Washington Watch Articles From 2022
Wrong at the Top of Their Voices
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.
Can the Arab East Move Past the Mess It’s In?
As someone who polls Arab public opinion, I’ve long been a fan of the 1919 King-Crane Commission created by President Woodrow Wilson to assess how the people of the Arab East wanted to be governed in the post-World War I era. The British and French had designs on the Arab East, but Wilson, though an arch-segregationist at home, declared that the newly liberated Arabs should shape their own destiny and that any post-war settlement regarding “territory [or] sovereignty [should be determined on] the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned.”
Anti-Arab Bias and Ignorance of European History
Much has been written about the double standards in political commentary regarding the war in Ukraine.
Whither the PLO?
When it comes to the Palestine Liberation Organization, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that the PLO is near dead.