World News Insights: Opinion Articles

In 1995, a book of mine entitled “The Generals of the Middle East” was released (by Dar Al Saqi) in London. The conclusion I come to in its 58-page introduction, in which I try to define the “Middle East,” is that every empire saw the region geographically. Paris and London dubbed it the “Near East…

Stories of Syria using Captagon as a bargaining chip to secure funds for reconstruction and regain its seat in the Arab League have been making the rounds ever since the country’s return to the Arab fold was announced. Normally, such false stories dissipate just as quickly as they emerged. How…

Some Western intellectuals have voiced their frustration with certain ideas about artificial intelligence and robots as a threat that could “invade our territory, displace us from our homes, consume our resources, and even marry our women.” Such fantastical notions were initially spread by science…

Mohammed al-Hammadi Emirati journalist The style and manner of the 32nd Arab Summit were those of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. With its emphasis on work and achievement, it became successful. Everyone who attended or watched the Jeddah Summit recognized that there was something very…

By Niki Kitsantonis The party of Greece’s conservative prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, was on track to win a decisive victory in the general election on Sunday but fell short of the majority required to lead a one-party government, setting the stage for another ballot within weeks since Mr…

By Alexandra Glorioso and Nicholas Nehamas As a 44-year-old, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida might be an unlikely candidate to wrest his party’s older voters away from Donald J. Trump, a 76-year-old baby boomer. But he is trying anyway. As Mr. DeSantis closes in on the official rollout of a…

In the many recent discussions I’ve had with journalist friends from Europe and the US, or even some from the Arab world who have not visited Saudi Arabia before, our conversations have centered around understanding the secret of Saudi Arabia’s rise. These discussions were especially focused on the…

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio I know all too well how some Americans feel about immigrants: I was undocumented for 25 years, and I am a child of immigrants who remain undocumented. I also wrote a book about the daily lives of migrants during the Trump years. At the time, the Trump…

In recent months, there have been several instances of elite universities or their faculty members offering some kind of institutional pushback to a censorious progressivism. Prominent examples include Cornell’s refusal to create a trigger warning requirement demanded by the undergraduate student…

For decades, the Middle East brimmed with crises like nowhere else in the world. It was a breeding ground for wars and conflicts and a region that constantly drew external interventions, which were often made under utterly illogical slogans totally removed from reality. The peoples and countries…

The saying about books that many cite and only few read is true for Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle). The book saw the light of day in 1925, from the luxurious prison cell Hitler had been detained in for his failed Munich Putsch. There are many conflicting stories about it. Some claim…

The ruptures and interventions have squandered more than a decade of the life of the Arabs. The stage was rough, costly, and scary. It cracked maps and pushed countries towards erosion. Feelings of conflict, separation and oppression were unleashed. It spilled a river of blood and destroyed…