Mariupol, Ukraine and the Crime of Hospital Bombing

Emergency services are seen on site of the destroyed Mariupol children's hospital as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9, 2022. (Reuters)

17 MARCH 2022 • By Neve Gordon, Nicola Perugini
Emergency services on site at the destroyed Mariupol children’s hospital as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9, 2022 (photo courtesy Reuters).

 

Aren’t wanton attacks on hospitals and other medical facilities considered war crimes? The coauthors of Human Shields, a History of People in the Line of Fire, Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, reveal the shocking truth about military attacks on hospitals, including the Russian Federation’s bombing last week of the hospital at Mariupol, Ukraine.

 

Neve Gordon & Nicola Perugini

 

As people around the world were glued to their screens trying to make sense of the Russian-Ukrainian war, a Russian airstrike devastated a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol. Reports suggest that the Mariupol complex was hit by a series of blasts that shattered windows and ripped away the façade of one building. Clips from the scene show Ukrainian police and soldiers rushing to evacuate victims, including a heavily pregnant woman who is seen carried on a stretcher amidst burning cars and torched trees. A few days later the Associated Press reported that both the woman and her baby had died as a result of the attack.

The attack on the Mariupol hospital was only one of 43 Russian attacks against Ukrainian medical units during the first three weeks of the fighting. In an effort to justify such bombardments, Russia has accused Ukrainian armed forces of using civilian structures and medical facilities as shields for military activities. Immediately after the attack on the maternity ward in Mariupol, the Russian Embassy in Israel shared an image ostensibly showing a Ukrainian battalion operating in proximity to the hospital. The image aimed to corroborate the charge that Ukrainian forces are illegally using civilian structures that are protected by the laws of war as shields. It did not take long, however, for the investigative journalist group Bellingcat to verify that the image used by the Russian Embassy in Tel Aviv was of a building actually located ten kilometers away from the Mariupol hospital and that the Russian line of defense was based on fabrication.

The image shared by the Russian Embassy in Israel and removed from social media after Bellingcat’s forensic investigation.

Bombing hospitals is not something new in the Russian playbook. Physicians for Human Rights has claimed that Russian forces were implicated in 244 attacks on medical facilities in Syria, where the destruction of the enemy’s health care services became a strategic objective of the Assad regime from the war’s outset. [German broadcaster Deutsche Welle claimed “hospitals across Syria have been attacked more than 400 times. Data obtained by DW suggests the attacks formed part of a larger strategy to cripple access to medical facilities in rebel-held areas.”] In rebel held areas within Syria, the medical field was swiftly pushed underground. Yet even when rebels constructed hospitals in caves, with makeshift emergency rooms, outpatient departments, and maternity wards, the Syrian government, which began receiving aerial assistance from the Russian Air Force in 2015, continued hunting the health professionals down. At a certain point, medical units receiving assistance from Médecins Sans Frontières asked the humanitarian organization to stop sharing the GPS coordinates of their facilities with the Syrian government, a common practice used during war to help protect medical units from attack. MSF realized that instead of guaranteeing protection to these hospitals and staff, at times the coordinates enabled the government and its Russian ally to transform them into targets. With the Syrian regime disregarding the distinction between war-makers and health providers, strikes on hospitals and health professionals became a cornerstone in the military campaign to defeat its enemies.

The attacks against medical facilities in Syria were carried out primarily from the air, and when the Russian air force was blamed with breaching the protections offered by the laws of war to civilians and medical units, officials either denied the allegation claiming that no attack had taken place—fake news—or blamed, as in Mariupol, the rebels for the attack and the ensuing destruction, averring that they were responsible since they had used the medical facility as a shield to defend a legitimate military target such as combatants hiding in one of the hospital wards. The Russian response might sound outrageous to some, but it actually emulates a line of defense adopted by an array of militaries since the inception of aerial warfare.


The Colonial Origins of Hospital Bombing
 

Hospital bombings have been consolidated as a warfare technique since the beginning of the last century. Not long after Louis Blériot became the first person to fly across the English Channel, European militaries woke up to the significance of airplanes for war. The Italians rushed to acquire a squadron of Caproni planes and, two years after Blériot’s 1909 flight, introduced aerial bombings to armed conflict as they quelled a popular revolt in Libya, their North African colony.

Human Shields is out from UC Press.

The Italian pilots, who at the time could not fly much faster than 100 kilometers an hour, opened their cockpits over Libya and threw out five-kilogram bombs both at demonstrators and at medical units. In response, the local affiliate of the Red Cross, the Ottoman Red Crescent, sent a cable to the International Committee in Geneva, asking it to “protest indignantly against bombing by Italian airplanes of hospitals marked with Red Crescent flag in Tripolitania.” While the newly established air force continued bombing medical facilities in the colony, Geneva relayed the complaint to the Italian government, asking for a response.

In its reply, the Italian government contested the facts but also requested that protective markings “should be clearly visible on tents, detachments, convoys, etc., so as to make them recognizable even from afar and from the air.” It added that during the fighting, medical personnel should keep a fair distance away from the forces engaged in combat and that in military camps, separate and clearly visible areas should be allotted to hospitals and medical staff. The Italian government declared that it would be unwilling to assume responsibility if such precautions were not observed at all times, for “it could not give up its capability of using all methods of attack authorized by international law, any more than the presence of [medical] units could be allowed to serve as a safeguard for the enemy against its action.” Thus, from the very first instances in which medical units were bombed from the air, the charge that these units were being deployed to shield legitimate military targets was introduced to justify the attacks. Military necessity trumped the protection of medical structures, aid workers and patients.

 

Proximity

The rules of the game were thus established in Libya. But it was only a few years later, in World War I, that airplanes were for the first time systematically used as instruments of violence. The International Committee of the Red Cross collected eighty complaints relating to the bombardment of hospitals and medical installations by artillery or aircraft. One case that received considerable media attention involved the German bombing of several hospital wards in Étaples on the northern coast of France in May 1918. The medical wards were hit repeatedly, with 182 patients and nurses killed and 643 injured. In one of the raids, a German pilot was shot down, and while being cared for in the damaged hospital he had bombed, he was interrogated about the attack.

“He tried at first to excuse himself by saying that he saw no Red Cross,” one newspaper reported, adding that “when challenged with the fact that he knew that he was attacking hospitals, he endeavored to plead that hospitals should not be placed near railways, or if they are, they must take the consequences.” The pilot’s claim was straightforward: during war, those who help sustain life cannot expect to be protected if they are located in proximity to military targets.

