World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Perhaps the main headline in 2022 was the Russian forces’ entry to Ukraine. Few had imagined the war would come back knocking on Europe’s doors, several decades after the last bullet of WWII was fired in May 1945. Unless resolved, belligerently or peacefully, the war will be the compass this year,…

I shall introduce my article by quoting this sentence from the Western media. It paves the way for much of what I would like to say. “As the world plunges into crisis, Saudi Arabia seems set to become a modern superpower.” As some had been betting on the imminent downfall of the Kingdom and its…

What would it be like to be so ashamed of your life that you felt compelled to invent a new one? Most of us don’t feel compelled to do that. Most of us take the actual events of our lives, including the failures and frailties, and we gradually construct coherent narratives about who we are…

Two weeks ago, the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey passionately advocated in a blog post the view that neither Twitter nor the government nor any other company should exert control over what participants post. “It’s critical,” he said, “that the people have tools to resist this, and that those tools…

We are now sailing in a new year. From the very first moment, we sense the need to fasten our seatbelts. The issue is greater and more dangerous than turbulence.  The past year left us with a minefield and festering wounds that demand taking difficult and painful decisions.  US President Joe…

This year, during the lead-up to the Israeli elections, I returned to my hometown, Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, to work on a research project and spend time with my family there. I had received a grant to study the impact on Palestinians’ health of Israel’s restrictions on Palestinians’…

Sooner or later, days and events will prove that the key to clipping Iran’s nails in the region and taking back the confrontation with Iran inside Iran is Syria, not any other country, whether it is Iraq or Lebanon. What brought about this introduction was a story published by our newspaper…

Like many millennials, I was educated, if that’s the right word for it, on the internet. The online music critics and antiwar bloggers of the mid-2000s who were my teachers did not introduce me to T.S. Eliot, but they made sure that I had reasonably detailed opinions about “Apocalypse Now Redux,”…

On a cold October morning, Colin Canham and his wife, Sara Emerick, were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide. Mr. Canham was found lying near a firearm outside the couple’s home. Ms. Emerick was inside. A detective told me that it seemed that Mr. Canham had committed a crime of passion — a…

Despite all of the unwanted developments of 2022, it was a good year because the scenarios we had been weary of did not play out. Many may disagree, even without me putting some of my optimism into the article. They might think I am presenting a deceptive reading of 2022.   It is important that…

Pelé once confessed that he had long been troubled by a conundrum, one he’d only be able to crack when he met God, face-to-face, and could demand an explanation.   What plagued him was a feeling of dual identity: There was “Pelé,” the world’s greatest living sports legend of the 20th century,…

Environmental action in 2022 culminated in an image of the self-congratulatory applause of heads of delegations and international organizations, on what they called a "historic deal", at the conclusion of the 15th meeting of the biodiversity convention (COP15) held in Montreal. However, heads of…