16 January 2019
Just as Oedipus, an immigrant of Phoenician descent, had to solve the Sphinx's riddle to save his besieged people, so Syrians today—and, in fact, all of us—face a new set of perplexing, life-or-death questions.
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The Israeli strikes that led to the Syrian regime downing a Russian plane Monday night were only the latest in over 200 carried out since 2017; a relentless campaign that has nonetheless done nothing to imperil Assad’s grip on the country.
The problems of solidarity recently outlined by Yassin al-Haj Saleh are indeed part of a wider, historic breakdown in the values and impact of the Western left, writes Jules Etjim, who offers a “sketch” of one possible way forward.
A new biography lays bare the extremist ideology that drives Benjamin Netanyahu, an early champion of the demagoguery that has now brought us his old friend, Donald Trump.
Despite a US green light for Russia and the regime to bomb at will in Daraa Province, rebels have thus far refused to surrender after several bloody days of Russian air strikes, regime barrel bombs, and yet more waves of civilian displacement.
Seeing Beirut slide into war in 2006 transformed the late TV presenter, moving him to humanize peoples—in the Middle East and beyond—whose voices were rarely heard in the US mainstream.
As then-defense minister, Hafez al-Assad was instrumental in Syria’s loss of the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967. His quest to avert accountability for this defeat was at the heart of the tyranny he instated over the following decades, writes Yassin al-Haj Saleh on the June War’s anniversary.
Russia hints it will press Iran to leave Syria, in line with recently renewed Israeli and American demands. But serious doubts remain as to whether a forced Iranian withdrawal is even possible, let alone likely.
It's impossible on any day, but especially a day like this year’s Nakba Day, to ignore the inherent bond between the Palestinian and Syrian causes.
After the Palestinianization of Syrians, there comes now the Syrianization of Palestinians.
Khalifa al-Khuder reports on the aspirations, sufferings, and occasional joys of the largely voiceless Syrian worker community in Lebanon.
Due to similar predicaments, Syrians' belief in the Palestinian cause has transformed from a merely Arab identitarian solidarity into more humane, emancipatory joint struggle.