Hamas Fans Flames of Islamic Anger Following “Day of Rage” by Jonathan Spyer Hamas leaders are seeking to escalate Palestinian unrest over the supposed Israeli threat to Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. In addition to reflecting the movement’s ideological goals, this effort makes good political sense. Hamas seeks to supplant the West Bank Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad....

The Dutch have a long and proud military history going back to at least the 16th century and even earlier if one considers the “Batavians”—fierce tribes who lived around the Rhine, in today’s the Netherlands—who were described by Tacitus as “the bravest of the tribes of the area, hardened in the Germanic border wars.” Dutch sailors and soldiers—straight and gay, I am sure—fought...

With Mexico’s cataclysmic drug war rapidly bleeding into the United States, this editorial from Mexico’s La Jornada warns people to prepare for extensive U.S. meddling in their nation’s internal affairs. According to the newspaper, Mexico’s government is deteriorating at such an alarming rate, that it is incapable of exercising control over ‘huge swaths’ of the country. The...

A retired Marine general, John J. Sheehan, told senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Dutch Army failed to protect the city of Srebrenica during the Bosnian war ”partly because of the presence of gay soldiers in its armed forces,” according to the Washington Post. Sheehan, a NATO commander who retired in 1997, made these comments during hearings on “don’t ask, don’t tell”...

How badly has American credibility been damaged by Israeli treatment of Vice President Biden during his visit to the country? According to this article by columnist Elias Harfoush of Saudi Arabia’s Dar al-Hayat, seeing Washington get pushed around this way is making it hard for Arabs to resist Iranian threats – and support harsher sanctions over its nuclear program. Harfoush also writes that Israeli...

It is my impression that, for whatever reasons, politicians and government officials (including ex-politicians—if one could ever find one of those— and ex-government officials) are more open and candid when giving interviews to foreign correspondents. A couple of weeks ago, I commented on “one of the most interesting and candid interviews that a foreign newspaper has conducted with one of our...

Is the United States coming down too hard on Iran, which it believes is building a nuclear weapon? That is the ever-more popular narrative being espoused by important powers that include China, Russia and now, Brazil. According to this article by columnist John Saxe-Fernandez of Mexico’s La Jornada, Brazil’s rejection of U.S. demands for harsh sanctions is a demonstration of the ‘change in...

Peter Feaver has a very interesting post up about the assertion in Karl Rove’s new book that “if the administration had known the true extent of Iraq’s WMD stockpile and programs it would not have pushed the use of force resolution in October 2002 and invaded in 2003.” In other words, if our intelligence were right, there would’ve been no invasion of Iraq. As Peter points out,...

Reflecting the deep sense of Palestinian frustration, columnist Adli Sadek of Alhayat Aljadeeda, a newspaper in the Palestinian territories, writes that the Israeli government is playing Washington like a harp, by using the trumped-up threat of an Iranian bomb to force it to back off on Israeli-Palestinian talks and the formation of a Palestinian state. Sadek goes on to warn Arabs that they must be united...

The press has been full of stories about the shabby way in which Vice-President Joe Biden was treated on his recent trip to Israel and his confrontation with P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu over the unexpected (to the United States) news that Israel was going ahead with the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem.

Are liberals and conservatives coming together to add President Grant to our pantheon of heroes? This morning, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz argues in the Times, Although slandered since his death, Grant, as general and as president, stood second only to Abraham Lincoln as the vindicator of [American] principles in the Civil War era. The occasion for Wilentz’s op-ed is a proposal by Rep. Patrick McHenry...

From the Times: An indictment this month from one of Spain’s top judges assert[s] that Venezuelan intelligence officials were involved in training Basque separatists and Colombian guerrillas in Venezuela… Judge Velasco’s indictment, based largely on testimony from demobilized FARC guerrillas and FARC computer files obtained by Colombia’s army, describes a 20-day training course led by [Basque exile...

I first heard of “Agent Rose” when she celebrated a birthday at her home in North Somerset, England, on February 3, 2009. The title of the BBC News story then was “War heroine toasts 104th birthday.” This morning, I read about her again. Sadly, the headline read, “Andrée Peel, Rescuer of Allied Airmen, Dies at 105.” Andrée Peel was Agent Rose, a French resistance heroine who helped save more...

As America’s news media and political class focus largely on health care reform, the ongoing political polemics between Republicans and Democrats, Eric “The Tickler” Massa, and reports of Rahm Emanuel’s exercise of literal naked political power, a major story is unfolding that’s of historical significance: growing tensions between Israel and its Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu...

There have been a slew of charges over recent months that James Cameron lifted the plot of Avatar from previous writers, most memorably by the St. Petersburg Communist Party, who called for Cameron’s arrest for plagiarizing the work of Soviet-era science fiction writers. But this article from Ukraine’s Day newspaper makes the most convincing case of all. Columnist Maxim Chaikovsky writes that...

By anyone’s measure, it has been a long, hard road for the Iraqi people. This article by columnist Imad Al Akhras of the newspaper Sotal Iraq, reflects evident pride, and heaps almost Koranic praise on the nation’s security forces for giving Iraqis a chance to, ‘follow in the footsteps of the civilized world.’ For Sotal Iraq, Imad Al Akhras writes in part: The participation of Iraqis...

Now that Iraq has held what is widely percieved to be successful nationwide elections, is it time for the critics of George W. Bush to admit that Iraq has turned out to be a success? This article by columnist Ivan Rioufol of France’s Le Figaro argues that without the much-derided former president and his neoconservative allies, there would be no democracy in Iraq. For Le Figaro, Ivan Rioufol writes in...

Karl Rove says he is “proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists… Yes, I’m proud that we kept the world safer than it was, by the use of these techniques. They’re appropriate, they’re in conformity with our international requirements and with US law.” Of course, the U.S. did a lot of nasty things to its detainees, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and a lot...

Mark Benjamin has written an article at Salon about the details of how waterboarding was actually done (as opposed to how torture supporters like Dick and Liz Cheney and Marc Thiessen and Andy McCarthy have claimed it was done) by C.I.A. interrogators. Benjamin culled these details from the hundreds of pages of documents contained in several reports that the Department of Justice declassified and released to...

As is public knowledge, the CIA has been involved with a good number of coups since it came into being after World War II. One of those coups took place in Guatemala in 1954. This article from Guatemala’s El Periodico is both highly critical of the U.S. due to the consequences of that coup, and extremely complimentary, praising the importance of the United States as an example of a system that works. For...

Are Beijing’s concerns about the Dalai Lama’s visits to Washington merely about preserving face, as they say in Asia? Is it reasonable to suspect that the United States today is, or has plans to use the Tibetan Diaspora to destabilize Tibet and/or China? For Russia’s Novosti, columnist Dmitry Kosyrev writes that there is more than wounded pride at the heart of Beijing’s histrionics. Kosyrev...

Some answers HERE.

Like a strong drink, North Korea’s shrill Stalinist rhetoric should be consumed in small sips. A good time of year to sample this brew is in March, when the U.S. and South Korea hold joint military exercises called Key Resolve/Foal Eagle. This statement by the Korean People’s Army Supreme Command warns the U.S. and South Korea about the consequences of these yearly maneuvers. The order by the Korean...

Almost eleven years ago, U.S. and other allied troops entered Kosovo following a nearly three-month-long air campaign—Operation Allied Force—by the U.S. and the Air Forces of its NATO allies and which included the first participation in combat by the German Air Force since World War II. The bombing campaign—which also included the use of Tomahawk cruise missiles—and the subsequent invasion...

From his Washington Post column: