Aljumhuriya Daniel Marwecki, in a fascinating book titled Germany and Israel: Whitewashing and Statebuilding, argues that in the 1960s, “Germany was ‘denazified’ by Israel in exchange for weapons and money. On the other hand, Arab States were ‘nazified’ in a move that sought to legitimize the Israeli position in the Arab-Israeli Conflict.” Thus, at that…
The Monologue Reigns Supreme: A Response to PEN Berlin
Aljumhuriya Editor’s Note: The letter reproduced below was written and sent to PEN Berlin at the end of January this year by Yassin al-Haj Saleh, as a member of the writer’s organization. While some changes have been made to the text to ensure the avoidance of misunderstanding, the central meaning and arguments have been left…
The Three Pillars of the Enforced Disappearance
The Dial More than 110,000 people were forcibly disappeared in Syria over the course of the last 13 years. What started in March 2011 as a peaceful revolution and part of the “Arab spring” turned into a civil war in 2012. The regime used extreme violence from the very beginning, and by 2013 the situation…
The Liquid Imperialism That Engulfed Syria
New Lines magazine Syria is a country of only 71,498 square miles in area, with a population of less than 24 million, and yet two global superpowers (the United States and the Russian Federation) and three of the largest regional powers (Iran, Turkey and Israel) are present on its territory. Israel has occupied the Syrian…
Normalization with a mass murderer
L’Orient Today There is something incomprehensible about the accelerated pace of normalization between a growing number of Arab regimes and Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. After the visits of the Syrian dictator to Muscat in February and then Abu Dhabi March, Syria's foreign minister made his first trip last Wednesday to Saudi Arabia since 2011.…
Syria’s Catastrophe Upon Catastrophe
DAWN In the first few days after the earthquake that devastated southern Turkey and northwestern Syria in early February, only vehicles carrying the dead bodies of Syrian refugees crossed the Turkish border into Syria—not aid and equipment to rescue people from the rubble of collapsed buildings, not vitally needed medical supplies, not temporary shelters to…
Syria Before the Storm: A Dissident Recalls Life in the Pre-Assad Era
New Lines Magazine My father, Ibrahim al-Haj Saleh, was a man of faith. As a child, he had attended a traditional Islamic elementary school, known as a “kuttab,” where he learned to read and write. I witnessed him pray and fast during the holy month of Ramadan his whole life. My mother, Ajaja al-Husayn,…
Anatomy of Tadamon Massacre, Damascus, 2013
What does the Tadamon massacre that come to be known in details in April this year, 9 years after was committed tell us about Syria? This article investigate seven faces of this horrific crime. The full text is only available through the Journal of Genocide Research This essay was first published in Arabic by Aljumhuriya…
Selective Solidarity
medico international Up to recently, it had seemed that many people in the west think that the Russian War in Ukraine is qualitatively different from the one it has been leading for six years and a half in Syria. While one witnesses international outrage at the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and European countries are…
Chomsky Is No Friend of the Syrian Revolution
New Lines Magazine Just three weeks following my release after 16 years in prison in Syria, I started translating a book into Arabic. The book was “Powers and Prospects: Reflections on Human Nature and the Social Order,” by Noam Chomsky. It had taken me some time to realize that the leading linguist and the harsh…