Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Ramzy Baroud
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PA political circus: Why Abbas must hand the keys over to the PLO
The painful truth is that the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas has already ceased to exist as a political body that holds much sway or relevance, either to the Palestinian people or to Abbas’ former benefactors, namely the Israeli and the American governments. So, when the Palestinian Authority Prime…
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The ‘Palestinian Chair’: Exposing Israel’s direct role in US violence
The banning of deadly police practices by many American states and cities following the murder of an African American man, George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police officers is, once more, shedding light on US-Israeli collaboration in the fields of security and crowd-control. From California to New York, and…
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The New Political Order: How Will Palestinians Respond to Netanyahu’s Annexation?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is moving forward with his annexation plans, which would allow Israel to claim nearly a third of the overall size of the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Although the illegal annexation of Palestinian land is supposed to represent only one provision of the Donald Trump administration’s…
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Palestine Bleeds: Execution of autistic man is not an exception but the norm
A 32-year-old man with the mental age of an 8-year-old child was executed by Israeli soldiers on May 30, while crouching behind his teacher near his special needs school in the Old City of Jerusalem. The cold-blooded murder of Eyad Hallaq might not have received much attention if it were…
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‘Wolf Warrior Diplomacy’: Israel’s China Strategy in Peril
Israel’s balancing act that allowed it to reap America’s unconditional and, often, blind support, while slowly benefiting from China’s growing economic influence and political prestige, is already floundering. Thanks to the heated cold war between the US and Chinese economic superpowers, the Israeli strategy of playing both sides is unlikely…
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Political ambiguity or a doomsday weapon: Why Abbas abandoned Oslo
This time, we are told, it is different and that President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is absolutely serious about his decision to absolve his leadership from all previous agreements signed with Israel and the United States. But this time is not different, and Abbas is not serious. “The…
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Why does Israel celebrate its terrorists: Ben Uliel and the murder of the Dawabsheh Family
Israeli media and Zionist apologists everywhere are busy whitewashing Israel’s globally-tattered image using the rare indictment of an Israeli terrorist, Amiram Ben Uliel, who was recently convicted for murdering the Palestinian Dawabsheh family, including an 18-month-old toddler in the town of Duma, south of Nablus. The conviction of Ben Uliel…
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Why Israel Fears the Nakba: How memory became Palestine’s greatest weapon
On May 15, thousands of Palestinians in Occupied Palestine and throughout the ‘shatat’, or diaspora, participated in the commemoration of Nakba Day, the one event that unites all Palestinians, regardless of their political differences or backgrounds. For years, social media has added a whole new stratum to this process of…
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How We Became Refugees: The Day My Grandfather Lost His Village in Palestine
Starting on March 27, 1948, a beautiful, small Palestinian village called Beit Daras, came under Zionist militias attacks. With little means – a few old rifles and kitchen knives – the Badrasawis fought back, repelling the first raid and the second. The final attack on the peaceful village followed a…
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Arabs, UN must move to swiftly protect the status of Palestinian refugees
‘Heinous racism,’ is how the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor described a recent decision by Lebanese authorities to bar Palestinian refugee expats from returning to Lebanon. Lebanon’s restrictions on its ever-diminishing population of Palestinian refugees is nothing new. However, this event is particularly alarming as it may be linked to…
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‘Apartheid is a Crime’: Former Swedish Diplomat Speaks about His Experiences in Occupied Palestine
Mats Svensson is a former Swedish diplomat, author, and photographer. His books include “Crimes, Victims, and Witnesses – Apartheid in Palestine.” His latest volume, “Apartheid is a Crime – Portraits of Israeli Occupation,” was just released by Cunepress in Seattle. Svensson joined me and my co-host Romana Rubeo on “Palestine…
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100 years of shame: Annexation of Palestine began in San Remo
One hundred years ago, representatives from a few powerful countries convened at San Remo, a sleepy town on the Italian Riviera. Together, they sealed the fate of the massive territories confiscated from the Ottoman Empire following its defeat in World War I. It was on April 25, 1920, that the…
