THE imagery is graphic enough. A mob scales the walls of the American embassy in the Egyptian capital, raises an Islamist banner and burns the Stars and Stripes. A female announcer dons a headscarf on state television for the first time in its 50-year-long history. Bearded police officers demonstrate for an end to the force’s […]
The storming of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday echoed events following the 2005 Danish publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that led to widespread protest in 2006 and assaults on Danish embassies around the world. Today, Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, and his government are playing the same role that his predecessor Hosni […]
Many Arabs believe that the Arab Spring is a Western, and more specifically an American, plan since the days of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to divide the Middle East into smaller rival nations to breed discord and plunder their wealth. Some subscribe to the theory that recent events in Egypt, Libya, Yemen […]
Who lost the Arab Spring? After the murder of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three other American diplomats in Libya, President Barack Obama’s performance during the upheaval in the Arab world will inevitably become a highly charged political issue. Read Here – The National, Abu Dhabi
The wave of violent, senseless and deadly assaults on US legations in the region in recent days elicits a deep sense of disappointment, even despair. A decade of attempts by a series of American administrations and a handful of Western countries to combat Islamic extremism and to promote democracy in the region appears to have […]
BRUSSELS/ALGIERS: Egypt, Algeria and Morocco on Thursday slammed an anti-Islam film that has sparked protests worldwide, but also denounced attacks on US missions by angry protesters. Egypt’s Islamist President Muhammad Mursi vowed Thursday not to allow attacks on foreign embassies in Cairo, saying the Egyptian people reject such “unlawful acts.” Speaking during a visit to the European […]
A few months before Egypt’s presidential election in June, one of the country’s leading businessmen quipped that it would take a crazy man to want to lead the Arab world’s most populous country. It made sense to be cynical at that time. No one knew where Egypt was heading or what a military hungry for power […]
The time has come, Clinton made it clear, for Israel to internalize the fact that the United States also has an independent policy, its own interests and timetable, which, amazingly, are not decided in Jerusalem. Read Here – Haaretz
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for the United States to declare “red lines” for Iran and its nuclear program makes it even harder for the Obama administration to walk the line between calming Israel and increasing the pressure on Iran. As Washington considers its responses — and anticipates how Iran would respond in turn — the […]
SINCE the wave of Arab uprisings started last year, the theory of “Arab exceptionalism” promoted by many Western governments to justify supporting dictatorships has looked a lot weaker. There was virtually no demand for democracy in rich, pro-Western or strategically valuable Arab countries, it was once breezily argued. Now the buzz phrase is “monarchical exceptionalism”. […]