In May 1939, while Britain was preparing for another world war, the attack on medical facilities at Étaples and the German pilot’s claim about why the hospitals were bombed was raised in the House of Lords in London and reaffirmed by a much more prominent soldier. Hugh Trenchard, who had served as an infantry officer in the Second Anglo-Boer War and later helped found the Royal Air Force, which he headed from 1918 until 1930, actually supported the explanation provided by the pilot. He told his fellow parliamentarians that he was aware of the “popular idea” that “every hospital flying the Red Cross is purposely bombed.” “One heard very much the same about the bombing of the hospitals and camps at Étaples during the War,” he continued, “and it apparently did not occur to anybody that the real objectives there were the railway and the dumps.”

Bombed hospital in Étaples, 1918. (photo: United Kingdom Ministry of Information, First World War Official Collection).

Trenchard referred his colleagues to the History of the Great War Based on Official Documents—a chronicle of Britain’s military efforts during the First World War—and pointed out what the director of military operations at the War Office said: “We have no right to have hospitals mixed up with reinforcement camps, and close to main railways and important bombing objectives, and until we remove the hospitals from the vicinity of these objectives, and place them in a region where there are no important objectives, I do not think we can reasonably accuse the Germans.” In other words, the British War Office agreed with the Italian government and the German pilot that a hospital’s proximity to a legitimate military target makes it susceptible to attacks, while also intimating that the culpability lies with those who place the hospital in such a location, not with those who bomb it.

 

 

Black Letters

During the Second World War, the intensity of aerial bombings increased dramatically and whole cities were systematically being bombarded, some until they were completely flattened. Indeed, a mere thirty-four years after the first handheld explosives were thrown from a cockpit at Libyan protestors, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, making the singling out of hospitals moot. In what some have called “total war,” civilian life becomes expendable and bombing medical units is par for the course.

The horrors of World War II led the International Committee of the Red Cross to draft a new convention dedicated to the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructures that included legal clauses aimed at protecting hospitals. Several provisions were adopted obliging warring parties to refrain from attacking medical facilities that display the Red Cross emblem. Civilian hospitals “may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict,” reads article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The following article, article 19, then prohibits shielding military activities behind Red Cross emblems, noting that the “protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy.” The article also prohibits placing medical facilities in proximity to military targets. It reads: “In view of the dangers to which hospitals may be exposed by being close to military objectives, it is recommended that such hospitals be situated as far as possible from such objectives.” International law thus combined the protection of hospitals with the prohibition of using hospitals as shields.

The tenuous nature of these provisions became apparent during conflicts that took place in Southeast Asia immediately following the Second World War. In North Korea during the Korean War in the early 1950s, American and United Nations forces destroyed scores of medical facilities, forcing the Koreans to move their hospitals underground. In Vietnam, the French air force was accused of bombing medical units and evacuation convoys with napalm during the 1954 defeat of the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, to which the French government responded by accusing the Vietnamese resistance of violating the laws of war and “transporting munitions in medical aircraft marked with the Red Cross emblem.”

A decade and half later, the Americans were charged with deliberately bombing Vietnamese hospitals marked with the Red Cross emblem. After the infamous bombardment of the 940-bed Bach Mai Hospital, the United States military maintained that Vietnamese militants had shielded themselves behind the Red Cross emblem, explaining that the hospital “frequently housed antiaircraft positions to defend the military complex,” adding that it was located less than 500 meters from the Bach Mai airfield and military storage facility. The deployment of hospitals to conceal legitimate military targets and their proximity to such targets were thus invoked together as justifications for the attack.

Due to these and other attacks on hospitals, medical units again received significant attention during the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts in the mid-1970s, which led to the formulation of the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions. During the conference, the international delegates again outlined the two conditions in which protections offered to hospitals can be forfeited: “The Parties to the conflict shall ensure that medical units are situated as far as possible [from military targets] so that attacks against military objectives cannot imperil their safety. Under no circumstances shall they be used in an attempt to protect military objectives from attack.” In the final version of Additional Protocol I, these conditions were formulated as a form of shielding and incorporated into article 12, which states that “under no circumstances shall medical units be used in an attempt to shield military objectives from attack. Whenever possible, the Parties to the conflict shall ensure that medical units are so sited that attacks against military objectives do not imperil their safety.”

In the wording of the article, we can see that proximity and hospital shielding have a parallel history in international law. The charge that a medical unit is located in proximity to a military target implies that it is shielding the target and can therefore lose its protection under law. It is as if the Italian government’s arguments voiced after the bombing of medical facilities in Libya and Ethiopia became international norms.


In the Midst of Terror

The claim that hospitals were being used as shields became pervasive with the subsequent “War on Terror” and its systematic attacks against mainly brown civilians. From the war in Afghanistan and the US-backed Saudi intervention in Yemen to the Israeli campaigns in Gaza and the Syrian civil war, in recent years hospitals have constantly been bombed by military forces under the guise of counterterrorism, while the shielding argument has been invoked time and again. According to the World Health Organization, in 2020 a medical unit was attacked on average every day, and in 2021 more than two medical units were attacked every single day. Clearly, hospital bombings are neither sporadic nor a series of isolated events but rather a strategy of warfare aimed at weakening the enemy’s infrastructure of existence. And while a few hospitals may have indeed been used as shields, the sheer number of bombings suggests that belligerents use the shielding accusation ex post facto in order to legitimize the strikes.

In Syria it has been primarily President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its ally Russia that bombed hospitals in rebel-held territories, while in Yemen and Gaza it is Saudi Arabia and Israel whose planes have been destroying medical facilities held by nonstate actors. International and local human rights and humanitarian groups have consistently condemned these attacks, claiming that they are in flagrant violation of international law.

The states charged with bombing medical units either deny the accusation or maintain that the hospitals were shielding insurgents, harboring weapons, or used as a cover for militants launching rockets. In such cases, the bombings do not violate international law, since the law allows militaries to bomb medical facilities that serve as shields, provided that they give adequate warning to those on the ground and do not breach the principle of proportionality.

During the 2014 Gaza War, for example, Israeli strikes destroyed or damaged seventeen hospitals, fifty-six primary healthcare facilities, and forty-five ambulances. In a similar vein, Saudi officials attempted to justify the high number of air strikes targeting medical facilities in Yemen adopted the same catchphrases, accusing their adversaries, the Houthi militias, of using hospitals to hide their military forces. After the bombardment of an underground medical facility in a rebel-controlled area, a Syrian regime official declared that militants would be targeted wherever they were found, “on the ground and underground,” while his Russian patron explained that rebels were using “so-called hospitals as human shields.”

In a September 2019 press conference convened to speak about “numerous allegations of bombings of medical and other civilian facilities in Idlib,” Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, explained that rebels routinely used medical units to commit acts harmful to the enemy. He thus presented exceptional situations—which according to international law strip medical units of their protections—as the rule, while adding that “the deliberate manipulation of information has become one of the most important weapons of this war.” The Russian presumption was that the opposition will always deny that it was using medical units to advance their war efforts, and thus the debate was shifted from hospital bombings per se, to whether the bombing was legitimate given the legal exceptions.

