by storm. The unstated aim of the “#Untie_Our_Hands” initiative is the desire to kill, with no accountability, more Palestinian protesters at the nominal border with the Gaza Strip. The campaign was motivated by the killing of an Israeli sniper, Barel...

  • Forget propaganda and failed narratives; a new understanding of Afghanistan is a must

    For twenty years, two dominant narratives have shaped our view of the illegal US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Neither would readily accept the use of such terms as “illegal”, “invasion” and “occupation”. The framing of the US “military intervention” in Afghanistan, which started on 7 October 2001, as the...

  • Stadio Olimpico: Can sports heal the world?

    Amid chaotic politics and anti-immigrant and refugee sentiments, Stadio Olimpico in Rome seemed like an oasis of social and cultural harmony. AS Roma and Raja Casablanca fans gathered in their thousands on a hot Saturday evening to cheer for their teams in a friendly match, the first at the...

  • Jenin; and Israel’s fear of an armed Palestinian rebellion

    The killing of four young Palestinians by Israeli occupation soldiers in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank on 16 August was a consequential event, the repercussions of which are sure to be felt in the weeks and months ahead. The four Palestinians — Saleh Mohammed Ammar,...

  • Colonialism and solidarity define the decisive Israel-Palestine battle in Africa

    The decision by the African Union Commission last month to grant Israel observer status membership in the AU was the culmination of years of relentless Israeli efforts aimed at co-opting Africa’s largest political institution. Why is Israel so keen to penetrate Africa? What made African countries finally succumb to...

  • The quiet rebellion of US Jews turning against Israel is good for Palestinians

    A unique but critical conversation on Israel and Palestine is taking place outside the traditional discourse of Israeli colonialism and the Palestinian quest for liberation. It is an awkward and difficult — but overdue — discussion concerning American Jews and their relationship with Israel as well as their commitment...

  • Greed and consumption are why the world is burning

    Rome is scorching hot. This beautiful city is becoming unbearable for other reasons, too. Although every corner of the beaming metropolis is a monument to historical grandeur, from the Colosseum in Rione Monti to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in San Giovanni, it is now struggling under the...