I have been trying to avoid writing this review, not because of the book’s subject matter (this is not a profound book any sense of the word) but because it has been done so many times before and has by now become quite dated in the ephemeral world of controversy. But I finally read the book more than two years after downloading the original working paper of the same title from the Kennedy School of Government’s website—and at least a year since the book itself was published. I had put off reading the expanded argument because I was already familiar with both the working paper and the version published in the London Review of Books—plus, I was aware that Mearsheimer and Walt had based their arguments entirely on secondary research and I am already very familiar with the topic.

First, let me just address a minor issues: John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (henceforth M/W) must be congratulated for their attempts at initiating a serious debate about this absurdly sensitive issue (at least in the United States). Considering their argument is neither new to anyone familiar with the subject, the book’s only real contribution is its success at reaching a wide audience. Had similar arguments been published by less reknowned academics and pundits (which they have been), “the Lobby” would surely have buried them in a mountain of obsolescence, ignored and forgotten without concern (which they have). But M/W cannot be dismissed as ideologues and so, the likes of Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz and other apologists for Israeli/U.S. crimes immediately went on the offensive by attempting to undermine the credibility and authority of the authors when faced with hard facts from a wide array of scholars. (more…)

Control Room, directed by Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, provides unique insights into the media dynamics on the eve of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. It primarily portrays the interactions between Al Jazeera journalists on the one hand and US military spokespersons and Western journalists on the other hand. Al Jazeera is a TV station largely funded by the Arab Emirate of Qatar, which has the politically most open system in the Emirates. It was initially hailed by Western commentators and the US government as exceptionally critical of Arab governments and the region’s most prominent outlet for free speech. When it reported on atrocities by the Algerian military, for example, the Algerian government decided to disconnect the electricity in the capital city of Algier to avert that ordinary Algerians would observe the grim accounts. Al Jazeera fell into disfavor with many rulers, as a consequence of which its licenses to broadcast and report have been canceled or otherwise thwarted in dozen countries. Contrary to popular perception, Al Jazeera was not chiefly at odds with Western government before the Iraq invasion. (more…)

Arguably, the strong aid pessimism that persisted during the 1980s and 1990s had faded a little at the turn of this century. In 2000, at the Millennium Summit at the UN Headquarters (the only UN gathering in which all heads of state were present) all governments agreed upon the Millennium Development Goals as a grand strategy to markedly reduce extreme, deadly poverty. Its first goal was the reduction of the percentage of people living in extreme poverty by half until the year 2015. The other goals set targets for school enrollment, universal primary education, maternal health and a “global partnership for development”. The foundational thinking for this approach is to be found in what has been termed the “unofficial” book behind the goals, articulating the views of their architect – The End of Poverty by Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Professor Sachs is a fervent advocate of the view that a drastic increase in development aid could achieve these goals, and the public largely bought these arguments.

It seemed like the days in which perceptions that aid would largely become embezzled, spent by gullible do-gooders or used by big powers to further their geo-political and economic interests dominated debates about development were numbered – a shift in perceptions that is has in recent years been incessantly challenged by New York University Professor William Easterly. His book The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (New York: Penguin Books, 2006) left its imprint on the academic and public debate on development aid. (more…)

I was so eager to read the memoirs of this great Marxist historian that I could not wait to read it. Finished it on the plane last night. What a big disappointment. You can be a great historian and write a lousy memoirs. You don’t even learn much about who he is from reading it. You learn some about the times but I would rather read his The Age of Extremes (a history of the 20th century). Now that is a fine piece of work.

I think that the problems with this memoirs is this: to write a good memoirs 1) you need to think that you are somewhat interesting; 2) you need to be a good story teller; 3) you need to be comfortable talking about yourself. That does not apply here. (more…)

In 1986, a great deal had already been written about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though most of this work was primarily concerned with the West Bank… and Gaza was almost an afterthought. As far as I know, Paul Cossali and Clive Robson’s Stateless In Gaza (Zed Books, 1986) was one of the first books to deal with Gaza in an informal, people’s history sort of way. And it remains the only effort… Of course, “first” and “only” do not necessarily imply greatness, but Stateless In Gaza is an interesting (if occasionally scattered) look into the opinions and attitudes of pre-Intifada Gazans.

“Abdel Salam was the first person in our village to build a house out of stone—he had lots of money and contacts with the foreigners.” Thus begins the inauspicious opening of Stateless In Gaza, from there continuing to anecdote after anecdote as a series of seemingly endless tales of hardship and personal sacrifice. In this way, the various Palestinian narrators describe aspects of Gaza’s history beginning with the nakba of 1948 and passing through the Egyptian and Israeli occupations up to (the present day at the time of the book’s publishing) 1986. (more…)