Such explanations can serve as a robust defense because medical personnel actually lose the protections allocated to them by international law if they “exceed the terms of their mission” or carry out “acts harmful to the enemy” According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, “Such harmful acts would, for example, include the use of a hospital as a shelter for able-bodied combatants or fugitives, as an arms or ammunition dump, or as a military observation post; another instance would be the deliberate siting of a medical unit in a position where it would impede an enemy attack.”

In an effort to legitimize its bombing of Palestinian medical facilities following the 2014 war on Gaza, Israel invoked both exceptions in a legal report. It accused “Hamas and other terrorist organizations” of exploiting “hospitals and ambulances to conduct military operations, despite the special protection afforded these units and transports under customary international law.” It claimed that hospitals were used both as “command and control centers, gunfire and missile launching sites, and covers for combat tunnels” and also as proximate shields for Hamas militants who fired “multiple rockets and mortars within 25 meters of hospitals and health clinics.” Sometimes Israel would call the hospital in advance, warning the staff that it was about to bomb their facility. This allowed the Israeli government to claim that it had provided due warning and reasonable time to evacuate the buildings before it launched a strike, and therefore had not violated international humanitarian law articles requiring belligerents to warn medical units before bombing them.

Following protests by Médecins Sans Frontières against the bombardment of one of its medical units in Yemen, the Joint Incidents Assessment Team of Saudi Arabia’s military coalition released a response similar to Israel’s argument in its legal report on the attack on Gaza: “The [Assessment Team] found that the targeting was based on solid intelligence information. . . . After verification, it became clear that the building was a medical facility used by Houthi armed militia as a military shelter in violation of the rules of international humanitarian law.” According to the self-exonerating report, one of the medical facilities targeted by the coalition “was not directly bombed, but was accidentally affected by the bombing due to its close location to the grouping which was targeted, without causing any human damage. It is necessary to keep the mobile clinic away from military targets so as not to be subjected to any incidental effects.” Even though hospitals had been bombed, the Assessment Team concluded that coalition forces had not violated the law.

The Color Line

Although the legal condemnation of those who use hospitals as shields is unconditional and that act is always considered a war crime, the protection offered to hospitals is conditional. All a warring party has to do in order to legally justify an attack is to claim that a medical unit was located near a target or was used to conceal it, assert that it warned the medical personnel before the attack, and argue that the assault followed the principle of proportionality. The history of bombing hospitals, the legal debates surrounding it, and the formulation of legal clauses pertaining to the protection of medical facilities reveal that international law privileges those who attack over those who shield and can serve as a tool for humanizing the use of lethal force against the very medical units that the law itself purports to protect.

From the advent of aerial bombing, practically every time warring parties admitted they had bombed a hospital (and it was not a mistake), they invoked one of the legal exceptions to justify the act. This history undoubtedly questions the liberal understanding which presumes that juridical processes can replace violence as a way of settling conflicts. This liberal story line, which takes us from violence to law, does not account for the violence of the law itself. Actually, the laws of war do not prohibit violence, they regulate its deployment, providing concrete guidelines about who can be killed, what can be destroyed, and the repertoires of violence that can be legitimately used. The law makes lofty claims about the importance of protecting hospitals but as the history of hospital bombing shows, the law enables and at times even facilitates violence by providing numerous exceptions that allow states to target medical units. Consequently, invoking the law to seek relief from violence is not necessarily the best strategy.

This history thus raises serious questions about the legalistic purview of many human rights and humanitarian organizations, which the legal historian Samuel Moyn has traced in his account of the change from an antiwar politics during the Vietnam War to an increasing emphasis on international law. Referring to the attack on medical facilities in Ukraine, a Physicians for Human Rights researcher exclaimed: “Russia’s brutal history of consolidating power through military action is a clear warning – these horrific attacks on civilians and critical health care infrastructure are a brazen and unambiguous violation of international humanitarian law. The perpetrators must be stopped and must be held accountable for their crimes.” Indeed, accountability for the violation of international humanitarian law has been the primary rallying cry for NGOs seeking justice in Gaza, Yemen, Syria and now Ukraine.

But insofar as legal exceptions legitimating attacks on medical unites are an integral part of the law, the law can end up justifying the bombing of hospitals. This suggests that only a complete ban on targeting medical units, without any exceptions, has any hope of reducing the violence. Once there is a ban, medical units cannot be legally bombed even when they are located close to a military target or when they shield combatants.

The post-9/11 Middle East is the key contemporary laboratory where the “hospital shielding” argument has been deployed to justify the bombing of hospitals. In our book on the global history of human shielding we show how Western liberal democracies have been complicit with the destruction of medical units and the killing of brown civilians. But now, with the attack on Ukraine and the killing of “European people with blue eyes and blond hair,” a different racialized sensibility towards civilian casualties than the one we have been witnessing during the last two decades is emerging. Western commentators seem much less inclined to accept the same legal arguments that had been used to excuse the destruction of civilian sites in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, or Palestine. The speed by which the International Criminal Court decided to open an investigation into possible war crimes carried out in Ukraine is an indication of this trend and is difficult to explain without taking into account the “color line”—to say it with W.E.B Du Bois. Indeed, the Western response to the Russian aggression on Ukraine further reveals how our sense of humanity is intricately tied to race and has never overcome its colonial imprint. But now that the hospital shielding argument has “returned” to Europe after many decades, people might be more critical of the shielding excuses voiced by warring parties as they try to legitimize the violence they deploy against civilian populations.

The time has come to advocate, without distinctions of color, for a total ban on bombing hospitals.

