As Washington retreats, Eastern Mediterranean conflict further marginalizes NATO
September 11th, 20200 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance in name alone. Recent events notwithstanding, the brewing conflict over territorial waters in the Eastern Mediterranean indicates that the military union between mostly Western countries is faltering. The current Turkish-Greek tension is only one facet of a much larger...
Israel’s friends at the RNC: “Christian Zionists” dictate the agenda of the Republican Party
September 3rd, 20200 It is difficult — and futile — to argue which American president has historically been more pro-Israel. While former President Obama, for example, has pledged more money to Israel than any other U.S. administration in history, Donald Trump has provided Israel with a blank check of seemingly endless political...
Nuclear weapons remain an existential threat
September 3rd, 20200 Seventy-five years ago, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing an end to World War II and sounding a warning about the devastating power of nuclear weapons. Remarkably, we have managed to avoid using these weapons in warfare again. But nuclear arms still present an existential threat and it is...
“Dying to Fish”: How Israeli piracy destroyed Gaza’s once thriving fishing industry
September 3rd, 20200 On August 16, the Israeli navy declared the Gaza sea a closed military zone. A few days later, a group of Gaza fishermen decided to take their chances by fishing within a mere two or three nautical miles off the Gaza shore. No sooner had they cast their nets, Israeli navy bullets began whizzing all around them. Soon after the...
“Palestine is still the issue”: U.N. vote exposes, isolates Canada
August 26th, 20200 This article is cowritten by Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo The notion that “Canada is better”, especially when compared with U.S. foreign policy, has persisted for many years. Recent events at the United Nations have, however, exposed the true nature of Canada’s global position, particularly in the matter of its blind and...
Five defining features of American foreign policy
August 20th, 20200 American foreign policy goes back to the late 1700s, when Benjamin Franklin lobbied France to support the colonies in their fight for independence from the British. Over 200-plus years, our foreign policy evolved essential features that helped make the United States the world’s indispensable nation. Robert Zoellick, a former World...
Hands off Lebanon: Macron’s self-serving “new pact” must be shunned
August 19th, 20200 French President Emmanuel Macron is in no position to pontificate to Lebanon about the need for political and economic reforms. Just as thousands of Lebanese took to the streets of Beirut demanding “revenge” against the ruling classes, the French people have relentlessly been doing the same; both peoples have been met with police...
The politics of war: What is Israel’s endgame in Lebanon and Syria?
August 15th, 20201 On August 4, hours before a massive explosion rocked the Lebanese capital, Beirut, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an ominous warning to Lebanon. “We hit a cell and now we hit the dispatchers,” Netanyahu said during an official tour of a military facility in central Israel. “I suggest to all of them, including,...
Rising China is here to stay
July 22nd, 20200 This is an election year, so we can expect a fresh round of China-bashing. American politicians love to use China as a punching bag; it never stops, really, but the trend accelerates when candidates are running for office. Some punches deserve to be thrown: China does a lot of things we don’t like. It challenges American interests,...
Emission rollbacks are bad for Michigan’s economy
July 22nd, 20200 In 2012, President Obama enacted new fuel emission rules that required automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks by 2025. The new rules were designed to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and were projected to save Americans $1.7 trillion in fuel costs. These new fuel emission standards were a huge win...
Good news from Washington: AIPAC, Israel losing to progressive Democrats
July 19th, 20200 While the U.S. administration of President Trump remains adamant in its support for Israel, the traditional Democratic leadership continues to employ underhanded language, the kind of “strategic ambiguity” that offers full support to Israel and nothing but lip service to Palestine and peace. Trump’s policies on Israel and...
Re-elect Prosecutor Kym Worthy, keep the progress going
July 17th, 20200 Clearly the upcoming November 2020 is a critical election: President Trump will be challenged by former Vice President Joe Biden in an election that will be historical and vital to us all. Yet as former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is local.” In Detroit/Wayne County, Michigan, the primary...
Tearing down the idols of colonialism: Why Tunisia, Africa must demand French apology
July 1st, 20200 The visit by newly-elected Tunisian President Kais Saied to France on June 22 was intended to discuss bilateral relations, trade, etc. But it was also a missed opportunity, where Tunisia could have formally demanded an apology from France for the decades of French colonialism, which has shattered the social and political fabric of this...
