Saw these:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/24/isis-women-girls-fgm-mosul-un

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28466434Wherein is described ISIS's issuing of a Fatwa that all women between the ages of 11 and 46 have to have FGM. (Female genital mutilation ( Read more... )

Benjamin Nutandyahoo, the heroic American Jew who decided that American Jews aren't properly Jewish enough to be Israelis, has been able to reap good PR for his Iron Dome missile defense system:

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The state that has claimed it's about preventing another Holocaust forcibly sterilizing Jews from a particular part of the world whose skin color they don't like and who the Israelis have had major issues accepting as Jews:

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/an-inconveivable-crime.premium-1.484110How any state conceived in liberty could do this is ( Read more... )

In the 1921 election for Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the guy who's now infamous as one of Hitler's propaganda bosses came in fourth. This scenario would be if the Nahashibis, the alternative to the Husseinis, had managed to be the ones to build the prototypical Palestinian leadership. Relative to the Husseinis the Nahashibis were more in tune with ( Read more... )

"At long last, the international community has signed the act that paves the way to a Palestinian state - and long overdue". This is how Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas commented on the UN vote from last month, where the Palestinian autonomy was upgraded to "observer" status. Still not a full member, but definitely a progress. Israel, of course ( Read more... )

What does Israel expect to accomplish by moving new settlements into the West Bank, exactly? As I asked before, so I'll ask again: what justification does Israel have for settling the territory allotted to Palestine in 1948? No amount of excuses about what the Arabs did then explains why Israel's 'security interests' are served by settling and ( Read more... )

When I was still a member of AH.com I began working on a scenario that led to a peace between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. My scenario was inspired by a comment read in a book by I believe Efraim Karsh who stated that if Arafat genuinely wanted to show up Israel in general and Ariel Sharon in particular that he should have tried for ( Read more... )

Evidently people in the United States have learned nothing from the last time a bunch of butthurt reactionaries tried to ragequit the United States after losing an election they made a lousy job of contesting:

( A global link poutpourri )