 

Neve Gordon

Neve Gordon Born and raised in Israel, Neve Gordon taught at Ben-Gurion University for seventeen years before moving to the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London. His first book, Israel’s Occupation (2008), provides a structural history of Israel’s mechanisms of control... Read more

Born and raised in Israel, Neve Gordon taught at Ben-Gurion University for seventeen years before moving to the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London. His first book, Israel’s Occupation (2008), provides a structural history of Israel’s mechanisms of control in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and still serves as a reference book for anyone interested in Israel’s military occupation. His second book, The Human Right to Dominate (2015 with Nicola Perugini) examines how human rights, which are generally conceived as tools for advancing emancipation, can also be used to enhance subjugation and dispossession. His most recent book Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire (2020 also with Perugini) traces the marginal and controversial figure of the human shield over a period of 150 years in order to interrogate the laws of war and how the ethics of humane violence are produced. Gordon was also the first director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel during the first Palestinian Intifada, a founding member and activist of Ta’ayush-Jerusalem during the second Intifada, and, following the birth of his two children, he helped found (and served for ten years as a board member) of the bi-lingual Jewish-Palestinian school Hagar. He is currently the Vice President of the British Society for Middle East Studies and a board member of the International State Crime Initiative. Follow him on Twitter @nevegordon or on FB
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Nicola Perugini

Nicola Perugini Nicola Perugini's research focuses mainly on international law, human rights, and violence. He is the co-author of The Human Right to Dominate (Oxford University Press 2015) and Human Shields. A History of People in the Line of Fire (University of California Press 2020). Nicola... Read more

Nicola Perugini's research focuses mainly on international law, human rights, and violence. He is the co-author of The Human Right to Dominate (Oxford University Press 2015) and Human Shields. A History of People in the Line of Fire (University of California Press 2020). Nicola has published articles on war and the ethics of violence; the politics of human rights, humanitarianism, and international law; humanitarianism's visual cultures; war and embedded anthropology; refugees and asylum seekers; law, space and colonialism; settler-colonialism and trauma in Israel/Palestine. Nicola is currently working on two research projects. The first is an exploration of the global history of the University of Edinburgh during the mandate of one of his imperial chancellors, Arthur James Balfour. The second, supported by the Leverhulme Trust, examines decolonization wars and international law. He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (2012/2013), a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University (2014-2016), and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (2017-2019). He has taught at the American University of Rome, the Al Quds Bard College in Jerusalem where he also directed the Human Rights Program, Brown University, and the University of Bologna. He has served as consultant for UNESCO and UN Women. His opinion pieces have appeared in Al Jazeera English, LRB Blog, Newseek, Internazionale, The Nation, the Huffington Post, the Conversation, Just Security, Open Democracy, the Herald. He tweets @PeruginiNic.

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Susan Abulhawa at Oxford Union on Palestine/Israel

6 DECEMBER 2024 • By Susan Abulhawa
Susan Abulhawa at Oxford Union on Palestine/Israel
Essays

A Fragile Ceasefire as Lebanon Survives, Traumatized

29 NOVEMBER 2024 • By Tarek Abi Samra
A Fragile Ceasefire as Lebanon Survives, Traumatized
Art

Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme: Palestinian artists at Copenhagen’s Glyptotek

22 NOVEMBER 2024 • By Arie Amaya-Akkermans
Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme: Palestinian artists at Copenhagen’s Glyptotek
Essays

A Jewish Meditation on the Palestinian Genocide

15 NOVEMBER 2024 • By Sheryl Ono
A Jewish Meditation on the Palestinian Genocide
Art & Photography

Palestinian Artists Reflect on the Role of Art in Catastrophic Times

1 NOVEMBER 2024 • By Nina Hubinet
Palestinian Artists Reflect on the Role of Art in Catastrophic Times
Centerpiece

“Habib”—a story by Ghassan Ghassan

1 NOVEMBER 2024 • By Ghassan Ghassan
“Habib”—a story by Ghassan Ghassan
Memoir

“The Ballad of Lulu and Amina”—from Jerusalem to Gaza

1 NOVEMBER 2024 • By Izzeldin Bukhari
“The Ballad of Lulu and Amina”—from Jerusalem to Gaza
Books

November World Picks from the Editors

25 OCTOBER 2024 • By TMR
November World Picks from the Editors
Book Reviews

The Walls Have Eyes—Surveillance in the Algorithm Age

18 OCTOBER 2024 • By Iason Athanasiadis
<em>The Walls Have Eyes</em>—Surveillance in the Algorithm Age
Editorial

A Year of War Without End

4 OCTOBER 2024 • By Lina Mounzer
A Year of War Without End
Art

Visuals and Voices: Palestine Will Not Be a Palimpsest

4 OCTOBER 2024 • By Malu Halasa
Visuals and Voices: Palestine Will Not Be a Palimpsest
Featured article

Censorship and Cancellation Fail to Camouflage the Ugly Truth

4 OCTOBER 2024 • By Jordan Elgrably
Censorship and Cancellation Fail to Camouflage the Ugly Truth
Essays

Shamrocks & Watermelons: Palestine Politics in Belfast

4 OCTOBER 2024 • By Stuart Bailie
Shamrocks & Watermelons: Palestine Politics in Belfast
Essays

Depictions of Genocide: The Un-Imaginable Visibility of Extermination

4 OCTOBER 2024 • By Viola Shafik
Depictions of Genocide: The Un-Imaginable Visibility of Extermination
Opinion

Everything Has Changed, Nothing Has Changed

4 OCTOBER 2024 • By Amal Ghandour
Everything Has Changed, Nothing Has Changed
Book Reviews

Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide by Atif Abu Saif

20 SEPTEMBER 2024 • By Selma Dabbagh
<em>Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide</em> by Atif Abu Saif
Art & Photography

Featured Artists: “Barred From Home”

6 SEPTEMBER 2024 • By Malu Halasa
Featured Artists: “Barred From Home”
Book Reviews

Egypt’s Gatekeeper—President or Despot?

6 SEPTEMBER 2024 • By Elias Feroz
Egypt’s Gatekeeper—President or Despot?
Fiction

“Fragments from a Gaza Nightmare”—fiction from Sama Hassan

30 AUGUST 2024 • By Sama Hassan, Rana Asfour
“Fragments from a Gaza Nightmare”—fiction from Sama Hassan
Essays

Beyond Rubble—Cultural Heritage and Healing After Disaster

23 AUGUST 2024 • By Arie Amaya-Akkermans
Beyond Rubble—Cultural Heritage and Healing After Disaster
Book Reviews

Birth in a Poem: Maram Al-Masri’s The Abduction

23 AUGUST 2024 • By Eman Quotah
Birth in a Poem: Maram Al-Masri’s <em>The Abduction</em>
Fiction

“Ten-Armed Gods”—a short story by Odai Al Zoubi

5 JULY 2024 • By Odai Al Zoubi, Ziad Dallal
“Ten-Armed Gods”—a short story by Odai Al Zoubi
Fiction

“Deferred Sorrow”—fiction from Haidar Al Ghazali

5 JULY 2024 • By Haidar Al Ghazali, Rana Asfour
“Deferred Sorrow”—fiction from Haidar Al Ghazali
Beirut

Ripped from Memoirs of a Lebanese Policeman

5 JULY 2024 • By Fawzi Zabyan
Ripped from <em>Memoirs of a Lebanese Policeman</em>
Book Reviews

Is Amin Maalouf’s Latest Novel, On the Isle of Antioch, a Parody?

