Portside

The way to war, which will surely prove to be the road to hell, seems open with a Third Gulf War looming on humanity’s horizon. Once again, Iran is the enemy. Again, as in 2003, a president is surrounded by bellicose advisers intent on just such a war and looking for the right excuse to launch it.

Since World War II Israel and its pre-state paramilitary organizations have assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world - some 2,300 "targeted killing operations," most of them against Palestinians, but also aimed at Egyptians, Syrians, Iranians and others. In the name of state security, Israeli officials didn't just walk the line of legality, they trampled it.

Turkey's war on Afrin is an attack not only on Kurdish self-determination, but on democracy and women's liberation in the Middle East.

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Trump’s dangerous and provocative move regarding Jerusalem—like so many of his reckless policies both abroad and at home—requires strong, broad-based opposition. It is unfortunate that, at least in this case, there is no real opposition party.

American foreign policy is at the root of forced migration from different parts of the world, and human rights advocates must address the problem at its heart.

If there is something like a “Trump Doctrine,” it lies in two developments: the boldness with which a declared reliance on coercion and conquest now sits uncomfortably beside America’s professed moral authority; and the implications of Trump’s ethno-nationalism for how global allies and enemies are conceived.

In November 1917, British foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour declared British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”; in December, Jerusalem fell to British troops, and the effects of these events continue to reverberate. The Balfour Centennial should be a time of somber reflection about global responsibility for the tragedy in Palestine, which is more than a local record of colonial crimes, severe as these have been.

Here’s the truth of it, if you just stop to think about America’s wars for a moment: it’s only going to get harder to look a widow or mother in the eye and justify them in the years to come.

“The current American president is ignorant of the region,” said Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif, speaking to reporters in a cave until recently occupied by Nusra. “We are the force that fights terrorism while the United States continues to support terrorism in many forms.”