On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the French parliament would be making a “grave mistake” if it chooses to recognize the state of Palestine when it votes on the matter on December 2nd. “Do they have nothing better to do at a time of beheadings across the Middle East, including that of a French citizen?” he said, …

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday urged the Israelis and the Palestinians to take a step back and return to negotiating terms before time runs out. “The Israeli and Palestinian people face a shared fate on shared land.  There is no erasing the other”, he told a UN committee on Palestinian rights. Ban also called “on the parties to …

On Monday, US President Barack Obama announced that US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel resigned from his post, with the White House coming under fire for its perceived fumbling of the response to extremist group Islamic State (IS). Hagel was at the White House during Obama’s announcement confirming his departure. The former Republican senator and 68-year-old Vietnam War veteran was on …

Monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Monday said that Kurdish fighters battling extremists from Islamic State (IS) were able to gain ground in the Syrian border town Kobane overnight. The town has become a symbolic battleground in the fight against the IS, with the global coalition launching airstrikes almost every day to aid the Kurdish fighters. According to …

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson was re-elected on Saturday, soundly beating main rival Kirk LaPointe despite signs late in the campaign that his bid for a third term in office was in trouble. Robertson was first elected in 2008 and is best known for being Vancouver’s public face in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Robertson’s Vision Vancouver party was the clear front-runner …

Human rights groups and NGOs have accused Israel of supporting a shoot-to-kill policy after several recent Israeli police incidents with Palestinians. A Jerusalem court on Sunday arraigned a border policeman after he shot and killed a Palestinian during a demonstration in the West Bank in May. Many argue that the manslaughter charge was not strong enough; furthermore, Israeli Public Security …

Extremist group Islamic State (IS) on Thursday claimed a suicide car bomb attack in the city of Arbil, the usually secure capital of the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq. In an online statement, the IS boasted that it had “breached all the security checkpoints of the agent Kurdistan government and reached the heart of the city of Arbil”. It also …

E-commerce and video game markets are growing “exponentially” across North Africa and the Middle East, driven by new youth-produced content and the mobile revolution, a new study suggested. The gaming market in the region is expected to almost triple its size, and expected to hit $4.4 billion in 2022 from $1.6 billion in 2014, a study conducted by Abu Dhabi …

Local Iranian media on Thursday reported that an Iranian-Canadian journalist, Hossein Derakhshan, dubbed “the blogfather” was freed from prison after being handed a 19 year jail term for traveling to Israel. Derakhshan was arrested in November 2008 after his visit to Israel, Iran’s arch-foe, using his Canadian passport, on what he called a trip to breed understanding between Israelis and …

By Ramzy Baroud When a journalist tries to do a historian’s job, the outcome can be quite interesting. Using history as a side note in a brief news report or political analysis oftentimes does more harm than good. Now imagine if that journalist was not dependable to begin with, even more than it being “interesting”, the outcome runs the risk …