The Alawite Massacres and the Future of Syria

karamshaar.com Like all honeymoons, the “Syrian revolutionary honeymoon”—in the words of Asef Bayat—was destined to end eventually. For nearly three months, many people were happy and in a celebratory mood after the fall of the Assad family regime, which had ruled the country for 54 suffocating years. But the end of the honeymoon came in…

The Syrian Conflict Is Not Yet Over

aljumhuriya Has the Syrian revolution triumphed with the fall of the Assad regime? Is what we have witnessed since last December a successful revolution – albeit after a long, tortuous path? This question carries cognitive significance, since it demands a detailed understanding of the almost 14 years which passed in Syria between the outbreak of…

What Was It That Came to an End in Syria?

Aljumhuriya In many of the off-the-cuff, incidental comments about Syria after the fall of the Assad regime that I observed, quite a number of people in Europe and the Middle East skeptically focused on what they would like to see and expressed their frustration for not seeing what they wanted; or they would mention anecdotes…

Seeing Israel Clearly Through Arab Eyes

New Lines Magazine While conflict with Israel has been part of the collective consciousness of the Arab world for generations, the character of the Israeli state and its ideological underpinnings have rarely been the subject of serious reflection outside of certain Palestinian circles. In some neighboring countries like Syria and Lebanon, the existence of Israel…

Gaza in Berlin

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…

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…