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Placing Palestine back at the centre of Muslim discourse in the West
Almost twenty years ago at a Muslim conference in Washington DC, I heard the distressing argument that Palestine should not be a central topic on the American Muslim political agenda. That point, which took many by surprise, was enunciated by a young American Pakistani Muslim academic, whose name is not…
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Hating Arabs as a Common Ground: Why Israel’s Coalition Government is Likely to Survive
Shortly after an agreement to form a “national emergency government” in Israel, leader of the Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) party, Benny Gantz, tweeted triumphantly that ‘democracy’ in Israel has been ‘safeguarded’. But how is a deal that would grant Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a veto power over…
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A Machiavellian Fiasco: How ‘Centrist’ Gantz Resurrected Netanyahu, Israel’s Right
It was intended to be a Machiavellian move, but the decision by Benny Gantz, leader of Israel’s Kahol Lavan (Blue and White) coalition, to join a Benjamin Netanyahu-led government is likely to destabilize the political fabric of Israeli society for years to come. In a surprising move, Gantz has entered…
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Spreading the virus of occupation: Spitting as a weapon in the hand of colonial Israel
Spitting at someone is a universal insult. In Israel, however, spitting at Palestinians is an entirely different story. Now that we know that the deadly coronavirus can be transmitted through saliva droplets, Israeli soldiers and illegal Jewish settlers are working extra hard to spit at as many Palestinians, their cars,…
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Solidarity in the age of coronavirus: What the Arabs must do
While the Coronavirus continues to ravage almost every nation on earth, Arab countries remain unable, or unwilling, to formulate a collective strategy to help the poorest and most vulnerable Arabs survive the deadly virus and its economic fallout. Worse, amid growing international solidarity, we are yet to see a pan-Arab…
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A Palestinian guide to surviving a quarantine: On faith, humour and ‘Dutch Candy’
Call it a ‘quarantine’, a ‘shelter-in-place’, a ‘lockdown’ or a ‘curfew’, we Palestinians have experienced them all, though not at all voluntarily. Personally, the first 23 years of my life were lived in virtual ‘lockdown’. My father’s ‘quarantine’ was experienced much earlier, as did his father’s ‘shelter-in-place’ before him. They…
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Tunisia Leads the Way: New Report Exposes Israel’s False Democracy
Tunisia is the Middle East’s greatest success story, according to the findings of the V-Dem Annual Democracy Report 2019. One of the world’s most regarded annual reports on democracy and good governance, the V-Dem Report is produced by the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute at the University of Gothenburg in…
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Technology of death: The not-so-shocking report on Israeli weapons exports
The Middle East region, battered by wars and adjoining humanitarian crises that have left millions of people stateless, hungry and diseased, is in urgent need for peace, security, and reconstruction. Thanks to the US, Russian, French, Israeli and other weapons manufacturers, however, it is now the dumping ground for military…
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BJP and Israel: Hindu Nationalism is Ravaging India’s Democracy
It was only a matter of time before the anti-Muslim sentiment in India turned violent. A country that has historically prided itself on its diversity and tolerance, and for being ‘the largest democracy in the world’ has, in recent years, exhibited the exact opposite qualities – chauvinism, racism, religious intolerance,…
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Death at the Greek border: Syrian refugees should not be used as political pawns
In a surprising move, Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced on February 29 that he will be re-opening his country’s border to Europe, thus allowing tens of thousands of mostly Syrian refugees into Greece and other European countries. Expectedly, over 100,000 people rushed to the Ipsala border point in the…
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‘Zionist’ Biden in his own words: ‘My name is Joe Biden, and everybody knows I love Israel’
“I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist,” current Democratic Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, said in April 2007, soon before he was chosen to be Barack Obama’s running mate in the 2008 elections. Biden is, of course, correct, because Zionism is a political…
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‘A Policeman, A Pastor and A Palestinian’: The ‘Chilestinians’ as a Model for Palestinian Unity
I was only introduced to the term ‘Chilestinians’ last February at a conference in Istanbul, during a presentation by the Director of the Palestinian Federation of Chile, Anuar Majluf. When Majluf referred to the well-rooted Palestinian community in Chile, who number between 450,000 and half a million, using that unfamiliar…