MER Article From the Editors (Fall 2014) In the last week of August, after several false starts, a ceasefire finally halted the summertime slaughter in Gaza. Israel’s bombs stopped falling, Palestinians stopped dying and the world media stopped its round-the-clock coverage. And, just like that, Gaza was again yesterday’s news. The Editors • 4 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Summer 2014) Targeted killings. Ground operations. No option off the table. Once again, Israel is using the technocratic vocabulary of twenty-first-century warfare to obscure its colonization of Palestine, and, once again, the Western media is collaborating in the grand deception. It was predictable, sadly, tha The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Spring 2014) “Will China dominate the twenty-first century?” So asks the title of a short book by Jonathan Fenby, a British journalist who was editor of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post during the period when that bustling entrepôt was being transferred from British control to the sovereignty of the People’s The Editors • 9 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Fall 2013) Albrecht, Holger. Raging Against the Machine: Political Opposition Under Authoritarianism in Egypt (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013). Al-Rasheed, Madawi. A Most Masculine State: Gender, Politics and Religions in Saudi Arabia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Antoon, Sina The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Fall 2013) A major victory for the hawks in the post-Vietnam era was to define “intervention” as military action and its opposite as inaction. Thus, in the recurrent debate over what to do about the civil war in Syria, the options are reduced to some sort of US strike, on the one hand, and nothing, on the oth The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Summer 2013) The problems of Christians in the Middle East are often not discussed forthrightly, either in the region or in writings about it. One reason is that, in many ways, the problems of Christians are everyone’s problems -- Israeli occupation hurts Christian and Muslim Palestinians alike, as does second-c The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Spring 2013) Aarts, Paul and Francesco Cavatorta, eds. Civil Society in Syria and Iran: Activism in Authoritarian Contexts (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2013). Al-Ali, Nadje and Deborah Al-Najjar, eds. We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013). Al-Am The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Winter 2012) Aarts, Paul et al. From Resilience to Revolt: Making Sense of the Arab Spring (Amsterdam: Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice Research and Documentation Center, June 2012). Beinin, Joel. The Rise of Egypt’s Workers (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 2012). Bishara The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Winter 2012) The course of the Egyptian uprising offers reason for both optimism and pessimism. On the down side, the post-Mubarak system, such as it is, exhibits plenty of characteristics of the old one. As Ahmad Shokr and Joshua Stacher detail in this issue, Egypt’s new civilian government, drawn from the ran The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Fall 2012) Bush, Ray and Habib Ayeb, eds. Marginality and Exclusion in Egypt (London: Zed Books, 2012). Castner, Brian. The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows (New York: Doubleday, 2012). Coll, Steve. Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power (New York: Penguin, 2012). Collins, John. G The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Fall 2012) “In the last decade,” wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the November 2011 Foreign Policy, “our foreign policy has transitioned from dealing with the post-Cold War peace dividend to demanding commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. As those wars wind down, we will need to accelerate efforts to The Editors • 5 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Summer 2012) Bahrain Centre for Human Rights. Post-BICI Report (Manama, March 2012). Brown, Nathan. When Victory Is Not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012). Caridi, Paola. Hamas: From Resistance to Government (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012). Davis, The Editors • 1 min read
