Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
At first, I didn’t believe it when someone said last week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had backtracked on his agreement to let US Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib visit Israel and the Palestinian Territories. After all, they are members of Congress and the...
Today, what is commonly known as the Fertile Crescent — the cradle of civilization and the Garden of Eden — is not so fertile anymore. The region that extends from the Nile Valley, through the Levant and along the Tigris-Euphrates river system is facing unprecedented pressure stemming from a...
It comes as welcome news that authorities in Saudi Arabia have taken important steps toward dismantling the repressive male guardianship system, which treats women in the country as minors. Women will no longer require permission from a male guardian to travel abroad and can apply for a...
Dear Ambassador Friedman, We, both Israelis and Palestinians, are members of the editorial board of the Palestine-Israel Journal, a joint quarterly issued in East Jerusalem for the past three decades. Our aim is to promote dialogue based upon equality, mutual recognition and respect and...
Ever since the 1979 revolution, Iran has been at the center stage of controversy — from the embassy siege to the nuclear deal. Today, the US government considers the country to be the world's “leading state sponsor of terrorism” due to funding networks and operational cells globally. So,...
The United Nations was not even three years old when it launched its first peacekeeping mission in 1948. For the last 70 years, it has been continuously involved in such operations, often with mixed results. Over this time, peacekeeping and the wars to which it has been applied have changed. The...
In an article on Fair Observer that attempts to analyze the latest developments inside Iran, Irina Tsukerman not only claims to understand a truth the rest of the media apparently have no access to, but in the subtitle to the article reveals her ideological bias: “A witch-hunt against real or...
On Monday, July 22, Iranian media reported the arrest of 17 alleged CIA assets, captured around facilities associated with the country’s nuclear program. Some of these individuals, although unnamed, have already been sentenced to death. It is not clear whether this group is connected to an...
On July 12, Turkey announced that the first shipment of the Russian-supplied S-400 missile defense system arrived at the Mürted air base. The US Department of Defense responded by removing Turkey from its F-35 fighter jets program, on the grounds that it “cannot coexist” with Russian...
In the run-up to this year’s general election, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged that he would annex large areas of the West Bank if he secured victory. The fulfillment of his promise — assuming Netanyahu wins the re-run scheduled for September after failing to form a...
When Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) ascended to power in 2002, Ankara’s foreign policy in the Middle East was extremely different from what it is today. From the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 until the beginning of this century, the ideology and stances of Mustafa...