14 JUNE 2024 • By Farah-Silvana Kanaan
Is Amin Maalouf’s Latest Novel, <em>On the Isle of Antioch</em>, a Parody?
Centerpiece

Dare Not Speak—a One-Act Play

7 JUNE 2024 • By Hassan Abdulrazzak
<em>Dare Not Speak</em>—a One-Act Play
Theatre

The Return of Danton—a Play by Mudar Alhaggi & Collective Ma’louba

7 JUNE 2024 • By Mudar Alhaggi
<em>The Return of Danton</em>—a Play by Mudar Alhaggi & Collective Ma’louba
Theatre

Noor and Hadi Go to Hogwarts—a Short Play

7 JUNE 2024 • By Lameece Issaq
<em>Noor and Hadi Go to Hogwarts</em>—a Short Play
Books

Palestine, Political Theatre & the Performance of Queer Solidarity in Jean Genet’s Prisoner of Love

7 JUNE 2024 • By Saleem Haddad
Palestine, Political Theatre & the Performance of Queer Solidarity in Jean Genet’s <em>Prisoner of Love</em>
Book Reviews

This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud —A Review

31 MAY 2024 • By Katherine A. Powers
<em>This Strange Eventful History</em> by Claire Messud —A Review
Essays

The Elephant in the Box

3 MAY 2024 • By Asmaa Elgamal
The Elephant in the Box
Essays

Freedom—Ruminations of a Syrian Refugee

3 MAY 2024 • By Reem Alghazzi, Manal Shalaby
Freedom—Ruminations of a Syrian Refugee
Essays

Undoing Colonial Geographies from Paris with Ariella Aïsha Azoulay

1 APRIL 2024 • By Sasha Moujaes, Jordan Elgrably
Undoing Colonial Geographies from Paris with Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
Art & Photography

Will Artists Against Genocide Boycott the Venice Biennale?

18 MARCH 2024 • By Hadani Ditmars
Will Artists Against Genocide Boycott the Venice Biennale?
Poetry

Two Poems from Maram Al-Masri

3 MARCH 2024 • By Maram Al-Masri, Hélène Cardona
Two Poems from Maram Al-Masri
Editorial

Why “Burn It all Down”?

3 MARCH 2024 • By Lina Mounzer
Why “Burn It all Down”?
Columns

Genocide: “That bell can’t be unrung. That thought can’t be unthunk.”

3 MARCH 2024 • By Amal Ghandour
Genocide: “That bell can’t be unrung. That thought can’t be unthunk.”
Essays

The Oath of Cyriac: Recovery or Spin?

19 FEBRUARY 2024 • By Arie Amaya-Akkermans
<em>The Oath of Cyriac</em>: Recovery or Spin?
Art

Issam Kourbaj’s Love Letter to Syria in Cambridge

12 FEBRUARY 2024 • By Sophie Kazan Makhlouf
Issam Kourbaj’s Love Letter to Syria in Cambridge
Poetry

“WE” and “4978 and One Nights” by Ghayath Almadhoun

4 FEBRUARY 2024 • By Ghayath Al Madhoun
“WE” and “4978 and One Nights” by Ghayath Almadhoun
Editorial

Shoot That Poison Arrow to My Heart: The LSD Editorial

4 FEBRUARY 2024 • By Malu Halasa
Shoot That Poison Arrow to My Heart: The LSD Editorial
Essays

A Century of Sergei Parajanov: Conjurer of Cinematic Worlds

29 JANUARY 2024 • By William Gourlay
A Century of Sergei Parajanov: Conjurer of Cinematic Worlds
Featured article

Israel-Palestine: Peace Under Occupation?

29 JANUARY 2024 • By Laëtitia Soula
Israel-Palestine: Peace Under Occupation?
Books

Illuminated Reading for 2024: Our Anticipated Titles

22 JANUARY 2024 • By TMR
Illuminated Reading for 2024: Our Anticipated Titles
Art

Palestinian Artists

12 JANUARY 2024 • By TMR
Palestinian Artists
Essays

Gaza Sunbirds: the Palestinian Para-Cyclists Who Won’t Quit

25 DECEMBER 2023 • By Malu Halasa
Gaza Sunbirds: the Palestinian Para-Cyclists Who Won’t Quit
Books

Inside Hamas: From Resistance to Regime

25 DECEMBER 2023 • By Paola Caridi
Inside <em>Hamas: From Resistance to Regime</em>
Columns

Messages From Gaza Now

11 DECEMBER 2023 • By Hossam Madhoun
Messages From Gaza Now
Featured excerpt

The Palestine Laboratory and Gaza: An Excerpt

4 DECEMBER 2023 • By Antony Loewenstein
<em>The Palestine Laboratory</em> and Gaza: An Excerpt
Editorial

Why Endings & Beginnings?

3 DECEMBER 2023 • By Jordan Elgrably
Why Endings & Beginnings?
Beirut

“The Summer They Heard Music”—a short story by MK Harb

3 DECEMBER 2023 • By MK Harb
“The Summer They Heard Music”—a short story by MK Harb
Fiction

“I, Hanan”—a Gazan tale of survival by Joumana Haddad

3 DECEMBER 2023 • By Joumana Haddad
“I, Hanan”—a Gazan tale of survival by Joumana Haddad
Book Reviews

First Kurdish Sci-Fi Collection is Rooted in the Past

28 NOVEMBER 2023 • By Matt Broomfield
First Kurdish Sci-Fi Collection is Rooted in the Past
Opinion

Gaza vs. Mosul from a Medical and Humanitarian Standpoint

27 NOVEMBER 2023 • By Ahmed Twaij
Gaza vs. Mosul from a Medical and Humanitarian Standpoint
Opinion

What’s in a Ceasefire?

