Follow Me Online

Making Change Podcast

Facebook

Twitter

Gopin Associates, LLC

YouTube

Middle East

  • SHI’A CRESCENT OR SHI’A CRUMB CAKE?

    An important backdrop to the militant American foreign policy of recent years is the fear that also pervades many Arab capitals of a rising “Shi’a Crescent” across the Middle East, which refers to the rise in militant power of Shi’ites across the region. Shi’ites represent about 12% of the Muslim population worldwide, as opposed to Sunnis who are the vast majority. King Abdullah of Jordan gave a grim warning of this rise on December 8, 2004 in anticipation of the Iraqi elections.

    But Dr. Moshe Maoz, Israel’s most senior expert on Syria and Iran, and also passionately committed to peace, has exposed this fear as oversimplified and misplaced, in an important study for the Saban Center. What appears as a rising crescent of the moon is actually more like crumb cake. There are separate and isolated movements across the region of Shi’ites asserting their presence, their rights and their power. …

  • A Humanitarian Award For Syria, a Censure for America?

    James Denselow writes of the horrible conditions of refugees inside and outside Iraq, 4 million of them, including minorities inside Iraq with no militia to protect. This includes Palestinians, of course, who, already living in horrifying camps, have been beaten and tortured by Iraqi police.

    As the violence against Palestinians in Iraq continues, the number of refugees in al-Waleed camp has increased to more than 1,700 today. They live in conditions totally unsuited to extended human habitation. Hazards include an extremely harsh physical environment, extreme temperatures (+50 C to sub-zero) outbreaks of fire amongst the tents, accidents caused by passing trucks and infestation of snakes and rats. Residents of this camp are assisted by UNHCR’s Iraqi Operation Unit in Amman and aid agencies such as Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). Unlike the Palestinians in the al-Tanf no-man’s land camp they suffer of a severe lack of protection as they are

    …

  • Jewish Arabs and a New Middle East


    Common Ground News Service – Middle East
    Jewish Arabs and a New Middle East
    by Marc Gopin

    27 March 2008

    WASHINGTON – In 1998, Prince Hassan of Jordan appeared on video at the University of Notre Dame, marking one of the first academic conferences in the field of religion and conflict resolution. As he spoke via teleconference, he quoted at length and with great love from the writings of Moses Maimonides – the world-famous medieval Jewish philosopher who had been a chief conduit between Arab neo-Aristotelian philosophy and the Christian world.

    It was already a thrilling moment for me – the conference was the first that I attended as an academic speaker – but Maimonides was part and parcel of my sequestered religious childhood. I went to school for 13 years as a child at a place called Maimonides School, and prayed there on Sundays and Saturdays. For Prince Hassan,

    …

  • Human Intelligence is the key to Middle East War Prevention

    David Ignatius, always well informed, outlines the ‘surprise’ in the West about the renewal of Israeli-Syrian negotiations, and presents the interesting puzzles that still surround the process. He writes:

    What’s going on between Syria and Israel? Are the indirect peace negotiations through Turkish mediators that were announced last month for real? I’ve been talking with sources on all sides, and they present an upbeat view of a peace process that has taken many people (including top Bush administration officials) by surprise.

    But of course it was a surprise, due to the foolishness of American isolationism and neoconservative ideology of the past eight years that we will pay heavily for well into the future. I have been on the ground inside Syria working on peace since 2005. I can say without a doubt that anyone with intelligence would have discovered how consistent the drumbeat was from Syrians at the highest …

  • An Important Conversation on a Palestinian Child poisoned by Israeli Military Waste

    An important conversation on mepeace.org between Palestinians and Jews is developing on Israeli military waste on the West Bank and its destruction of a child’s leg. In response to this shocking tragedy people inside Israel, abroad, and in Palestine are trying to draw attention to this by working together.

    Yesterday (Monday) we went with Iyad to search for and photograph evidence to document the military waste and dangerous materials that the IOF leaves in the area of the Jahalin Bedouin in the south Hebron hills. Iyad took us to visit a family whose child’s leg was badly burnt a month ago when he was playing in the desert with ammunition remains left behind by the Israeli military. Nothing could have prepared us for our meeting with the boy, whose name is Jabar, even though he had received medical attention at Yata [a nearby city]. The condition of his leg

    …

  • What exactly is pro-Israel?

    WASHINGTON – The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the most powerful lobby groups in the United States, just concluded its annual Washington conference. It drew a long line of administration officials and the presidential candidates to its doorsteps, all touting orthodox lines on what it means to be pro-Israel – messages carefully crafted to please the lobby. Now is a good time to ask, what exactly does “pro-Israel” mean, and who is pro-Israel in the United States today? The ones who twist every arm in Congress to be silent, to suppress what they know is right to do in terms of a fair Israeli-Palestinian deal? We have before us now a hair-trigger set of confrontations from Lebanon to the Persian Gulf, with long-range missiles, chemical and nuclear capable, aimed at Israel from a country in the Persian Gulf that has no business in Gaza. And yet, due to …

  • Israelis are Talking to Hamas

    First published in Middle East Online

    2008-05-26,

    WASHINGTON—There are Israeli Jews who have been talking to Hamas for years, especially Rabbi Menahem Frohman. In fact, there are more Israeli Jews, official and un-official, who would be talking not only to Hamas, but also to Syria and Iran were the White House not pressuring them against dialogue with enemies of Israel. This is unprecedented: a third party, supposedly mediating for peace, that forbids two parties from talking to each other.

    Sober intelligence analysts at the highest levels in Israel have been arguing the virtue of negotiation and a process of offers and counter-offers—not because they are nonviolence activists, but because they are realists seeking the path of least resistance to a more stable and safe Middle East. They have every intention of confronting the military threat from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, but through a subtle combination of approaches, not the least …

  • A Mufti, A Christian and A Rabbi

    In the West, A Mufti, a Christian and a Rabbi is often how a good interfaith joke begins. But I live inside this reality. I am a rabbi and my Syrian colleague, Hind Kabawat, is a Christian Arab. We have worked for four years with the Grand Mufti of Syria, Sheikh Ahmed Hassoun, in both Damascus and Aleppo. [Note: this has been moved down.] The three of us, along with many others of courage, have put on public events in Syria for four years that no one thought possible. No one believed Protestant, Catholic, Sunni, Shiâa, and Jewish clerics would sit together at a table, in front of cameras, working out the foundations of a tolerant civil society and making commitments to peace in the heart of Syria. We did this not only in the shadow of American neo-conservative efforts to attack Syria but also surrounded by militants in …

Categories