MER Article Editor's Picks (Winter 2011) Aloni, Udi. What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). Bier, Laura. Revolutionary Womanhood: Feminisms, Modernity and the State in Nasser’s Egypt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). Booth, Ken and Tim Dunne. Terror in Our Tim (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article New Insights into Libyan History Anna Baldinetti, The Origins of the Libyan Nation: Colonial Legacy, Exile and the Emergence of a New Nation-State (Oxford: Routledge, 2010). With the fall of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011, his paranoid and largely successful attempts to close off contemporary Libyan history to academic inquiry ha Jason Pack • 7 min read
MER Article The September 11 Effect on Anthropology Conventional wisdom among scholars of the Middle East is that the September 11, 2001 attacks left behind a threatening professional environment. Graduate students and faculty alike speak of hostile infiltrators in their classrooms, inevitably bitter tenure battles and the self-censorship that both c Lara Deeb, Jessica Winegar • 5 min read
MER Article Gender and Revolution in Egypt During the 18 days of the uprising against Husni Mubarak’s autocratic rule, the streets were filled with women from across the Egyptian social spectrum. Young and old, veiled and unveiled, poor and affluent -- women came out in force to support the movement for a democratic revolution. Yet the Mervat Hatem • 14 min read
MER Article Gaza's Tunnel Complex For an informal smuggling route, the tunnel complex underneath Gaza’s border with Egypt is remarkably formal. A security cordon of chicken-wire fencing surrounds the Gazan side of the site, barring entrance from Rafah town a few hundred meters away. At each exit a squad in military fatigues monitors Nicolas Pelham • 18 min read
MER Article The Illegal Oil Trade Along Turkey's Borders According to a 2005 report from the Turkish parliament, approximately 3.75 billion liters (or 1 billion gallons) of smuggled oil enter Turkey every year. [1] This volume makes up 18 percent of the national oil market; the smuggling costs the state $3 billion in lost tax revenue. Oil smuggling Firat Bozcali • 15 min read
MER Article Lampedusa More than 52,000 would-be migrants have landed on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011. Roughly half of the arrivals are young Tunisian men looking for job opportunities in Europe. Most of the others are Sahelians, sub-Saharan Africans or South Asians fleeing the violence in Libya. In many c Amanda Ufheil-Somers • 5 min read
MER Article The Clandestine Central Mediterranean Passage About 78 nautical miles separate the Tunisian town of al-Huwariyya at the head of the Cap Bon peninsula from Capo Feto at the southwestern tip of Sicily. An Italy-bound voyage between the two points, on the straight line headed roughly northeast-east, takes about 13 hours at an average speed of six Naor Ben-Yehoyada • 10 min read
MER Article Europe's Border Control with a Humanitarian Face “Suppose that Jordan decides to release its 2 million Iraqi refugees or that there is a regime change in Algeria,” hypothesized a risk analyst from Warsaw headquarters of Frontex, the European Union’s external border control agency, in 2008. Added his colleague, an operations specialist: “We have Cyprus, which has Greg Feldman • 10 min read
MER Article Extra-Legality A large, sinister pair of eyes stares out from the cover of the February 2011 Wired magazine, above the heading “The Underworld Exposed.” The rest of the face is darkened, melding with the shadows. At the top of the shadows reside the words “Counterfeit Ferraris, Sex Syndicates, Darknets, Secret Soc Carolyn Nordstrom • 11 min read
MER Article Was the Libya Intervention Necessary? The death of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi has become one of the most contested moments of Libya’s eight-month war. The exact circumstances of the colonel’s demise on October 20 are unclear, but evidence is mounting that Libya’s former ruler was killed -- extra-judicially executed -- by the band of young Claudia Gazzini • 20 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Winter 2011) A question nagged at Occupy Wall Street and its myriad imitators, the most exciting social movement to emanate from the United States in more than a decade, for much of the fall. “What are your demands?” journalists persisted in asking. “What do you want?” The Editors • 9 min read
