Advocates of democracy in the Middle East have been deeply alarmed since December 29, when Egyptian security forces staged lightning raids on the offices of three American nonprofits that work to promote democracy and fair elections overseas. Egyptian officials say they seized the organizations’ books and computers because they suspect them of fomenting the unrest…
Before, during and after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, women have been the focus of the protracted conflict in Egypt between grassroots protesters and the military regime. First it was the attack on CBS reporter Lara Logan, then the so-called ‘virginity checks’ on women protesters detained by the Egyptian army. And this past week…
Newt Gingrich’s December 9 Declaration of Palestinian Inventedness (“we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs”) caused a bit of a stir at the Saturday night GOP debate. Both Mitt Romney and Ron Paul condemned the remark as, in Paul’s words, “just stirrin’ up trouble.” Interestingly, though, both agreed that Gingrich’s point…
Shortly before the recent outbreak of violence in Tahrir Square, a friend fantasized about what he would do if he had a time machine with two buttons, one labeled “Back to Mubarak,” the other labeled “Stay the course.” This decent, eminent professional — a tear-gassed veteran of the original Tahrir Square protests that ousted autocrat…
The Muslim Brotherhood party appeared to be leading Egypt’s elections on Wednesday after 90 percent of the votes in a number of cities and provinces have been counted, according to Al Jazeera. Egypt’s Al Nour party, considered a radical Islamic party, appeared to be in second place behind the Muslim Brotherhood, and the centrist party…
American-Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy has been freed after being beaten, arrested and interrogated by security forces in Cairo. Eltahawy, 44, has reported that she was also sexually assaulted during her 12-hour detention. She is in Egypt covering the violent protests in Tahrir Square and its environs. Eltahawy is the first Egyptian journalist to have lived…
In a naked display of solidarity, 40 Israeli women recently took off their clothes to support an embattled young Egyptian woman who is under fire for posting a nude photograph of herself online. The Egyptian woman, Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, 20, posted the picture and allowed it to be put on Twitter in order to protest…
In early November, Muhammad Al Qotati, a worker at the smuggling tunnels in Rafah, Gaza, welcomed my friend, journalist Nick Pelham, and me to a walk-around. The area he showed us is less than half a mile from the town of Rafah and about the distance of a football field from Egypt; it looks a…
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