20 NOVEMBER 2023 • By Adrian Kreutz, Enzo Rossi, Lillian Robb
What’s in a Ceasefire?
Art & Photography

War and Art: A Lebanese Photographer and His Protégés

13 NOVEMBER 2023 • By Nicole Hamouche
War and Art: A Lebanese Photographer and His Protégés
Opinion

Beautiful October 7th Art Belies the Horrors of War

13 NOVEMBER 2023 • By Mark LeVine
Beautiful October 7th Art Belies the Horrors of War
Books

Domicide—War on the City

5 NOVEMBER 2023 • By Ammar Azzouz
<em>Domicide</em>—War on the City
Book Reviews

Suad Aldarra’s I Don’t Want to Talk About Home

5 NOVEMBER 2023 • By Ammar Azzouz
Suad Aldarra’s <em>I Don’t Want to Talk About Home</em>
Book Reviews

The Refugee Ocean—An Intriguing Premise

30 OCTOBER 2023 • By Natasha Tynes
<em>The Refugee Ocean</em>—An Intriguing Premise
Islam

October 7 and the First Days of the War

23 OCTOBER 2023 • By Robin Yassin-Kassab
October 7 and the First Days of the War
Book Reviews

The Archaeology of War

23 OCTOBER 2023 • By Arie Amaya-Akkermans
The Archaeology of War
Art

The Ongoing Nakba—Rasha Al-Jundi’s Embroidery Series

16 OCTOBER 2023 • By Rasha Al Jundi
The Ongoing Nakba—Rasha Al-Jundi’s Embroidery Series
Weekly

World Picks from the Editors, Oct 13 — Oct 27, 2023

12 OCTOBER 2023 • By TMR
World Picks from the Editors, Oct 13 — Oct 27, 2023
Art

Special World Picks Sept 15-26 on TMR’s Third Anniversary

14 SEPTEMBER 2023 • By TMR
Special World Picks Sept 15-26 on TMR’s Third Anniversary
Art

What Palestine Brings to the World—a Major Paris Exhibition

31 JULY 2023 • By Sasha Moujaes
<em>What Palestine Brings to the World</em>—a Major Paris Exhibition
Book Reviews

Can the Kurdish Women’s Movement Transform the Middle East?

31 JULY 2023 • By Matt Broomfield
Can the Kurdish Women’s Movement Transform the Middle East?
Interviews

Musical Artists at Work: Naïssam Jalal, Fazil Say & Azu Tiwaline

17 JULY 2023 • By Jordan Elgrably
Musical Artists at Work: Naïssam Jalal, Fazil Say & Azu Tiwaline
Book Reviews

Why Isn’t Ghaith Abdul-Ahad a Household Name?

10 JULY 2023 • By Iason Athanasiadis
Why Isn’t Ghaith Abdul-Ahad a Household Name?
Opinion

The End of the Palestinian State? Jenin Is Only the Beginning

10 JULY 2023 • By Yousef M. Aljamal
The End of the Palestinian State? Jenin Is Only the Beginning
Fiction

“The Long Walk of the Martyr”—fiction from Salar Abdoh

2 JULY 2023 • By Salar Abdoh
“The Long Walk of the Martyr”—fiction from Salar Abdoh
Featured Artist

Artist at Work: Syrian Filmmaker Afraa Batous

26 JUNE 2023 • By Dima Hamdan
Artist at Work: Syrian Filmmaker Afraa Batous
Columns

The Rite of Flooding: When the Land Speaks

19 JUNE 2023 • By Bint Mbareh
The Rite of Flooding: When the Land Speaks
Editorial

EARTH: Our Only Home

4 JUNE 2023 • By Jordan Elgrably
EARTH: Our Only Home
Essays

Turkey’s Earthquake as a Generational Disaster

4 JUNE 2023 • By Sanem Su Avci
Turkey’s Earthquake as a Generational Disaster
Islam

From Pawns to Global Powers: Middle East Nations Strike Back

29 MAY 2023 • By Chas Freeman, Jr.
From Pawns to Global Powers: Middle East Nations Strike Back
Music

Artist At Work: Maya Youssef Finds Home in the Qanun

22 MAY 2023 • By Rana Asfour
Artist At Work: Maya Youssef Finds Home in the Qanun
Art & Photography

And Yet Our Brothers: Portraits of France

22 MAY 2023 • By Laëtitia Soula
And Yet Our Brothers: Portraits of France
Film

The Refugees by the Lake, a Greek Migrant Story

8 MAY 2023 • By Iason Athanasiadis
The Refugees by the Lake, a Greek Migrant Story
Film Reviews

Yallah Gaza! Presents the Case for Gazan Humanity

10 APRIL 2023 • By Karim Goury
<em>Yallah Gaza!</em> Presents the Case for Gazan Humanity
Centerpiece

Broken Home: Britain in the Time of Migration

5 MARCH 2023 • By Malu Halasa
Broken Home: Britain in the Time of Migration
Fiction

“Counter Strike”—a story by MK HARB

5 MARCH 2023 • By MK Harb
“Counter Strike”—a story by MK HARB
Cities

For Those Who Dwell in Tents, Home is Temporal—Or Is It?

5 MARCH 2023 • By Arie Amaya-Akkermans
For Those Who Dwell in Tents, Home is Temporal—Or Is It?
Essays

Home Under Siege: a Palestine Photo Essay

5 MARCH 2023 • By Anam Raheem
Home Under Siege: a Palestine Photo Essay
Columns

Letter From Turkey—Antioch is Finished

20 FEBRUARY 2023 • By Arie Amaya-Akkermans
Letter From Turkey—Antioch is Finished
TV Review

Palestinian Territories Under Siege But Season 4 of Fauda Goes to Brussels and Beirut Instead

6 FEBRUARY 2023 • By Brett Kline
Palestinian Territories Under Siege But Season 4 of <em>Fauda</em> Goes to Brussels and Beirut Instead
Art

The Creative Resistance in Palestinian Art

26 DECEMBER 2022 • By Malu Halasa
The Creative Resistance in Palestinian Art
Columns

Everyone has a Stake in Morocco’s Football Team

15 DECEMBER 2022 • By Brahim El Guabli, Aomar Boum
Everyone has a Stake in Morocco’s Football Team
Film

The Swimmers and the Mardini Sisters: a True Liberation Tale

15 DECEMBER 2022 • By Rana Haddad
<em>The Swimmers</em> and the Mardini Sisters: a True Liberation Tale
Essays

Sexploitation or Cinematic Art? The Case of Abdellatif Kechiche

15 DECEMBER 2022 • By Viola Shafik
Sexploitation or Cinematic Art? The Case of Abdellatif Kechiche
Art

Museums in Exile—MO.CO’s show for Chile, Sarajevo & Palestine

12 DECEMBER 2022 • By Jordan Elgrably
Museums in Exile—MO.CO’s show for Chile, Sarajevo & Palestine
Film

You Resemble Me Deconstructs a Muslim Life That Ends Radically

21 NOVEMBER 2022 • By Jordan Elgrably
<em>You Resemble Me</em> Deconstructs a Muslim Life That Ends Radically
Essays

Nawal El-Saadawi, a Heroine in Prison

15 OCTOBER 2022 • By Ibrahim Fawzy
Nawal El-Saadawi, a Heroine in Prison
Book Reviews

A London Murder Mystery Leads to Jihadis and Syria

3 OCTOBER 2022 • By Ghazi Gheblawi
A London Murder Mystery Leads to Jihadis and Syria
Art & Photography

Kader Attia, Berlin Biennale’s Curator

15 SEPTEMBER 2022 • By Melissa Chemam
Kader Attia, Berlin Biennale’s Curator
Film

Ziad Kalthoum: Trajectory of a Syrian Filmmaker

15 SEPTEMBER 2022 • By Viola Shafik
Ziad Kalthoum: Trajectory of a Syrian Filmmaker
Film

The Mystery of Tycoon Michel Baida in Old Arab Berlin

15 SEPTEMBER 2022 • By Irit Neidhardt
The Mystery of Tycoon Michel Baida in Old Arab Berlin
Film

Two Syrian Brothers Find Themselves in “We Are From There”