PA political circus: Why Abbas must hand the keys over to the PLO
June 29th, 20200 The painful truth is that the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas has already ceased to exist as a political body that holds much sway or relevance, either to the Palestinian people or to Abbas’ former benefactors, namely the Israeli and the American governments. So, when the Palestinian Authority prime minister,...
Police violence: Is “reform” enough?
June 21st, 20200 Every few years, some particular instance of a pervasive phenomenon — police violence in the form of unjustified or at least highly questionable killings — "goes viral" with the result that America's cities explode in protest. Every time that happens, some American politicians complain about a non-existent "war on police", while......
Talented and dedicated citizens are reason for hope in a divided nation
June 21st, 20200 Discouraging news surrounds us. It’s hard to hide from. It’s in the newspapers, on television and radio, and on the Internet. Our nation is divided and our politics are polarized. We are torn apart by disagreements over immigration and by racial divisions. A pandemic has killed more than 100,000 Americans and hobbled the economy....
The ‘Palestinian Chair’: Exposing Israel’s direct role in U.S. violence
June 20th, 20200 Exposing Israel The banning of deadly police practices by many American states and cities following the murder of an African American man, George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police officers is, once more, shedding light on U.S.-Israeli collaboration in the fields of security and crowd control. From California to New York, and......
Why representative democracy matters
June 6th, 20200 Over the last few years, the health of American democracy has come under great scrutiny. Polling routinely shows that Americans are concerned that democratic institutions aren’t working as well as they ought to. Inevitably, this brings up the question of whether we can mend our problems or if the system of representative democracy...
‘Wolf warrior diplomacy’: Israel’s China strategy in peril
June 6th, 20200 Israel’s balancing act that allowed it to reap America’s unconditional and, often, blind support, while slowly benefiting from China’s growing economic influence and political prestige, is already floundering. Thanks to the heated cold war between the U.S. and Chinese economic superpowers, the Israeli strategy of playing both...
George Floyd’s death amplifies living in a nation with White privileges
June 6th, 20200 In light of what has been happening recently I have a few words to say. Let’s put the pandemic aside for a second, but keep in mind we have all been locked up and quarantined in our homes for at least three months now and so all our voices are amplified and all our emotions are magnified. The killing of George Floyd was senseless and...
My Beit Daras, my Nakba: Two Palestinian intellectuals reminisce about their destroyed village
May 15th, 20200 Dr. Ghada Ageel and Dr. Ramzy Baroud have more in common than their scholarly research on Palestinian history and politics. They are both refugees and the direct descendants of Palestinian refugees who were expelled from their historic village of Beit Daras at gunpoint during the catastrophic events that led to the Palestinian Nakba of......
Changes in the bankruptcy code offer a lifeline to struggling businesses amid the COVID-19 pandemic
May 11th, 20200 Almost all countries around the world are forced to adopt dramatic measures to slow down the COVID 19 pandemic. With social distancing in place by public health departments, we are all part of the fight to combat this pandemic. These measures have severely impacted the global economy in various ways. Small businesses will suffer the...
Ilhan Omar’s signature is more than disappointing, it’s shameful
May 8th, 20202 This week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, urging him to increase "diplomatic action by the United States to renew the expiring United Nations arms embargo against Iran and United Nations travel restrictions on those Iranian individuals involved......
Dearborn’s mayor should’ve been transparent about having COVID-19
May 1st, 20201 On Wednesday, Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly announced on Facebook that he and his wife were dealing with the coronavirus and the city’s many residents were happy to hear that they had recovered from the terrible virus, safe and strong. “Although I am a public figure, I am someone, like many of you, who values personal and family...
Opinion: Reasons for hope in a dark time
April 30th, 20200 We are living in a difficult time. Our country and its communities are deeply polarized; many Americans distrust one another as well as the government and other institutions. The novel coronavirus has deepened our problems in a way none of us imagined. The number of Americans who have contracted COVID-19 has surpassed a million. Tens......
