Middle East Strategy at Harvard

MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. John R. Bradley has written for The Economist, The Washington Quarterly, The Financial Times, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek, and Salon. His new book is [...]

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From Josef Joffe
Of course, antisemitism cannot be amusing. How could it be? This darkest of creeds has spawned million-fold death, not to speak of its less murderous forms like discrimination, persecution and expulsion.
But here is a rare instance that might bring at least a bittersweet smile to your face. Then, further below, we’ll get serious [...]

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From Michele Dunne
As if it were not enough that an Egyptian criminal court sentenced civil society activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim in absentia to two years in prison plus a fine for “harming the reputation of Egypt abroad,” now the Egyptian media reports that the courts have agreed to hear another suit seeking to strip Saad [...]

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From Tamara Cofman Wittes
Much of today’s backlash against democracy promotion in the Middle East can be traced to the Hamas victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections of 2006, and its effect of reinforcing the “Algerian nightmare” complex among nervous Washington policy makers about the prospect for political takeovers of Arab countries by illiberal and anti-American [...]

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From Steven A. Cook
For those too caught up in the drama of on-again, off-again Israeli-Palestinian talks, the Iraq and/or Iran debates, and Lebanon’s political paralysis to pay close attention, Egypt seems like the one part of the Middle East that is not teetering on the brink. The team that Husni (and Gamal) Mubarak put in [...]

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From J. Scott Carpenter
As early as this weekend, Geert Wilders, controversial Dutch politician and vocal critic of Islam, will release his new film, Fitna, on the internet. Fitna, which in Arabic means “dissension,” promises to be even more inflammatory in Muslim-majority countries than the Danish cartoons that sparked riots in many capitals in 2006. According [...]

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From Matthew Levitt
This past week’s news placed Hamas in the spotlight, with press coverage of key Hamas activity in the West Bank, Egypt and Jordan. While Hamas suffered significant setbacks at the hands of Israeli and Jordanian authorities, the group fared much better in Egypt.

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