22 AUGUST 2022 • By Angélique Crux
Two Syrian Brothers Find Themselves in “We Are From There”
Book Reviews

Questionable Thinking on the Syrian Revolution

1 AUGUST 2022 • By Fouad Mami
Questionable Thinking on the Syrian Revolution
Essays

Independent Algeria 60 Years Later: The Untold Story

25 JULY 2022 • By Fouad Mami
Independent Algeria 60 Years Later: The Untold Story
Art

Abundant Middle Eastern Talent at the ’22 Avignon Theatre Fest

18 JULY 2022 • By Nada Ghosn
Abundant Middle Eastern Talent at the ’22 Avignon Theatre Fest
Art

Abd el Kader at the Mucem: a colonial vision of the Emir

11 JULY 2022 • By Pierre Daum
Abd el Kader at the Mucem: a colonial vision of the Emir
Book Reviews

A Poet and Librarian Catalogs Life in Gaza

20 JUNE 2022 • By Eman Quotah
A Poet and Librarian Catalogs Life in Gaza
Columns

World Refugee Day — What We Owe Each Other

20 JUNE 2022 • By Jordan Elgrably
World Refugee Day — What We Owe Each Other
Art & Photography

Featured Artist: Steve Sabella, Beyond Palestine

15 JUNE 2022 • By TMR
Featured Artist: Steve Sabella, Beyond Palestine
Art & Photography

Steve Sabella: Excerpts from “The Parachute Paradox”

15 JUNE 2022 • By Steve Sabella
Steve Sabella: Excerpts from “The Parachute Paradox”
Book Reviews

Algeria and Albert Camus

6 JUNE 2022 • By Oliver Gloag
Algeria and Albert Camus
Film

Film Review: Maysoon Pachachi’s “Our River…Our Sky” in Iraq

30 MAY 2022 • By Nadje Al-Ali
Film Review: Maysoon Pachachi’s “Our River…Our Sky” in Iraq
Opinion

France’s new Culture Minister Meets with Racist Taunts

23 MAY 2022 • By Rosa Branche
France’s new Culture Minister Meets with Racist Taunts
Book Reviews

Fragmented Love in Alison Glick’s “The Other End of the Sea”

16 MAY 2022 • By Nora Lester Murad
Fragmented Love in Alison Glick’s “The Other End of the Sea”
Latest Reviews

Food in Palestine: Five Videos From Nasser Atta

15 APRIL 2022 • By Nasser Atta
Food in Palestine: Five Videos From Nasser Atta
Columns

Libyan, Palestinian and Syrian Family Dinners in London

15 APRIL 2022 • By Layla Maghribi
Libyan, Palestinian and Syrian Family Dinners in London
Opinion

U.S. Sanctions Russia for its Invasion of Ukraine; Now Sanction Israel for its Occupation of Palestine

21 MARCH 2022 • By Yossi Khen, Jeff Warner
U.S. Sanctions Russia for its Invasion of Ukraine; Now Sanction Israel for its Occupation of Palestine
Columns

Music in the Middle East: Bring Back Peace

21 MARCH 2022 • By Melissa Chemam
Music in the Middle East: Bring Back Peace
Essays

Mariupol, Ukraine and the Crime of Hospital Bombing

17 MARCH 2022 • By Neve Gordon, Nicola Perugini
Mariupol, Ukraine and the Crime of Hospital Bombing
Poetry

Three Poems of Love and Desire by Nouri Al-Jarrah

15 MARCH 2022 • By Nouri Al-Jarrah
Three Poems of Love and Desire by Nouri Al-Jarrah
Art

Fiction: “Skin Calluses” by Khalil Younes

15 MARCH 2022 • By Khalil Younes
Fiction: “Skin Calluses” by Khalil Younes
Opinion

Ukraine War Reminds Refugees Some Are More Equal Than Others

7 MARCH 2022 • By Anna Lekas Miller
Ukraine War Reminds Refugees Some Are More Equal Than Others
Columns

“There’s Nothing Worse Than War”

24 FEBRUARY 2022 • By Jordan Elgrably
“There’s Nothing Worse Than War”
Editorial

Refuge, or the Inherent Dignity of Every Human Being

15 JANUARY 2022 • By Jordan Elgrably
Refuge, or the Inherent Dignity of Every Human Being
Art & Photography

Children in Search of Refuge: a Photographic Essay

15 JANUARY 2022 • By Iason Athanasiadis
Children in Search of Refuge: a Photographic Essay
Columns

Getting to the Other Side: a Kurdish Migrant Story

15 JANUARY 2022 • By Iason Athanasiadis
Getting to the Other Side: a Kurdish Migrant Story
Film Reviews

“Europa,” Iraq’s Entry in the 94th annual Oscars, Frames Epic Refugee Struggle

15 JANUARY 2022 • By Thomas Dallal
“Europa,” Iraq’s Entry in the 94th annual Oscars, Frames Epic Refugee Struggle
Featured excerpt

The Displaced, the Unwanted, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

15 JANUARY 2022 • By Viet Thanh Nguyen
Book Reviews

Meditations on The Ungrateful Refugee

15 JANUARY 2022 • By Rana Asfour
Meditations on <em>The Ungrateful Refugee</em>
Fiction

Fiction: Refugees in Serbia, an excerpt from “Silence is a Sense” by Layla AlAmmar

15 JANUARY 2022 • By Layla AlAmmar
Fiction: Refugees in Serbia, an excerpt from “Silence is a Sense” by Layla AlAmmar
Book Reviews

Temptations of the Imagination: how Jana Elhassan and Samar Yazbek transmogrify the world

10 JANUARY 2022 • By Rana Asfour
Temptations of the Imagination: how Jana Elhassan and Samar Yazbek transmogrify the world
Fiction

Three Levantine Tales

15 DECEMBER 2021 • By Nouha Homad
Three Levantine Tales
Essays

Syria Through British Eyes

29 NOVEMBER 2021 • By Rana Haddad
Syria Through British Eyes
Columns

Burning Forests, Burning Nations

15 NOVEMBER 2021 • By Hadani Ditmars
Burning Forests, Burning Nations
Book Reviews

The Vanishing: Are Arab Christians an Endangered Minority?

