Middle East

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• 11/26/19
  

  The History Behind the Rocket Used in the Latest Attack Against Israel

  by Gideon Remez

  Israel wielded a similar "mega-rocket" against Egypt 50 years ago. How Soviet advisers dealt with it.

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• 11/24/19
  

  The Mysterious Assassination That Unleashed Jihadism

  by Thomas Hegghammer

  The story of Abdallah Azzam suggests that a root cause of modern jihadism was the collapse in respect for religious authority among young Islamists in the late 1980s.

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• 11/21/19
  

  Coexistence and Sectarianism in the Modern Arab World

  by Ussama Makdisi

  In the case of the Middle East, the need to demythologize communities and their ideological underpinnings needs to go hand in hand with evoking a dynamic history of coexistence that transcends communalism. 

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• 11/7/19
  

  The History Briefing on the Assassination of ISIS Founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: How Historians Have Discussed Recent News

  by Lila Someshwar

  Historians give much-needed context to a complex issue. 

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• 10/24/19
  

  We Must Not Grow Numb To The Yazidi Genocide

  by Alon Ben-Meir

  The international community cannot grow numb to genocide, as this will continue to haunt us only with greater force. The Yazidis have paid the ultimate price, and no other ethnic group should be subjected to the same fate by any perpetrator with impunity, and with apathy from the international community.

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• 10/20/19
  

  The Greatest Danger in the Kurdish Crisis

  by Zaman Stanizai

  If the heavy-handedness of the Turkish military is any indication, Erdogan seems to be bent on the ethnic cleansing and relocation of Kurds in northern Syria and resettling their lands along the Turkish border with Arab Syrian refugees currently residing in Turkey.

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• 10/20/19
  

  Kurdish Stalingrad: The Origins of the US-YPG Battle Synergy

  by Robert Troy Souza

  The American president would be wise to familiarize himself with the recent history that led to the small falafel shop in central Kobane that bears his name.

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• 10/15/19
  

  An Act of Betrayal and Infamy

  by Alon Ben-Meir

  To think that the President would sell America’s interests and abandon its allies for the sake of personal financial gain is not merely outrageous but criminal. 

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• SOURCE: Yahoo! News
  10/11/19
  

  A history of selling out the Kurds, people with 'no friends but the mountains'

  It has been a constant theme in the history of the Kurds, an ethnic group indigenous to parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  10/10/19
  

  Military Leaders Fear They’ve Seen This Before. It Ended in the Iraq War.

  The last time the United States abandoned allies in the Middle East, military officials say, it helped lead to the Iraq war.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  10/10/12
  

  Trump Says the Kurds ‘Didn’t Help’ at Normandy. Here’s the History.

  Kurds may not have been present at the D-Day landings, but there is evidence some fought for the Allies during World War II.

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• 10/6/19
  

  The Middle East: Must We Fight Forever?

  by Harlow Giles Unger

  Almost 235 years have elapsed since John Adams warned against America’s first military involvement in the Arab world. The United States today seems well on the way to fulfilling Adams’s prophecy that we will “fight them forever.”

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/27/19
  

  How war forced the United States to rethink the politics of oil

  by Chris Dietrich

  A historian explains how President Trump’s approach to oil is a relic of a previous era that isn’t likely to work.

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  9/14/2019
  

  The Only Way to End ‘Endless War’

  by Stephen Wertheim

  To get serious about stopping endless war, American leaders must do what they most resist: end America’s commitment to armed supremacy and embrace a world of pluralism and peace.

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• SOURCE: Daily Beast
  6/19/19
  

  Trump and the Persian Gulf Have a Long, Surprising History

  In 1987, Trump attacked Reagan’s deployment in the Gulf to protect ‘ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need destined for allies who won’t help.’ 

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• 6/9/19
  

  Arbella Bet-Shlimon Got Into History to Counter False Perceptions of Middle East Region

  by Erik Moshe

  She had a goal when she first started out in history: to use teaching, scholarship, and research to help offset spurious ideas that foster cruelty to Middle Easterners in the United States and prolong destructive foreign policy abroad.

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• SOURCE: Lobelog
  5/21/19
  

  The Real Reason Iran’s Hardliners Don’t Want To Talk To America

  by Shireen T. Hunter

  Tehran’s reluctance to engage in direct talks with America at a normal state-to-state level within a bilateral framework long predates the Trump administration. 

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• 5/19/19
  

  History Does Not Bode Well for President Trump’s Peace Plan

  by Yoav J. Tenembaum

  History has taught us that every attempt by the United States to settle the Arab Israeli conflict by advancing its own peace plan has failed.    

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• SOURCE: Informed Comment
  5/15/19
  

  Top Ten differences between the Iraq War and Trump’s Proposed Iran War

  by Juan Cole

  An informative look. 

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  5/9/19
  

  Now for Sale on Facebook: Looted Middle Eastern Antiquities

  Artifacts said to have been taken from the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria have been offered for sale on Facebook.