Julian Sayarer is an author and journalist. His latest book is Fifty Miles Wide: Cycling Through Israel and Palestine (Arcadia, 2020).
Fifty years after the Yom Kippur War, its legacy still defines US policy in the Middle East. The aftermath of the conflict saw Washington massively expand aid to Israel — while buying off Arab governments in order to isolate the beleaguered Palestinians.
On this day in 2000, popular resistance forced Israel to abandon its nearly two-decade-long occupation of southern Lebanon. It showed that Israel is not invincible — and provided valuable lessons for the Palestinians.
Both junior US allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia have nurtured ever warmer relations in recent years. But Saudi Arabia’s closeness to Israel is also a source of criticism at home, setting it at odds with broad public support for Palestine.
Israel routinely refuses to extradite its own citizens — including people who’ve flown there purely to escape justice. Its Law of Return rewards criminals who can claim a vague connection to Israel, even as it denies innocent Palestinians their homeland.
Enthusiasts for Israeli militarism often claim that Gaza needs “freeing from Hamas.” Such a claim is steeped in the logic of collective guilt, refusing Palestinians the right to both armed struggle and the ballot box.
Today marks 50 years since Israeli agents murdered Ghassan Kanafani in Beirut. Their terrorist attack silenced the Palestinian writer — but failed to extinguish his people’s spirit of resistance.
Alaa Abd el-Fattah is a leading Egyptian dissident, today held in a maximum security jail in Cairo. His prison writings express the living thought of the Egyptian revolution, defying the Sisi government’s attempt to extinguish it.
Evangelical Zionists want Jews to move to Palestine to set the stage for the divine requital of Armageddon. This hasn’t stopped Israel from sealing alliances with even nakedly antisemitic evangelicals, so long as they support the dispossession of Palestinians.
Two months since the October 25 coup, protesters are in the streets of Sudan demanding restored civilian rule. But military leaders’ success in “normalizing” ties with the US and Israel is helping to entrench them in power.
Joe Biden has continued Donald Trump’s Middle East policies — ignoring Palestinian demands for justice and sealing an alliance between Israel and Gulf state dictatorships.
The Jerusalem Post has proposed that Germany pay off its remaining Holocaust reparations in military hardware for Israel. No financial compensation can make up for history’s greatest crimes — but it shouldn’t be used against Palestinians in the present.
Hammam Chott is famed in UK media as the Tunis cemetery where Jeremy Corbyn supposedly laid a wreath to terrorists. But “wreathgate” was a lie — and it erased the real crime that happened here on October 1, 1985, when Israeli jets murdered 60 people.