Iraq

Egyptians seen on a public bus in Cairo during the coronavirus pandemic, April 6, 2020. (Mohamed Hozyen)

‘I want to be seen’: Coronavirus lockdown stories from across the Middle East

With a computer, Zoom, and a list of questions, I spoke to young people across the region about how their lives are being affected by COVID-19.

By Yuval Abraham May 6, 2020

Protesters blocking access to the Ring bridge in Beirut, Lebanon. October 26, 2019. (Nadim Kobeissi / Wikimedia Commons)

Obsessing over ‘geopolitics’ dehumanizes Middle East freedom struggles

The debate around Soleimani's assassination ignores months of inspiring protests against local and foreign oppressors in the region.

By Jehad Abusalim January 12, 2020

Immigrants from Iraq and Kurdistan exit their plane on arrival in Israel, having flown via Tehran, late spring 1951. (Teddy Brauner, GPO)

Iraqis want their Jewish neighbors back

Months after a Shiite cleric who won the parliamentary elections in Iraq said Jews “are welcome,” an online poll on the matter suggests that Iraqis are ready to discuss the right of return – more than Israelis are. By Meron Rapoport “Iraq’s Jews: 70 years after their expulsion, they seek to return to Iraq and become citizens…

By +972 Magazine August 30, 2018

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File photo of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looking out over the Egyptian border. (Ariel Jerozolimski/POOL/FLASH90)

The false story Israel tells itself about the Middle East

According to Israel’s leaders, the Middle East is made up of primitive tribespeople and Islamic radicals who cannot be negotiated with. They’re wrong. By Idan Barir and Ori Goldberg Nearly a month ago, a hearing at the Knesset’s State Control Committee that looked into the State Comptroller’s report on Israel’s handling of Operation Protective Edge,…

By +972 Magazine May 27, 2017

A Syrian teenager in front of his shelter in one informal camp for Syrian refugees in the Bekaa Valley, near the village of Jib Janin, eastern Lebanon, April 14, 2016. (Anne Paq/Activestills.org)

Who speaks for Syria?

We who are Syria’s neighbors, among whom so many of Syria’s victims have sought shelter, owe it to them — and to ourselves — to speak honestly and without shame about this singularly Arab tragedy. In so doing, we must create space for our Syrian sisters and brothers to lift their voices above those of…

By Samer Badawi October 5, 2016

Niswan Zalud, 22, a Yazidi man whose family fled ISIS, Shingal, Iraqi Kurdistan. (Seth J. Frantzman)

PHOTOS: A modern genocide — Yazidi survivors in Shingal

Text and photos by Seth J. Frantzman In August 2014 the extremist group calling itself Islamic State (ISIS) swept through a part of northern Iraq inhabited by the Yazidi religious minority. ISIS had already broadcast to the world their intention to exterminate “un-believers” and those they opposed. They had massacred 1,600 Shia army cadets at Camp Speicher…

By +972 Magazine January 1, 2016

Protesters hold vigil for the slain journalists of Charlie Hebdo, Strasbourg, France, January 7, 2015. (photo: Claude TRUONG-NGOC CC BY-SA 3.0)

France must not push Muslims into the arms of extremists

The terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket were well-trained, spoke French and knew their actions would play into the hands of France’s Islamophobic right. Let’s not give them what they’re after. By Yossi Dahan As Israel’s news outlets covered the terrorist attacks in Paris, we watched how our analysts and correspondence suddenly…

By Haokets January 11, 2015

Israelis of Kurdish origin demonstrate in solidarity with the Yazidi community in front of the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, August 13, 2014. The Yazidi community in northern Iraq has recently been attacked by extremists of Islamic State. The protesters called for U.S intervention. (Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)

The Kurds must not be abandoned again, this time to ISIS

If there are any people on earth who deserve the world’s protection from slaughter, it is the Kurds. Despite the stereotype of Mizrahi Jews in Israel resenting Arabs because of the way they were treated in the old country, there are plenty of Mizrahim who have good memories of their relations with their former Muslim…

By Larry Derfner October 9, 2014

Raqqa following a Syrian air force bombing, September 6, 2014. (Screenshot)

Trapped between Assad and ‘IS’: Inside the capital of the ‘Islamic State’

Following a long period of quiet, the Syrian city of Raqqa is once again being shelled — this time by Assad’s forces. Residents have been forced to flee the shelling, along with IS’s extremist agenda. An interview with a resident of the ‘Islamic State.’ By Elizabeth Tsurkov Raqqa, the capital of the “Islamic State” in northern…

By +972 Magazine September 8, 2014

ISIS fighters ride through the Syrian city of Al-Raqqa. (photo: Islamic State)

As violence rises, Muslim moderates must do more

My colleagues at ‘Let Us Build Pakistan’ and I have discovered various overlapping interests on certain issues and we occasionally cross-post material that we think our audiences would find relevant. Here is one such article I found interesting. Against the background of a fresh wave of violence in the Middle East, a Muslim writer calls…

By Dahlia Scheindlin August 25, 2014

Israeli soldiers raid the village of Halhul, near Hebron. (photo: Activestills)

Why Israel’s response to the kidnappings feels awfully familiar

If the past is any gauge of what’s to come, things are not looking good in the West Bank – neither for the Palestinians who remain under occupation there, nor for the three missing teenagers. From a Haaretz report: The Israel Defense Forces plans to arrest additional senior Hamas officials. Yesterday security forces arrested 65 key…

By Samer Badawi June 18, 2014

Mass grave of victims of the Farhud, 1941. (photo: Ministry of Education and the Ben - Zvi, Jerusalem)

Farhud, 1941: Iraqi Jews remember a massacre

On the holiday of Shavuot in 1941, Iraq’s Jews experienced a pogrom that claimed over 180 lives and ended in mass looting. But there’s another story from the Farhud that often goes undiscussed: the bravery of Muslims during the crisis. “The Farhud” / Foreword By Orit Bashkin (translated by Asaf Shalev) Silently but not without some…

By Cafe Gibraltar June 10, 2014

Israeli Air Force F-15 takes off (photo: IDF Spokesperson

The dark heart of Israel’s regional military policy

When you believe your enemies hate you more than they love their children, as Golda Meir put it, there’s no real deterrence against them; you have to keep bombing. Most people in the West, I’d say, think that if Israel gives up the occupation, it will be healed. It will no longer be a danger…

By Larry Derfner February 28, 2014