15 NOVEMBER 2021 • By Hadani Ditmars
The Vanishing: Are Arab Christians an Endangered Minority?
Columns

Refugees Detained in Thessonaliki’s Diavata Camp Await Asylum

1 NOVEMBER 2021 • By Iason Athanasiadis
Refugees Detained in Thessonaliki’s Diavata Camp Await Asylum
Interviews

Interview With Prisoner X, Accused by the Bashar Al-Assad Regime of Terrorism

15 OCTOBER 2021 • By Jordan Elgrably
Interview With Prisoner X, Accused by the Bashar Al-Assad Regime of Terrorism
Film Reviews

Will Love Triumph in the Midst of Gaza’s 14-Year Siege?

11 OCTOBER 2021 • By Jordan Elgrably
Will Love Triumph in the Midst of Gaza’s 14-Year Siege?
Essays

Why Resistance Is Foundational to Kurdish Literature

15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • By Ava Homa
Why Resistance Is Foundational to Kurdish Literature
Latest Reviews

Beginnings, the Life & Times of “Slim” aka Menouar Merabtene

15 AUGUST 2021 • By Menouar Merabtene
Beginnings, the Life & Times of “Slim” aka Menouar Merabtene
Weekly

Heba Hayek’s Gaza Memories

1 AUGUST 2021 • By Shereen Malherbe
Heba Hayek’s Gaza Memories
Memoir

“Guns and Figs” from Heba Hayek’s new Gaza book

1 AUGUST 2021 • By Heba Hayek
“Guns and Figs” from Heba Hayek’s new Gaza book
Weekly

Wafa Shami’s Palestinian Mulukhiyah

25 JULY 2021 • By Wafa Shami
Wafa Shami’s Palestinian Mulukhiyah
Weekly

Summer of ‘21 Reading—Notes from the Editors

25 JULY 2021 • By TMR
Summer of ‘21 Reading—Notes from the Editors
Weekly

Fadi Kattan’s Fatteh Ghazawiya الفتة الغزاوية

25 JULY 2021 • By Fadi Kattan
Fadi Kattan’s Fatteh Ghazawiya الفتة الغزاوية
Columns

When War is Just Another Name for Murder

15 JULY 2021 • By Norman G. Finkelstein
When War is Just Another Name for Murder
Fiction

Gazan Skies, from the novel “Out of It”

14 JULY 2021 • By Selma Dabbagh
Gazan Skies, from the novel “Out of It”
Art

Malak Mattar — Gaza Artist and Survivor

14 JULY 2021 • By Jordan Elgrably
Malak Mattar — Gaza Artist and Survivor
Essays

The Gaza Mythologies

14 JULY 2021 • By Ilan Pappé
The Gaza Mythologies
Columns

The Semantics of Gaza, War and Truth

14 JULY 2021 • By Mischa Geracoulis
The Semantics of Gaza, War and Truth
Latest Reviews

No Exit

14 JULY 2021 • By Allam Zedan
No Exit
Essays

Gaza, You and Me

14 JULY 2021 • By Abdallah Salha
Gaza, You and Me
Columns

Gaza’s Catch-22s

14 JULY 2021 • By Khaled Diab
Gaza’s Catch-22s
Essays

Making a Film in Gaza

14 JULY 2021 • By Elana Golden
Making a Film in Gaza
Essays

Gaza IS Palestine

14 JULY 2021 • By Jenine Abboushi
Gaza IS Palestine
Latest Reviews

A Response to “Gaza: Mowing the Lawn” 2014-15

14 JULY 2021 • By Tony Litwinko
A Response to “Gaza: Mowing the Lawn” 2014-15
Centerpiece

“Gaza: Mowing the Lawn” by Artist Jaime Scholnick

14 JULY 2021 • By Sagi Refael
“Gaza: Mowing the Lawn” by Artist Jaime Scholnick
Essays

Sailing to Gaza to Break the Siege

14 JULY 2021 • By Greta Berlin
Sailing to Gaza to Break the Siege
Book Reviews

ISIS and the Absurdity of War in the Age of Twitter

4 JULY 2021 • By Jessica Proett
ISIS and the Absurdity of War in the Age of Twitter
Weekly

A New Book on Music, Palestine-Israel & the “Three State Solution”

28 JUNE 2021 • By Mark LeVine
A New Book on Music, Palestine-Israel & the “Three State Solution”
Essays

Syria’s Ruling Elite— A Master Class in Wasta

14 JUNE 2021 • By Lawrence Joffe
Syria’s Ruling Elite— A Master Class in Wasta
Weekly

The Maps of Our Destruction: Two Novels on Syria

30 MAY 2021 • By Rana Asfour
The Maps of Our Destruction: Two Novels on Syria
Essays

The Wall We Can’t Tell You About

14 MAY 2021 • By Jean Lamore
The Wall We Can’t Tell You About
Essays

We Are All at the Border Now

14 MAY 2021 • By Todd Miller
We Are All at the Border Now
Essays

From Damascus to Birmingham, a Selected Glossary

14 MAY 2021 • By Frances Zaid
From Damascus to Birmingham, a Selected Glossary
Weekly

Beirut Brings a Fragmented Family Together in “The Arsonists’ City”

9 MAY 2021 • By Rana Asfour
Poetry

A visual poem from Hala Alyan: Gaza

14 MARCH 2021 • By TMR
A visual poem from Hala Alyan: Gaza
Columns

Memory and the Assassination of Lokman Slim

14 MARCH 2021 • By Claire Launchbury
Memory and the Assassination of Lokman Slim
Poetry

The Freedom You Want

14 MARCH 2021 • By Mohja Kahf
The Freedom You Want
TMR 6 • Revolutions

Ten Years of Hope and Blood

14 FEBRUARY 2021 • By Robert Solé
Ten Years of Hope and Blood
TMR 6 • Revolutions

The Revolution Sees its Shadow 10 Years Later

14 FEBRUARY 2021 • By Mischa Geracoulis
The Revolution Sees its Shadow 10 Years Later
TMR 5 • Water

Watch Water Films & Donate to Water Organizations

16 JANUARY 2021 • By TMR
Watch Water Films & Donate to Water Organizations
Film Reviews

Muhammad Malas, Syria’s Auteur, is the subject of a Film Biography

10 JANUARY 2021 • By Rana Asfour
Muhammad Malas, Syria’s Auteur, is the subject of a Film Biography
TMR 4 • Small & Indie Presses

Trembling Landscapes: Between Reality and Fiction: Eleven Artists from the Middle East*

14 DECEMBER 2020 • By Nat Muller
Trembling Landscapes: Between Reality and Fiction: Eleven Artists from the Middle East*
TMR 4 • Small & Indie Presses

Freedom is femininity: Faraj Bayrakdar

14 DECEMBER 2020 • By Faraj Bayrakdar
Freedom is femininity: Faraj Bayrakdar

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