Last week, the Arab American Institute, Churches for Middle East Peace, and the American Friends Service Committee brought a group of Palestinian Americans with family in Gaza to meet with members of Congress and media.  

Poor Syria! That’s an inauspicious start, but it’s honest, as the country is facing myriad problems, internal and external, none of which can easily be resolved. 

If US President Donald Trump really wants to earn a Nobel Peace Prize, he’s going to need to do better than his 20-point “Comprehensive Plan to End Gaza’s Conflict.” While in his characteristic style of exaggeration, Mr. Trump called the release of his plan “one of the greatest days in human history,” poring over Arab, Israeli, and US press reveals that most analysts are not inclined to see it that way.  

On September 10th, conservative Republican political activist Charlie Kirk was murdered while speaking at a rally on a college campus in Utah. The reactions to his death were immediate and sustained, reflecting the deep divisions that plague American society today. 

For too many years now Democrats have focused on winning elections by appealing to what they have termed their “base” (young voters, Black, Latino, and Asian voters, and educated women). At the same time, they have largely abandoned white working class voters to Republicans—one reason why Democrats have lost too many recent federal and local elections across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states.

What to do or say about Israel’s war on Gaza has establishment Democratic consultants and the elected officials for whom they work in a tizzy. 

Nothing good will come of the chaos that has already been created by the Trump administration. In just a few months, it’s taken a wrecking-ball to institutions, agencies, and programs. 

While some supporters of Palestinian rights saw the developments at last week’s meeting of the Democratic National Committee as a defeat, it was, in fact, a victory. Here is what happened at the meeting and why I feel that progress was made.

Even though the bottom has fallen out of Democrats’ support for Israel, some in the party still can’t bring themselves to recognize this reality. 

We’ve reached a sort of tipping point in the way political leaders in the West are reacting to Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza. It’s maddening for two reasons: that it took this long to get an official response from Western capitals; and that, once the magnitude of the tragedy became clear, the responses have been so decidedly ineffectual. 

Our understanding of an historical event’s meaning is a function of two factors. The first is what we choose to identify as the starting point leading up to the event. The second is the lens through which we view it.

American political parties are in disarray. Instead of being the engines that organize and drive our politics, their roles have been supplanted by partisan social media influencers, non-profit political groups, super PACs, and the billionaires who fund them and consultant groups they hire. 

Any way you look at it, the northern rim of the Arab World is a mess. US politicians, echoing Israel’s position, speak glibly (and dishonestly) of a transformed or new regional order. In reality, the situation has worsened. Israel has accelerated its genocidal war on Gaza, land-grabbing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and occupations and deadly bombings of Lebanon and Syria.  

Meetings between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are more akin to a master class in posturing and duplicity than in diplomacy. Last week’s meetings were no exception.  

Last week, the UN was scheduled to convene a special session promoting a two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Israel’s attack on Iran and the deadly exchanges that followed resulted in a postponement.

It was 2006 and Tim Kaine had recently won the Virginia gubernatorial election. I was at a meeting at Democratic Party headquarters with a group of party officials. One opined, “I believe that one of the lessons we should learn from Tim Kaine’s victory was that we need to talk more about our religion. Kaine did and he won. We should do it too.” 

This week, all eyes will be on the fascinating race for mayor of New York City. One reason it’s so interesting is because New York plays such an outsized role in American life.

A few months after the Democrats’ bitter defeat in the 2024 elections, the party convened an Executive Committee meeting. Instead of taking a long hard look at the reasons for their poor performance, the meeting devolved into an orgy of self-congratulations.

The Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is setting the stage for the upcoming United Nations’ International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution.

The murders of two young Israeli Embassy staff members, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, shook Washington and provoked conflicting reactions. What follows are some observations on the murders and the disturbing way they were viewed and used by pro-Israel organizations and a few pro-Palestinian advocates.   

One thing of which we can be certain is that there will be consequences to the genocide in Gaza. 

Followers of policy and political developments in Israel/Palestine must be struck by the degree to which the tactics employed are disconnected from desired ends and by how some leaders’ and movements’ obsession with their mistaken path distracts them while they dangerously march themselves and their followers off a cliff.  

A year ago, at the peak of the campus unrest over the war in Gaza, I was asked to address a conference on the topic “How to Conduct Civil Discourse.” I relished the opportunity to do this because the issue of how we engage in civil discourse was (and remains) both timely and necessary. 

American voters want an end to the war in Gaza and for President Trump to withhold US aid, if necessary, to pressure Israel to end it.  

For American Catholics, Pope Francis was elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church at a time of crisis for both the institution and the faithful. The church in the United States was reeling from the aftershocks of continuing exposés of widespread sexual abuse by priests and the growing rift separating the church’s leadership from significant portions of younger Catholics.

For decades now, Arabs, in particular Palestinians, and supporters of Palestinian rights have been the weak link in the civil liberties chain. During this period, when a US president or Congress has sought to take measures curtailing a range of civil liberties, they would exploit the perception of the danger posed by Arabs to justify their actions.

From 2013 to 2017, I served as a White House appointee to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Annually we would review the practices of countries around the world as they impacted the ability of their citizens and residents to freely practice their faiths. We would then issue reports that would identify countries (about two dozen) that violated religious freedom, together with our recommendations for actions the US government could take to bring these countries into compliance. 

During the past week, there were reports of Palestinians in Gaza engaged in public protests against Hamas. These demonstrations took place in at least three main locations involving hundreds and possibly thousands of Palestinians overall. The signs carried by protesters and the slogans they’ve used make clear their anti-Hamas intent: “Hamas must go” and “We want to live.” 

