Humanism_In_Ruins_Featured Image WHITE Current Analysis Humanism in Ruins – An Interview with Aslı Iğsız Aslı Iğsız discusses her book Humanism in Ruins, which examines the long-lasting impacts of the 1923 Greek-Turkish Population Exchange Agreement. Challenging the common portrayal of the population exchange agreement as a success story, she unveils how the discourses of liberal humanism and coexisten Burak Başaranlar • 12 min read
MER Article Being Muslim at the Margins On January 6, 2008, newspapers in the province of Tunceli in eastern Turkey appeared festooned with the holiday wishes, “May your Gaghand be merry.” [1] Celebrated on the same day as Armenian Christmas and bearing the same name, Gaghand is an important, if almost forgotten event in the religious cal Kerem Öktem • 11 min read
Current Analysis Israel’s “Demographic Demon” in Court A low-key but injudicious war of words briefly broke out between Israel’s two most senior judges in the wake of the May 2006 decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law. A temporary measure passed by the Knesset in July 2003, the law eff Jonathan Cook • 12 min read
Current Analysis Darfur: Worst Humanitarian Crisis “The worst humanitarian crisis in the world today”—so relief agencies and news reports refer to the catastrophe still unfolding in the westernmost Sudanese province of Darfur. With the United Nations estimating that 50,000 people have been killed and 1 million displaced, the description is apt. But Maren Milligan • 2 min read
MER Article A Bloody Stupid War When a war breaks out people say, “It’s too stupid; it can’t last long.” But though a war may well be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. -- Albert Camus, The Plague Moustafa Bayoumi • 27 min read
MER Article Israeli Constitutional Committee Faces Double Bind As Israel celebrated its fifty-sixth Independence Day in April 2004, with most cars, streets, homes and public buildings draped in the national colors of blue and white, a senior member of the Israeli parliament launched a salvo beloved of the Zionist majority. Ilan Shalgi of the secular Shinui party demanded Jonathan Cook • 16 min read
MER Article The Challenge to the Two-State Solution Ariel Sharon's push for unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four forlorn West Bank settlements in the spring of 2004 came after a year of mounting criticism inside and outside Israel that he had no long-term "solution" for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the prime Gary Sussman • 20 min read
MER Article The Shrinking Space of Citizenship On February 14, 2002, the Israeli government sent several light planes to spray 12,000 dunams of crops in the southern Negev region with poisonous chemicals. The destroyed fields had been cultivated for years by Bedouin Arabs, on ancestral lands they claim as their own. The minister responsible for Oren Yiftachel • 20 min read
MER Article Refugees in Their Own Country Six bodies uncovered in February during construction on an old Iraqi army base in Iraqi Kurdistan were grim reminders of the Ba'th regime's past genocidal policies towards the Kurds. "The past is ever present in Kurdistan," as one Kurdish journalist says. But little reminder is needed of past atroci Maggy Zanger • 11 min read
Current Analysis Israel's Palestinians and the Politics of Law and Order Last week, a shocking case of Israeli police brutality in the occupied West Bank was reported in the Washington Post. Officers accosted three young Palestinians out delivering groceries, beat them and took photographs of themselves holding up the Palestinians' bloodied heads "like hunting trophies" Graham Usher • 5 min read
Current Analysis Israel's Cabinet Crisis and the Political Economy of Peace Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak postponed this week's cabinet meeting from Sunday to Tuesday in an effort to resolve the crisis prompted by the Shas Party's announcement that it is leaving his government. Shas (Sephardi Torah Guardians), with 17 seats in the Knesset, is Israel's third largest part Joel Beinin • 4 min read
