MER Article Israel and Guatemala From the May-June 1986 issue of Middle East Report: Israel’s increasingly visible presence throughout the Third World, including such disparate places as the Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Zaire, Botswana, El Salvador and Argentina, raises a number of questions about the objectives and chara Cheryl Rubenberg • 30 min read
MER Article "The First Prime-Time Bombing in History" Noam Chomsky has been active in the movement against US military intervention for many years. His most recent book on the Middle East is The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (South End, 1986). His latest book, Turning the Tide (South End, 1986), is on US policy toward Joan Mandell, Zachary Lockman • 9 min read
MER Article Mad Dogs and Presidents When Ronald Reagan ordered US warplanes to attack Libya on April 15, terrorism was the occasion rather than the cause. Like the electronic confetti spewed out to muddle Libyan radar screens, the terrorism issue was snow to disarm and deflect critics of American military intervention. Such interventi Joe Stork • 15 min read
MER Article Comprehending Terror Let us begin with the dictionary definition of terror -- “intense, overpowering fear” -- and of terrorism -- “the use of terrorizing methods of governing or resisting a government.” This simple definition has the virtue of fairness; it focuses on the use of coercive violence and its effects on the v Eqbal Ahmad • 8 min read
MER Article From the Editors (May-June 1986) As the banner on our cover proclaims, spring 1986 is our fifteenth anniversary. In early April, we celebrated with a banquet attended by some 200 hundred readers and friends in Washington. On that occasion, MERIP also honored four individuals whose work has helped inform our own efforts. They were: The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Letters (March/April 1986) Nuclear Dumping in Sudan and Somalia? (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article Lackner, P.D.R. Yemen Helen Lackner, P.D.R. Yemen: Outpost of Socialist Development in Arabia, (London: Ithaca Press, 1985). It is hard to imagine a more timely publishing event than the appearance of Helen Lackner’s new book on the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, given the crisis that engulfed that country this Joe Stork • 2 min read
MER Article Naff, Becoming American Alixa Naff, Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience, (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985). Alixa Naff gives us a rare and detailed look into the virtually unknown and now largely forgotten world of the early Arabic-speaking immigrants who made their Nabeel Abraham • 2 min read
MER Article Before Their Diaspora Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948, introduction and commentary by Walid Khalidi, (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1984). Before Their Diaspora gathers some 400 photographs to present a portrait of Palestine, its people and their culture, fr Sarah J Graham-Brown • 5 min read
MER Article Mutiny in Cairo Wednesday, February 26. The story was on BBC at eight this morning. Central Security Forces (al-amn al-markazi) mutinied last night at the big camp at Dahshour and at two camps in Giza, on the road to Alexandria. Thousands of conscripts burst out of the camps and burned nearby luxury hotels. The gov Ann Lesch • 7 min read
MER Article Hangover Time in the Gulf After a decade of soaring revenues and frenetic spending, the six “Eldorado” states of the Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates—the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council) are now in a tight economic and financial squeeze. Experts and analysts in the Gulf and around the w Ghassan Salameh • 14 min read
MER Article Catastrophe in South Yemen How can social tensions be managed and policy differences resolved by ruling socialist parties in poverty-stricken Third World states? On January 13, 1986, this question defeated the Yemeni Socialist Party in a devastating spasm of civil war. Parallels can be drawn between the South Yemeni trauma an Fred Halliday • 11 min read
