It is very strange to see that Bloggies 2008 has dropped ‘Middle East’ nominations for this year. Here is the statement:

Most categories will remain as they’ve always been. But because of revision or removal, it’s time to bid farewell to:

* Best British or Irish Weblog
* Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog
* Best Craft Weblog
* Best [...]

I admit I have missed the news when it was announced end of last July, but better late than never.

Honored to be Bahraini by soul for living in Bahrain for the last four years, I am very happy to know that Wafaa Ganahi, a 23-year-old teacher from the Law Faculty of Bahrain University, won the [...]

By Régis Debray, Le Monde Diplomatique

Foreword from the journal: Last year President Jacques Chirac asked Régis Debray to study the situation in the Middle East. On 15 January 2007 Debray sent the French authorities the following document on Palestine. It is an important key to understanding a long policy drift whose results are now obvious.

How [...]

A conference of cowboys
By Alon Liel

In the absence of a nightingale, even a raven is a songbird - or is it? The international conference initiated by U.S. President George W. Bush in the twilight of his term in office is definitely no songbird. It is more of a raven than a nightingale. After seven years [...]

A remarkable piece - considering its source was head of the American Jewish Congress and fellow at the neocon dominated CFR. The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam, by Henry Siegman, London Review of Books.

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Just one year after the 1967 war, Moshe Dayan, a former IDF chief of staff who at the time was minister [...]

The British Medical Journal has featured two opinions on the subject, one for and one against, and is allowing its readers online, either academics or members of the public, to vote.

Go to this page. Scroll down a bit and you can find the icon to click on to participate in the vote. Once you open [...]

From the New Yorker’s David Remnick: The Apostate

Excerpts:

Short of being Prime Minister, Burg could not be higher in the Zionist establishment. His father was a Cabinet minister for nearly four decades, serving under Prime Ministers from David Ben-Gurion to Shimon Peres. In addition to a decade-long career in the Knesset, including four years as Speaker, [...]

French philosopher Alain Badiou gave this interview to Le Monde last week. The original title was about the crisis of the intellectual Left. While the first two questions focused on the crisis of the French Left, most of the interview was about the particularisms lying at the foundations of Israel as a Jewish only [...]

Thanks as well as a hat tip to the great ladies at Jordan Journals for making this article available. (Unless you have a print subscription to the Jordan Times, this article is not freely available online, the only other site that has it requires subscription). Cross-posted at Reclaiming Space at http://peoplesgeography.com by Ann El [...]

Some 4.4 million Palestinians remain refugees nearly 60 years after the start of the 1948 war. About one third of these refugees still live inside camps. Examples of conditions in various countries: Jordan hosts about 1.8 million Palestinian refugees including some 130,000 people who fled from Gaza in 1967. These refugees, as opposed to most [...]