Bread and Net is SMEX’s yearly conference. Design courtesy of SMEX. Organizing for Digital Rights—An Interview with Mohamad Najem of SMEX Activists are fighting for an online civic space. Marya Hannun, Mohamad Najem • 12 min read
MER Article The Limits of Confronting Racial Discrimination in Tunisia with Law 50 In 2018, Tunisia became the first country in the Middle East and North Africa to pass a law that criminalizes racial discrimination. In a society that has long denied the existence of racism, the law—popularly known as Loi 50 or Law 50—has been applauded by local activists and international human ri Shreya Parikh • 11 min read
Current Analysis The Travel Ban and Iranian-Americans By the end of his first few weeks in office, President Donald Trump had managed to rile up most everyone in the country who was not agitated already. Of the many unsettling Trump initiatives, one of the most contentious has been his effort to make good on campaign promises of Semira Nikou • 15 min read
Current Analysis The Myth of Israel's Liberal Supreme Court Exposed Little more than a decade ago, in a brief interlude of heady optimism about the prospects of regional peace, the Israeli Supreme Court issued two landmark rulings that, it was widely assumed, heralded the advent of a new, post-Zionist era for Israel. But with two more watershed judgments handed down Jonathan Cook • 23 min read
Current Analysis The Negev's Hot Wind Blowing Over the past 15 months the dusty plains of the northern Negev desert in Israel have been witness to a ritual of destruction, part of a police operation known as Hot Wind. On 29 occasions since June 2010, hundreds of Israeli paramilitary officers have made the pilgrimage over a dirt track near the c Jonathan Cook • 16 min read
Current Analysis The Rites and Rights of Citizenship On Tuesday I became a citizen of the United States. Almost ten years ago, I was granted permanent residency. Between my Green Card and my naturalization certificate lies the seemingly endless decade of the “war on terror.” Moustafa Bayoumi • 8 min read
MER Article Shoring Up the National Security State Many expected the Obama administration to slow or altogether stop the growth of the national security state that its two predecessor administrations brought into being, but just the opposite has occurred. Prisoners are still held without charge at Guantánamo Bay; the Patriot Act is still the law; t Nina Farnia • 10 min read
MER Article Civil Wrongs Within 24 hours of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush administration had announced the identities of the alleged perpetrators, all but one dead, and had largely reconstructed the plot as it understood it. In short order the administration put forth the notion that another such attack was immin Louise Cainkar • 13 min read
Current Analysis Recipe for a Riot On October 8, 48-year old Tawfiq Jamal got into his car with his 18-year old son and a friend, and set out for the house of his relatives, the Shaaban family, who lived as of then in a new, predominantly Jewish neighborhood on the eastern edges of Acre. A walled city on the sea, mainly famed in the Peter Lagerquist • 31 min read
Current Analysis The Golan Waits for the Green Light Since their government has not, Shoshi Anbal and a posse of her fellow Tel Aviv housewives are preparing to engage in diplomacy with Syria. On May 18, they assembled along the Israeli-Syrian frontier to applaud what at the time was Syrian President Bashar al-Asad’s latest iteration of his call for n Nicolas Pelham • 19 min read
Current Analysis Is Time on Iranian Women Protesters’ Side? In early June, Zanestan—an Iran-based online journal—announced a rally in Haft Tir Square, one of Tehran’s busiest, to protest legal discrimination suffered by Iranian women. The demonstration was also called to commemorate two landmark events in women’s struggle for equality in Iran. The first was the Ziba Mir-Hosseini • 16 min read
Current Analysis Vilifying Muslims Is Un-American Muslim-bashing has become socially acceptable in the United States. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 46 percent of Americans hold negative perceptions of Islam, 7 percentage points higher than after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The poll also discovered that a third of the Moustafa Bayoumi • 2 min read