When the Israeli Knesset passed its 2025 budget this past week, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu breathed a sigh of relief. Had the budget not been approved by March 31, the Knesset would have been automatically disbanded, and new elections would have been called. Polls indicate that Netanyahu and his coalition would have decisively lost.  

Significant attention and/or concern has been generated by President Donald Trump’s early Executive Orders and actions.

With genocide unfolding in Gaza, Christians in the Holy Land are having a difficult time feeling joy this Christmas season. Bethlehem has canceled its traditional celebrations. There will be no tree-lighting or festivities.

Events of the past week have highlighted how the US’ feckless indulgent behavior toward policies pursued by Israel have damaged America’s standing in the world. Two United Nations votes calling for a ceasefire in Gaza showed the US has been abandoned by most of our closest allies, many of whom are increasingly questioning our global leadership.

It’s been more than two months since Ukraine was a front-page news in the US press. It had become an old story and was being displaced by the horrors unfolding daily in Gaza.

In recent weeks, the Biden administration has attempted to pivot from its initial unconditional support for Israeli actions in Gaza by combining caution with a vague plan for “the day after.”

Almost two months into this monstrous conflict in Gaza and it is clear that the war is being fought not only on a battlefield but over the very terms that can be used to speak about it. Pope Francis discovered this last week when he described what was unfolding in Gaza as “going beyond war, this is terrorism,” and reportedly noted that “terrorism should not be used to justify terror.”

Several events that have occurred in the past few weeks should make us pay attention to the frightening reality we are in when it comes to freedom of speech regarding Israel/Palestine. We are on precarious ground.

The war over Gaza has had an explosive and surprising impact on the cohesion of the Democratic coalition. For decades now, the American body politic has been fractured mainly over critical social and cultural issues ranging from race and gender to guns and immigration—more often than not with Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other. Only in rare instances have foreign policy concerns entered the equation and never in the way that Israel/Palestine has in recent weeks.

I’ve been organizing Arab Americans for almost a half century. For the past three decades, working with my brother, John Zogby, we've polled the community’s views on a range of political topics. I’ve learned to value polling because it opens a window and allows you to hear and understand what people are saying and what their views may portend for the future.

In the days that passed between the death and burial of Sinéad O’Connor, there was an outpouring of praise for the Irish singer. News accounts and op-eds in major media in the US and Ireland made note of her courageous and prophetic voice. If there is a lesson to be learned from Sinéad’s life and the reactions to her passing, it is the importance of calling institutions and nations to account for past sins and the benefits that can accrue to future generations when such a reckoning occurs. 

News last week that the US and Israel were about to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) advancing Israel’s entry into the US Visa Waiver Program (VWP) shouldn’t have caught us by surprise. But it did. For months, we had been assured by various Biden Administration officials that Israel could not meet the requirements of the program. Concerns focused on the VWP’s statutory requirement that participant governments must guarantee full reciprocity to US citizens seeking entry - without regard to race, religion, or national origin.

This week, I traveled to Chicago for a two-day reunion of Jesse Jackson’s historic 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns. I was invited to speak on unique contributions he made to America’s foreign policy debates. 

Last week I was afforded the opportunity to address a special United Nations Security Council Session on Palestine. The invitation had been extended by the UAE UN Ambassador HE Lana Nusseibeh, in her capacity as president of the Security Council. 

All religions are, at their core, about us—about real people living in a world with others, trying to make sense of our joy and sorrow, our fears and hopes, and our purpose for being here. When looked at this way, the stories told in our scriptures, when stripped down to their essential message, teach us beautiful lessons about how we should see our lives.  

Christmastime 1914, five months into the First World War, a remarkable event occurred. No one knows exactly how it began, but French, British, Belgian, and German soldiers on both sides of the trenches began singing Christmas carols, each in their own language, and then put down their weapons, played football, and exchanged Christmas greetings and gifts with one another. 

The brilliant and incisive Palestinian American professor, Dr. Ibrahim Abu Lughod, was a mentor who taught me some invaluable lessons about politics and history. While he was a profoundly political being, he was at heart a historian and social scientist. He, therefore, cautioned me not to be unduly influenced by each day’s headlines or the reactions of commentators to daily events.

When future historians write about America’s Middle East foreign policy during the last quarter century, it must include a lengthy chapter entitled “American Hubris.” 

While the November midterm elections will be about a number of economic, social, and political issues, at its core the elections will be about which party and candidate voters feel cares most about them and has solutions that speak to their most basic needs. 

Three decades ago, I was on a US Embassy-sponsored speaking tour in Yemen before its 1993 national elections. After giving a lecture at the university in Sanaa, I met with the leaders of the various political parties—at their offices or at afternoon “ghat sessions.”

Twenty years ago when Congress passed the bipartisan McCain-Feingold bill on campaign finance reform , many celebrated what they hoped would be a new era in US politics. There were limits set for individual contributions and those of political action committees. All contributions in federal elections were to be reported to the Federal Election Commission and made available for public scrutiny. There was also a taxpayer fund established that would allow presidential candidates, if they wished, to secure matching funds for lower-level contributions to their campaigns, if they accepted a limit on their overall spending.

Fifty years ago this July, Israel assassinated Ghassan Kanafani. They planted a bomb in his car killing him and his 17-year-old niece, Lamis. Over the years I’ve thought a lot about Ghassan, his significant contributions to Arab literature, my meetings with him, and the role he played in shaping my doctoral dissertation and my thinking about Palestine. 

My conflicted feelings about the Fourth of July were a long time in the making.

Last week, Mary Lou McDonald, the President of Sinn Fein, the Irish republican/socialist party, and leader of the opposition in the Irish Parliament, addressed a European Union conference.