Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 37

Exodus

My latest is a review of Samel Tadros' book Motherland Lost in the Wall Street Journal.

The Middle East is tough on minorities. After millennia of Jewish presence throughout the Arab and Persian lands, almost every country in the region—save for Israel, of course—was emptied of Jews in the last century.

Today it's the Middle East's Christians who are streaming out. In Lebanon, Christians made up a slight majority a couple of decades ago, but today they're down to barely a third of the populatio...

Can Beirut Be Paris Again?

My latest essay in the print edition of City Journal is now available online. Here's the first part:

Before it became the poster child for urban disaster areas in the mid-1970s, Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East. With its French Mandate architecture, its world-class cuisine, its fashionable and liberated women, its multitude of churches on the Christian side of town, and its thousand-year-old ties to France, it fit the part. Then civil war broke out in 1975 and tore city and count...

Diana West's Junk History

I'm a little slow this week since I'm out of town visiting family and attending a wedding, but I have some more material almost ready to go. In the meantime, take a look at historian Ron Radosh's masterful takedown, called “McCarthy on Steroids,” of Diana West's paranoid book, America Betrayal.

His review essay is epic length and you really need to read the whole thing, but here's an excerpt from the beginning.

Many Americans at both ends of the political spectrum view history in conspiratorial...

Hezbollah Plays the Israel Card

Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah briefly emerged from his underground lair on Friday and delivered his first public speech in years urging his enemies to stop fretting over his involvement in the Syrian war and worry instead about the Jews. “Call us terrorists, criminals, try to kill us,” he said, “we Shiites will never abandon Palestine.”

But they have abandoned Palestine—for now, anyway—and are fighting instead to save their collective backside in Syria. If Bashar al-Assad falls...

Is Morocco the Model for Arab Democracy?

I have another long essay in the current issue of The Tower magazine, this one about Morocco. I briefly cover a few things at the beginning that I’ve covered here at length, so I’m going to post an excerpt from the middle instead.

Americans love revolution. Why shouldn’t we? Ours was among the most successful in history. It endures more than 200 years later, and was not the result of gradual change. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the b...

Tunisia on the Brink

The Arab Spring began in Tunisia, and it’s lurching toward the brink again just weeks after the Egyptian army overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government.

Last week an assassin took out left-wing opposition leader Mohammed Brahmi with a 9mm pistol. Ballistics reports indicate the killer used the exact same weapon to murder another opposition leader, Chokri Belaid, last winter. And this week Al Qaeda-linked terrorists dug in on Mount Chambi killed at least eight Tunisian soldiers.

Ennahda, the l...

Egypt’s Morsi Investigated for Conspiracy and Murder

Egyptian prosecutors are investigating the now-overthrown president Mohammad Morsi for his alleged involvement in a plot with Hamas to break Muslim Brotherhood members out of jail in 2011—including Morsi himself—that left fourteen prison guards dead.

The Brotherhood claims the charges are politically motivated. That may well be the case. Egyptian prosecutors aren’t exactly above board and honest, not now and not ever.

Far more interesting than whether or not Morsi was involved is that the charg...

Kickstarter Rewards Delivered

Those who donated to my Kickstarter project to fund my last trip to the Middle East have just received a full color e-book for their iPads, Kindles, Nooks, Kobos, etc.

This book is only available to my Kickstarter supporters. You can't get it anywhere else.

If you wish you had one of these, I’ll be running another Kickstarter project soon and you can guarantee yourself a copy of the next one.

If you donated to my Kickstarter project and did not receive your copy today, send an email to michaelto...

Not Even Zombies Can Save the Middle East

Israelis and Arabs aren’t likely to get along in the real world any time soon, but they briefly pull it off in the film adaptation of Max Brooks’ mega best-selling novel, World War Z. People who hate Israel for a living are giving the movie a big thumbs-down because of it.

As’ad AbuKhalil, the self-described “Angry Arab,” quotes a reader named Mohammad who describes the film as “Zionist pornography.”

Here is Jesse Benjamin at the relentlessly axe-grinding Mondoweiss Web site: “Not only is Israe...

If Hezbollah Had a Facebook Page...

...this is what it would look like.

OG Image: