October 11, 2023

Goodbye, Status Quo

NEED TO KNOW Goodbye, Status Quo ISRAEL/ GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a7853464-ef94-4b48-96b9-d7badbef5e55.png"] Thousands of young people were dancing at an outdoor music festival near the Gaza border in southern Israel on Friday when rockets started flying overhead and gunshots sounded, bringing the party – and a threadbare peace – to an...

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October 06, 2023

Speak, Calliope

NEED TO KNOW Speak, Calliope LIBYA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bbf539f5-8945-4e8b-9453-35a595c0de45.png"] Poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi penned eerily prescient lines in the days before he would die in a flood in the city of Derna, on eastern Libya’s Mediterranean coast. “The rain /Exposes the drenched streets, /the cheating contractor, /and the failed state,” he wrote...

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September 05, 2023

Stumbling To the Starting Line

NEED TO KNOW Stumbling To the Starting Line LIBYA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bbf539f5-8945-4e8b-9453-35a595c0de45.png"] Libyan Foreign Minister Najla al-Mangoush fled to Turkey last week after the oil-rich country’s prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, sacked her amid protests stemming from news that she had met with the Israeli foreign minister in Rome. Israel’s Foreign...

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August 30, 2023

A Toxic Mystery

NEED TO KNOW A Toxic Mystery IRAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/aa73e799-3df4-4d8a-8ec5-35a9feeb2bb4.png"] Someone has been poisoning girls in schools in Iran since November last year. “Victims described smelling peculiar odors, such as citrus, rotting fish, or chlorine, before experiencing symptoms that included vomiting, dizziness, shortness of breath, and fatigue,” wrote the New Yorker...

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August 24, 2023

The Fraying Chains

NEED TO KNOW The Fraying Chains IRAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/aa73e799-3df4-4d8a-8ec5-35a9feeb2bb4.png"] Almost a year ago, a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini died while in the custody of Iran’s so-called morality police. Her offense was refusing to wear her hijab – a headscarf – contrary to the Islamic Republic’s harsh laws. Amini’s death...

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August 08, 2023

Wobbly Stools

NEED TO KNOW Wobbly Stools WEST BANK & GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7446631-e728-4689-8f2d-ebddc1f4962c.png"] Late last month, globetrotting New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman announced that American officials were considering a new security pact with Saudi Arabia. The pact would function like a three-legged stool: The US would give iron-clad security guarantees to...

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August 01, 2023

To Be Reasonable

NEED TO KNOW To Be Reasonable ISRAEL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2f7ce1b6-fa2d-e80d-cdee-e2c83f69c720.png"] Left and right in Israel are split over the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu curtailing the country’s high court from citing the “reasonableness doctrine” in its decisions. As the Atlantic magazine explained, the doctrine is a British common law tool...

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July 10, 2023

The Tiger’s Stripes

NEED TO KNOW The Tiger’s Stripes EGYPT [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/180d3d63-0093-422e-a6d2-b3d9896f0053.png"] Ten years ago on July 3, the Egyptian military under Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi launched a coup against the first democratically elected president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi – a member of the Islamist organization the Muslim Brotherhood, that supporters describe as...

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May 16, 2023

Welcome Back

NEED TO KNOW Welcome Back SYRIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e4901088-a8f1-4f67-bb93-075f2af0bff8.png"] The Arab League recently welcomed Syria back into the fold after suspending the country’s membership 12 years ago, when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched his crackdown on rebels wanting to bring an end to his tyrannical rule. Around half a million...

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April 12, 2023

New Kids on the Block

NEED TO KNOW New Kids on the Block WEST BANK/ GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7446631-e728-4689-8f2d-ebddc1f4962c.png"] For years, Fatah and Hamas have vied for control of Palestine. The largest faction in the late Yasser Arafat’s renowned Palestinian Liberation Organization, Fatah controls the occupied territories of the West Bank, where Palestinian officials uneasily cooperate...

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April 04, 2023

Israeli Spring

NEED TO KNOW Israeli Spring ISRAEL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2f7ce1b6-fa2d-e80d-cdee-e2c83f69c720.png"] Civil unrest in Israel has prompted many observers to wonder if the same pro-democracy impulses that motivated Arab Spring activists more than a decade ago are now emerging in the Jewish state on the Mediterranean. The protests recently forced Prime Minister...

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March 29, 2023

Books, Traffic and Trauma

NEED TO KNOW Books, Traffic and Trauma IRAQ [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7f5678d9-eac3-49b9-9755-dcad8927e883.png"] Twenty years after the American invasion of Iraq, the booksellers of Mutanabbi Street are back again, reviving the popular Arabic saying, “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, and Baghdad reads.” Fighting in the streets kept the customers away from this otherwise...

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March 21, 2023

A Hatchet in the Ground

NEED TO KNOW A Hatchet in the Ground SAUDI ARABIA/ IRAN/ CHINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/613e746f-14cd-b434-50ae-61a59c1972d5.png"] It’s hard to say which is more remarkable about the recent peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran – the reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite Muslim powers who have been at odds over the future...

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March 16, 2023

The Proxy Peace

NEED TO KNOW The Proxy Peace YEMEN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ee4609f2-2073-461b-ae67-50c2f07e3c6e.png"] The civil war in Yemen kept a rusting supertanker off the coast of the Middle Eastern country from delivering one million barrels of oil. Now, in an extraordinary move, wrote Agence France-Presse, the United Nations has purchased a new tanker...

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March 01, 2023

Nintendo and Synagogues

NEED TO KNOW Nintendo and Synagogues PERSIAN GULF [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2ef43bc6-4aa5-34f4-36a6-10052b2a1cae.png"] The Arab nations of the Persian Gulf are normalizing relations with Israel, loosening some of their harsh Islamic orthodoxies, and gradually transitioning their oil-dependent economies to a post-carbon future. These changes could herald a new era of openness and prosperity....

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February 22, 2023

A People, Betrayed

NEED TO KNOW A People, Betrayed LEBANON [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0326e424-e014-0b21-f1eb-761dce1d14a3.png"] After losing their jobs and selling their cars and other assets, parents in Lebanon are giving their children to orphanages because there is nothing left to sell to feed their children. “It was a hard decision,” Hussein Kassar told the Pulitzer...

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February 16, 2023

When the Earth Moves

NEED TO KNOW When the Earth Moves TURKEY/ SYRIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0f15500b-d13e-4a44-afc8-f426e94eea1f.png"] Two brothers rationed protein drinks to survive under the rubble of a collapsed building in the city of Kahramanmaras in Turkey, wrote the New York Times. In the northern Syrian city of Afrin, hospital staff named a new-born baby...

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January 18, 2023

Oiling the Hinges

NEED TO KNOW Oiling the Hinges MIDDLE EAST [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7000f0bb-c02b-4438-87c6-002be2c0dfc6.png"] Natural gas is changing the Eastern Mediterranean. It could also shake up the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. As the Middle East Institute outlined in a recent report, governments in southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa have been struggling to develop...

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January 05, 2023

The Prodigal Leader

NEED TO KNOW The Prodigal Leader ISRAEL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a7853464-ef94-4b48-96b9-d7badbef5e55.png"] Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister of Israel again in late December, his sixth time in the job. His coalition, widely described as the country’s most hardline and right-wing government ever, contains a self-described “anti-Arab” party and is quickly moving to...

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January 03, 2023

Won’t Back Down

NEED TO KNOW Won’t Back Down IRAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/aa73e799-3df4-4d8a-8ec5-35a9feeb2bb4.png"] The Iranian government’s crackdown on free speech and the free flow of information has led protesters who are challenging the country’s Islamic clerics to smuggle Starlink satellite dishes into the country. Manufactured by a subdivision of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s...

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