Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Mustafa Fetouri
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Money in US elections: pro-Israel money corrupting the entire system
“Strengthening bipartisan support for the US-Israel relationship”: this is how the American-Israeli Affairs Public Committee (AIPAC) on X, former Twitter, profiles itself, giving the impression that it is only a simple group of lobbyists, among thousands of others, in a land where lobbying for whatever cause is legal, welcomed...
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Libya’s Central Bank crisis exposes lack of legitimacy and strong foreign meddling hampering Libya’s progress
Crises in Libya multiply, sometimes, at a daunting speed, making tracking and analysing them a difficult task even for pundits and professional commentators. In many cases, it takes the most trivial of triggers to engulf the country, particularly the capital, Tripoli, in a spiralling crisis usually involving guns and...
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It is time for Arabs to stop blaming Hamas for the genocide in Gaza. Blame yourselves, instead
The overwhelming majority of ordinary Arabs and Muslims support and sympathise with the Palestinian people. They usually express this support and show such sympathy through their use of words in referring to Hamas and other resistance groups fighting Israel. They commonly call them heroes, courageous men and, when they...
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Trans-Mediterranean Migration Forum in Tripoli: too much talk but little action
Early last month, the Tripoli-based government hosted the Trans-Mediterranean Migration Forum (TMMF), with the participation of 16 African and European states and 12 international and regional organisations, including the United Nations mission in Libya. Among the top leaders taking part were the Chadian President, Mohamed Idriss Deby, and Italian Prime...
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Turkiye-Syria rapprochement: how Erdogan the dove is trying to correct his mistakes as a hawk
“… For the sake of peace for the people, the country and the region, finally step down.” That was Turkiye’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, back in November 2011 calling on Syrian President, Bashar Al-Assad, to resign. Then, the Syrian bloodshed had just started, while Damascus responded with brutal...
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What could another four years of Trump mean for the Middle East?
Right after the June US presidential debate, many observers of American politics were doubtful if Joe Biden would be the Democratic nominee to face Donald Trump in the 5 November election. By early July, that doubt turned into almost certainty that Biden would have to be replaced as the...
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Deepening Moroccan-Israeli military ties: who is the enemy?
News reports have it that Morocco has signed a $1 billion to buy an Israeli spy satellite to replace its two old satellites built by the joint European-owned Airbus and the French-owned Thales satellites. This latest deal has been shrouded in secrecy because it concerns building a spy satellite...
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The Arab League after Gaza genocide: reform or die
No one can deny the fact that the Al-Aqsa Flood operation of 7 October, 2023, has changed almost everything in the region, making it a pivotal and turning point for the Middle East and how it should be handled by world powers. After nearly nine months of Israeli genocide in...
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The US's long war on the international justice system and its mechanism
Responding to the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) back in 2002, the United States Congress passed what became publicly known as The Hague Invasion Act, literally authorising the president of the US to invade The Hague, a Dutch city where the ICC is seated. The Act, formally...
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Free Julian Assange exposes America's hypocrisy regarding press freedom in Gaza
On 20 May this year, two British judges gave Julian Assange another chance to appeal an earlier court decision that he should be extradited to stand trial in the United States. Last May’s ruling turned out to be a turning point in the long saga of WikiLeaks founder Julian...
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Financial ransacking of Libya: will it ever end?
Libya scores 170 out of 180 countries listed in the international Corruption Perceptions Index, a measurement of corruption around the world published by Transparency International, an anti- corruption, non-governmental advocacy group. To be at number 170 on the list of 180 countries surveyed is enough to shame any politician...
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Israel has finally made anti-Semitism an empty slogan
Many people in the Global South think Israel has hijacked the Holocaust and over-politicised it for its own political purposes since its creation in 1948. People in the South do not really share the burden of guilt over what Christian Europeans did to the Jewish people and their collaborators...
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Libya’s ‘five devils’ are ready to frustrate the newly designated UN acting mediator
The United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Libya (SRSG), Abdoulaye Bathily, resigned his position on 16 April, some 18 months after he took up the near-impossible task of mediating the Libyan crisis. Mr. Bathily was SRSG number nine since the UN got into the Libyan mess it helped create back...
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The meaning of the three EU countries’ recognition of the Palestinian State
Before the latest recognition of the Palestinian State by three European Union countries, a total of 143 countries have already done so. Now that Ireland, Norway and Spain have followed suit, that total reaches 145 countries out of 193 countries that are members of the United Nations. This is...
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The US President is authorised to invade The Hague if any Israeli is held by the ICC
On Monday, 20 May, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, announced that his office is seeking arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, triggering a fierce competition among the American Republican law makers. Almost all of them went to work in drafting...
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Libya is under the spotlight again, but for all the wrong reasons
Libya, over last few weeks, has been creeping back into the headlines after being out for while, as the political process in the fractured country stalled and the United Nations’ efforts to bridge the gap between its ever-disagreeing politicians failed. Despite too little being worthy of news headlines is...
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Biden sanctions a few Israeli settlers, but what about the 1000s of US citizens in occupied Palestine?
The entire issue between the Palestinians and Israelis is about Israel’s occupation of Palestine; occupier and occupied. It’s not rocket science, and if the so called “two-state solution” is to see the light of day, Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements and settlers must leave the West Bank and East Jerusalem...
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Iran didn't attack Israel, it acted in self-defence
On 1 April Israeli fighter jets bombed the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing seven people described by various media outlets as “members” of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. Among the dead was Brigadier-General Mohammad Reza Zahedi. As is usually the case, Israel never confirmed or denied that it carried out...
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UN envoy to Libya resigns, further complicating already complicated reconciliation
On 16 April, the United Nations envoy to Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, tendered his resignation to his boss, Secretary-General António Guterres, shortly after briefing the UN Security Council, for the last time, on the situation in Libya. Mr. Bathily, whose account on X, formerly Twitter, still says he is the...
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Hypocritical Arab and Muslim countries help Israel kill more Palestinians while condemning it
Most countries in the world, big and small, have expressed their condemnation and outrage at the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, ongoing for the last 194 days. In diplomatic language or just blunt wording, like South Africa, each state has told Israel what it thinks of its military...
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The unenviable position of the Palestinian Authority
The position of the Palestinian National Authority, known as the PA, has really been very awkward, to say the least. Here, the top Palestinian Authority, supposedly representing all the people inside and outside Palestine, is standing helpless and hopeless, while Israel, its “partner in peace”, slaughters, maims and jails...
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Why Israel insists on defending its lies about the October attack
When you try something and find out it is useless, it is stupid and much more useless to continue with it. At least, that is logic and that is how the human brain works. Not in Israel, though. Since the 7 October attack on its military bases and semi-militarised Kibbutzim,...
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How Gaza has changed the world and how to sustain the momentum it has created
Since October 2023, the entire world is clearly making its voice heard about Gaza, over and over again, and in many different ways. Wherever one looks around the world, one is likely to see people supporting Gaza, calling for a ceasefire, demanding aid flow into the Palestinian enclave, while...
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People power: The people against Israel’s occupation and genocide
On Sunday 25 February, 2024, Dyab Abou Jahjah was in his home with his family in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, when his doorbell rang. He opened the door to find three men standing at the doorstep. They were plain clothes police officers. The short interview started and finished on...