Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Syria, a war-torn country in the Middle East. Never miss an update on terror militia, airstrike activity with Israel or the United States’ involvement.
Syria
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Opinion That ‘Invented People’? The Idea Is Invented
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…
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Opinion Attack on Iran Unlikely — For Now
The recent intimations that Israel is planning a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure are not likely to lead to any such action anytime soon. More likely, they reflect an attempt to generate stronger international sanctions, coming as they did just as Vienna’s International Atomic Energy Agency was about to release a report confirming Israel’s…
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Opinion Hitchens Has a Few Questions for the Flotilla
Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, has a few questions about the Free Gaza flotilla that he wishes the journalists on the scene would find time to ask. Most of the speculation so far has been to do with methods and intentions, allowing for many avowals about peaceful tactics and so forth, but this is soft-centered…
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The Schmooze Out and About: Israeli Music for Syrian Protestors; The Shame of Playing Shylock
The Independent takes a look at Habonim, the Socialist Zionist youth group that was once home to Mike Leigh, David Baddiel and Sacha Baron Cohen. The Brooklyn Rail revisits the work of Russian Jewish filmmaker Dziga Vertov, on the occasion of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Israeli singer Amir Benayoun (profiled in…
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Opinion More Lessons From the Arab Spring, or Follow the Bouncing Logic
Recently published analyses teach the following lessons: Lesson 1. The Arab uprisings are not necessarily democratic in nature, and liberal readiness to back them — morally or with arms and material aid — is at best foolhardy romanticism. We should stand back and avoid getting involved. Why undermine existing regimes when the replacement might be…
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Food Shabbat Meals: Claudia Roden’s Chicken Sofrito
Poulet sofrito, a braised chicken dish with lemon, cardamom and turmeric, was the Sabbath dish at my parents’ home in London after they left Egypt in 1956 following the Suez crisis. In Egypt it had been our cook Awad who prepared it. Without the distractions of life in Cairo within a large extended family, my…
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The Schmooze Vogue’s Ill-Timed Profile of Syria’s First Lady
Her husband runs one of the world’s most repressive police states, but Vogue wants you to know that Syria’s first lady runs a “wildly democratic” household. She is also, the magazine says, “glamorous, young, and very chic.” As other Arab dictators are forced from power, the fashion magazine has released what has to be one…
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The Schmooze An Electric Simcha With Omar Souleyman
Omar Souleyman is a singer from Hasakah, Syria, who plays a techno-ish version of dabke, an Arabic folk music usually heard at weddings. He performs in a red-and-white checkered keffiyeh, dark glasses, and a moustache. Not the most likely artist to take the American hipster-indie music scene by storm, you say? Think again. Now on…
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Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
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