perspectives
It's hard to think of a writer more contentious than Salman Rushdie. From death threats to fatwas, insult to injury, the Indian-born British-American author has carved out a career from controversy, becoming a martyr in the process. The darkened lens over his right eye is now a symbol of sacrifice, lost in a life-changing and condemnable attack two years ago. To some, he's a liberal hero — the ultimate champion of secularism and free speech who becomes more revered the more he's attacked. But to Muslims like me, Salman Rushdie is the embodiment of modern-day Islamophobia, a literary figure who...
The New Arab
Karim Khan’s arrest warrants are undoubtedly historic. They signal an end to decades of entrenched Israeli exceptionalism and impunity on the world stage, where Israel's powerful Western allies have disabled any attempt to hold Tel Aviv to the same legal and political standard as other states. Israeli exceptionalism has paralysed international mechanisms, including the United Nations Security Council, and maintained that the destiny of the Palestinians is beyond reach. Now, with this taboo broken, Palestinians and human rights defenders can celebrate the prospect of long-overdue accountability...
The New Arab
On May 1, after eight months of verbal confrontations and retaliatory boasts, Colombia severed diplomatic ties with Israel, becoming the third Latin American country — after Belize and Bolivia — to cut relations since October 7, and the fifth Latin American country overall. Netanyahu’s response to the move was predictable, launching a tirade against Colombian President Gustavo Petro and calling him, like other detractors, an “antisemitic supporter of Hamas.” In response, the left-wing politician replied, “A genocidaire is a genocidaire, no matter if he has a religion or not.” The move didn’t m...
The New Arab
Hours after a helicopter carrying Iran’s president, foreign minister and other top officials went missing in bad weather over the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan, speculation was rife over whether this was a deliberate assassination or an accident. Initially described as a “hard landing”, all hopes of finding survivors were dashed when Iranian media reported the helicopter debris was found completely incinerated. Despite the decades-long rhetoric that the regime is “in a fight for its long-term survival”, Iran’s 45-year theocracy is quite durable and unlikely to overturn any time soon" Man...
The New Arab
Normally, when students in the United States start protests towards the end of the Spring semester, administrators try to stall. The presidents and deans know that in May the students start to think about their summer plans and then retreat back to their homes, often far from the campus. Then, during the long summer, which comes to end only in the early weeks of September, the students are absorbed in internships and jobs, lives of love and lives of anxiety about the precarious world that awaits them. The high officials of the colleges and universities know that once the students return to cam...
The New Arab
Bad behaviour certainly has its rewards. That is, at least, if you are among Lebanon’s political elite, who secured €1 billion in financial aid from the European Union last week. On May 2, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides announced the three-year assistance package at a joint press conference in Beirut with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati. Brussels framed it as a commitment to supporting Syrian refugees and “other vulnerable groups” in Lebanon, as well as an effort to curb irregular migration to Europe through strengthening Bei...
The New Arab
This week Israel has seized control of the Rafah border crossing — Gazans only escape route — and rolled military tanks deep into the city, dressed in “obnoxious Israeli flags”. Yet another cycle of mass murder has begun in a city already populated by orphaned children living amongst mass graves. The violence is unspeakable, sending shock waves across the world. Students are building protest encampments and the UN Human Rights Council have issued fresh calls for an arms embargo. But is this enough? The movement for Palestinian justice is unrelenting in its pursuit of new strategies to target I...
The New Arab
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the protests on US campuses against his country’s attacks on Gaza, saying that they were “reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s.” He was, apparently, comparing the protesters to the Nazi student groups that beat up Jewish students and faculty. That comparison dilutes the horror of Nazism by overlooking both the extent of the violence that Nazi students inflicted on anyone who was Jewish and their avowedly racist goal of purging the universities of all Jewish students and professors. They achieved that go...
The New Arab
The prominent Irish authorBrendan Behan once described himself as a 'doctrinaire Republican', that being a staunch and unmoving Irish Republican, regardless of political reality or practicality. The description resonated with me as an Irish republican growing up in West Belfast — a stronghold of the political party Sinn Féin. The party's tight political and economic grip on West Belfast has manifested as a hangover from the control of the area once held by the Provisional IRA. It exists from a time and an experience that, for decades, has connected the consciousness of West Belfast to the stru...
The New Arab
The 2024 general election in India, spanning six weeks from April 19 to June 1, is poised to be the largest in history. Promising a continuation of his firebrand Hindu nationalism, Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks a third consecutive term in office, while opposition parties try, seemingly in vain, to warn of the existential threat that Hindutva rule has on the democratic and secular character of the country. Unlike the previous high-turnout elections of 2014 and 2019, where Modi was first the anti-establishment challenger and then able to rouse anti-Pakistan sentiment after the 2019 Pulwama ...
The New Arab
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