President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, flew into Iraq on Monday with the top U.S. military officer to get a first-hand assessment of the battle against Islamic State from U.S. commanders on the ground and to meet Iraqi officials. For Kushner, who has not been to Iraq before, the trip comes at a critical time…
(JTA) — Yazidi leader Vian Dakhil was given an exception from the State Department from the Trump administration’s travel ban and will be allowed to travel to the United States to receive a prize named for Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress. Dakhil, a member of the Iraqi parliament who has led…
I just received a text from my guitarist, urging me to change our band name from “Iraqis in Pajamas” to something else — anything else, as long as it has no Middle Eastern connotation. A young Muslim woman at the local university was just attacked and hit in the head, he informed me, and the…
Howard Stern never expected he’d figure into an American presidential race. The talk-show host told BuzzFeed News that it felt surreal when he got name-checked at Monday night’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, as the candidates disputed Trump’s opposition to the Iraq War. “Now I can check that off on my bucket list,”…
WASHINGTON — The author of a work on the Nazi-era massacre in Baghdad believed to have precipitated the Jewish exodus from Iraq is commemorating its 75th anniversary with candle lightings in four cities. Edwin Black, who in 2010 published “The Farhud,” about the June 1-2, 1941 massacre of at least 180 Jews in Baghdad, will…
(JTA) — Seeing that no one was investigating the looting of Iraq’s National Museum in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s fall, Col. Matthew Bogdanos put the Marines under his command on the job. A first-generation Greek American with a master’s degree in classical history, Bogdanos appreciates cultures that value their history and preserve their antiquities….
Despite mounting questions about his credibility and criticism that he may be supporting terrorism, a Canadian businessman says he is more determined than ever to continue his controversial quest to buy the freedom of Yazidi and Christian women and girls enslaved by the brutal terrorist group, Islamic State. In a September 1 interview with the…
In 2003, I served as the U.S. Coalition official responsible for “administering” the province of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. At the time, I was struck by how the different communities intermarried, spoke each other’s languages, and loved each other’s cultures. In an attempt to defuse tensions emerging from the struggle for power after the overthrow…
