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In-Depth Coverage

Original Commentaries

07/02/09
The U.S. Pullout from Iraqi Cities  —
06/25/09
Understanding the Situation in Iran  —Geneive Abdo, fellow, The Century Foundation; former Iran correspondent, The Guardian (1998-2001)
06/23/09
Solving the Problem of the Old City  —Michael Bell, former Canadian ambassador to Egypt, Israel and Jordan; co-director, Jerusalem Old City Initiative, University of Windsor. Interview with Middle East Bulletin.

Setting the Record Straight

Potential Partner for Regional Stability

“As long as the current radical regime is in power in Damascus, there won’t be any negotiated peace even of the most superficial variety because the conflict is indispensible to the Syrian dictatorship. And the most probably type of change in Syria—though its likelihood is still low—to a radical Islamist regime would make any such peace even less likely.”
—Barry Rubin, director, Global Research in International Affairs Center, IDC Herzliya, “Peace on the Borderline,” The Rubin Report, May 31, 2009versus
  • “The al-Asad regime in Syria continues to play the dangerous game of allowing or accepting extremist networks and terrorist facilitators to operate from and through Syrian territory. ... However, unlike Iran, Syria’s motives probably stem from short-sighted calculations rather than ideology. It is possible that over time Syria could emerge as a partner in promoting security in the Levant and in the region.”
    —General David Petraeus, commander, U.S. Central Command, testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, “The Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategic Review and the Posture of U.S. Central Command,” April 2, 2009

    • Middle East Analysis

    Upcoming Events

    WATCH: Prospects for a Two-State Solution: Understanding Challenges and Creating Opportunities

    Featured panelists:

    Brigadier General (Ret.) Ilan Paz, former head of the Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank (2002-2005)
    Ghaith al-Omari, advocacy director, American Task Force on Palestine; advisor, Middle East Progress; former advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

    Discussion moderated by:

    Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, advisor, Middle East Progress

    When: Friday, March 20, 2009
    Program: 9:00am to 10:30am

    WATCH HERE

    The 12th Year

    Noa Rotman, granddaughter of Yitzhak Rabin, published in Yedioth Ahronoth, adapted for Middle East Bulletin

    My memory is worn, scarred, stimulated and pained. Once a year, I sit shiva in the national mourners’ hut, wearing a three-piece suit, hair styled, everything in place, crying reservedly. Once a year, they bring out my grandparents’ freckled wonder girl to say something touching, something authentic and real, while all made up for the cameras, hoping that she won’t forget to top it off with an interesting anecdote from her last encounter with him. The wonder girl, who turned 30 this year, who has the first hint of wrinkles around her eyes, isn’t sure how to sort between realities and revised memories, among the images in her head.
    My memory is worn, but the jailed murderer, it seems, is not. He has enjoyed conjugal visits with his fiance. His fiance, who was introduced to him by right-wing activists since he was sent to prison and who divorced her husband to carry on a horrifying lineage, has been waiting to clutch her son. What sickening timing, for this child, , the result of a repugnant merger between pure satisfied evil, brought into the covenant as our dark reality is teetering on the edge of hell.

    Our bodies hang on the edge of this abyss. It is a long, long row; this is the twelfth journey to this infinity; our fates on the silver platter of Israeli talkback culture, asking and being asked once again, to remember, with great pathos, and never to forget. Actually no, devoid of pathos, but rather with Rabinesque sincerity, feeling a pain that never abates, slightly ashamed, left with a suppressed anger presented with a civic smile. As everyone expects.

    We make our way to another school named after him, with a choir comprised of sweet kids who today may want to remember him, but tomorrow may join the choir of those who dispute his legacy, wishing once again to believe that more people miss that man, whom we have been mourning for twelve years. Occasionally someone reprimands us for refusing to move on.

    My memory hurts. How does it hurt? It hurts like longing, like a broken heart. Why use the word ‘like’? My heart is truly broken. Maybe I’m blessed because I used to have a normal family, with an omelet in the evening and a warm blanket at story time before bed, with pajamas with a faint smell of laundry detergent, with the table set for Friday night dinner, with cakes and relatives. And when everything shattered and we almost became a meager copy of the family we once had been—a faded row of almost painfully beautiful, mourning figureheads—I decided to rescue the remnants of the family I had and stopped cooperating with the collective memory.

    After we stayed quiet for some time, we realized that wouldn’t work, because people said we were too quiet and that we had stopped remembering, that we were a lesser generation than our predecessors. But wait - just a moment ago it seemed like the winds of silence were blowing: after excess talk, mounds of criticism and garbage piled up on our queen mother, our beloved grandmother Leah, who was scorned until she was reduced to nothing, fading away in front of the news cameras on Mount Herzl.

    My memory is pained, my anger has been provoked, my soul is tired, and my life has only just begun.

    Please rise for the singing of our national anthem.