When we were arabs Current Analysis Memoir of a Jewish Arab Hayoun identifies himself as a Jewish Arab and traces his family history to show how Jewish Arabs were maliciously separated from their societies and how their identities were used in a game of colonial domination. Dana El Kurd • 11 min read
MER Article What is Activism? In early 2011, the world watched as millions of people took to the streets across the Arab world to demand the fall of regimes, or at least substantial political reforms. As the weeks and then months unfolded, the broadcast media adopted split screens to show simultaneous live footage of crowds in m Kevan Harris, Jillian Schwedler • 11 min read
Current Analysis Between Terror and Tyranny Nearly a year after Egypt’s first democratically elected president was overthrown by a military coup led by Field Marshal ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, a spokesperson for the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) released a video statement [https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/africa/11422-video-isis Abdullah Al-Arian • 15 min read
Current Analysis The Lessons Algeria Can Teach Today's Middle East As we witness today the escalating horrors across the Middle East—acute insecurity, combined with varying degrees of violence, death and destruction, from Libya and Egypt, to Syria, Iraq and now Yemen, we may want to recall the Algerian experience of the 1990s and consider some lessons to be drawn f Miriam R. Lowi • 4 min read
MER Article The Responsibilities of the Cartoonist Khalid Albaih is a political cartoonist “from the two countries of Sudan,” in his words, who is now based in Qatar. His drawings appear at his Facebook page, entitled Khartoon! in a play on the name of the Sudanese capital. Katy Kalemkerian and Khalid Medani spoke with him in Montreal on November 9, Katy Kalemkerian, Khalid Mustafa Medani • 22 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Spring 2015) It is easy to be rendered speechless, or cast into despair, by the sheer enormity of the conflagration in today’s Middle East. At year’s end in 2014, more than half of the countries this magazine covers were embroiled in wars within their borders or nearby. The Saudi-led assault on Yemen launched in The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Three Pawns in the “Great Game” Hugh Wilford, America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East (New York: Basic Books, 2013). Middle East scholars have long been aware of the CIA’s power and swagger in the region, yet their studies rarely mention the Agency beyond passing references, and t David H. Price • 13 min read
toensing_052414_1 Current Analysis Please Explain This Map In early May the website Vox made a small splash on the Internet with “40 Maps That Explain the Middle East [http://www.vox.com/a/maps-explain-the-middle-east].” Chris Toensing • 6 min read
Current Analysis China's New Silk Road Strategy In the current issue [http://www.merip.org/mer/latest] of Middle East Report, we write about the strategic logic of China’s increasing investment in teaching Middle Eastern languages [http://www.merip.org/mer/mer270/chinas-strategic-middle-eastern-languages], particularly Arabic, Persian and Turkish I-wei Jennifer Chang, Haiyun Ma • 3 min read
Current Analysis Region, Race and Some Ironies of History In the forthcoming issue [http://www.merip.org/mer/latest] of Middle East Report, “China in the Middle East,” I write about the often forgotten history [http://www.merip.org/mer/mer270/changing-modes-political-dialogue-across-middle-east-east-asia-1880-2010] of political, intellectual and cultural t Cemil Aydin • 3 min read
MER Article Arabs in Yiwu, Confucius in East Beirut The September 11, 2001 attacks marked the beginning of large-scale trade between the Middle East and mainland China in the modern era. New visa restrictions in the United States -- until then the number-one trading partner of Arab countries -- forced Arab merchants to find business destinations in v Roschanack Shaery • 6 min read
MER Article DragonMart, the Mega-Souk of Today's Silk Road In 1998, a shipwreck was discovered off the coast of Indonesia. It turned out to be the remains of an early ninth-century dhow from the Gulf that had been headed back from China with a cargo of over 70,000 items, primarily ceramics, produced in different Chinese regions. The goods varied in style an JACQUELINE ARMIJO • 9 min read