Middle East Politics

Classrooms were never sufficient for Jared Cohen; he wanted to learn about global affairs by witnessing them firsthand. While studying on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, he took a crash course in Arabic, read voraciously on the history and culture of the Middle East, and in 2004 he embarked on the first of a series of incredible journeys to the Middle East. In an effort to try to understand the spread of radical Islamist violence, he focused his research on Muslim youth.

This book is written by two of the leading terrorist experts in the world. Hacking ISIS will explain in graphic detail how ISIS produces religious cultism, recruits vulnerable young people of all religions and nationalities and disseminates their brutal social media to the world. More, the book will map out the cyberspace-level tactics on how ISIS spreads its terrifying content, how it distributes tens of thousands of pieces of propaganda daily and is winning the battle in cyberspace and how to stop it in its tracks.

Sabrina Mahfouz once sat in a Whitehall interview room and was interrogated about everything from her political leanings to her private life. It was ostensibly a job interview, but implicit in their demands was the unspoken question: as a woman of Middle Eastern heritage, could she really be trusted? Years later, Sabrina found herself confronting the meaning behind this interrogation, and how it was specifically informed by the British Empire's historical dominance in the Middle East.

In 1958, Ahmad Chalabi’s wealthy Shiite family was exiled from Iraq after a revolution that ultimately put Saddam Hussein in power. The young Chalabi devoted his life to restoring his family to prominence. His first coup attempt was in 1963 at age nineteen, while on a school break from MIT. His next was aided by Iranian intelligence. But as the years passed and Saddam stayed in power, Chalabi made an audacious decision: he needed the support of both Iran and its powerful archenemy, the United States.

When conflicts become entrenched over generations, the language of war infiltrates everyday life, concealing destruction and hardening positions. Nowhere is this truer than in the Middle East. Award-winning author Raja Shehadeh explores the politics of language and the language of politics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reflecting on the walls that they create - legal and cultural - that confine today's Palestinians just like the borders, checkpoints and so-called "Separation Barrier".

The birth of South Sudan was celebrated the world round. But the celebration would not last: South Sudan's freedom-fighters soon plunged their new nation back into chaos, shattering the promise of liberation and exposing the hubris of their American backers. Drawing on extraordinary personal stories of identity, liberation, and survival, this narrative tells an epic story of paradise won and then lost. Zach Vertin's firsthand accounts, from deadly war zones to the halls of Washington power, bring listeners on an extraordinary journey into the rise and fall of the world's newest state.

Niemand steht so sehr für eine unerschrockene Berichterstattung aus dem Nahen und Mittleren Osten wie Natalie Amiri. Für ihr neues Hörbuch hat die preisgekrönte Autorin die gesamte Region bereist. Sie gibt den notleidenden Kindern aus Gaza eine Stimme, spricht mit israelischen Angehörigen getöteter Geiseln, trifft kurdische Frauen, die in Kobane die Stellung gegen den IS halten – und im israelischen Gefängnis Marwan Barghuthi, dessen Bedeutung für die Palästinenser mit der Nelson Mandelas für Südafrika verglichen wird.

Determined to offer an unfiltered version of events, the Washington Post's Anthony Shadid was neither embedded with soldiers nor briefed by politicians. Because he is fluent in Arabic, Shadid, an Arab-American born and raised in Oklahoma, was able to actually disappear into the divided, dangerous worlds of Iraq. Day by day, as American dreams clashed with Arab notions of justice, he pieced together the human story of ordinary Iraqis weathering the terrible dislocations and tragedies of war.

This book tells the stories of the Muslims, Christians, Jews and others who made a courageous stand against the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, the first modern genocide. Foreigners and Ottomans alike ran considerable risks to bear witness and rescue victims, sometimes sacrificing their lives. Diplomats, humanitarians, missionaries, lawyers and other visitors to the Empire stood up, including Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra; Raphael Lemkin, the jurist who first established genocide as an international crime; and the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen.

Called by Winston Churchill in 1921, the Cairo Conference set out to redraw the map of the Middle East in the wake of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The summit established the states of Iraq and Jordan as part of the Sherifian Solution and confirmed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine—the future state of Israel. No other conference had such an enduring impact on the region. C. Brad Faught demonstrates how the conference was an ambitious, if ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to move the Middle East into the world of modern nationalism.

Using the writings of Cosmas and a wealth of other historical and archaeological evidence from the period, eminent historian G. W. Bowersock carefully reconstructs this fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history. The flashpoint of the war, Bowersock tells us, occurred when Yusuf, the Jewish king of Himyar, massacred hundreds of Christians living in Najran. The Christian ruler of Ethiopia, Kaleb, urged on by the Byzantine emperor Justin, led a force of 120,000 men across the Red Sea to defeat Yusuf.

Rachel Shabi was born in Israel to Jewish Iraqi parents. When she was a child her family emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1974. Their leaving reversed the spiritual trek of the Jewish Diaspora, around the world whose members wistfully repeat at the Passover tables, "Next year in Jerusalem." Years later, in fact, Shabi went back to visit and to live for an extended period, but her attitude toward her former homeland is conflicted by the longstanding discrimination suffered by Arab Jews in Israel.

The Olive Branch from Palestine provides a new narrative of the Palestinian effort to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and offers a bold plan for ending this conflict today, a proposal that focuses on Palestinian agency and the power of the Palestinians to bring about the two-state solution, even in the absence of a fully committed Israeli partner.

For more than a decade, Katherine Zoepf has lived in or traveled throughout the Arab world, reporting on the lives of women, whose role in the region has never been more in flux. Only a generation ago, female adolescence as we know it in the West did not exist in the Middle East. There were only children and married women. Today, young Arab women outnumber men in universities, and a few are beginning to face down religious and social tradition in order to live independently, to delay marriage, and to pursue professional goals.

Informed by unparalleled access to still-secret documents, interviews with top field commanders, and a review of the military's own internal after-action reports, Cobra II is the definitive chronicle of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq, a conflict that could not be lost but one that the United States failed to win decisively. From the Pentagon to the White House to the American command centers in the field, the book reveals the inside story of how the war was actually planned and fought.

Venice, 1522. Intelligence arrives from the east confirming Europe's greatest fear: the vastly rich Ottoman Sultan has all he needs to wage total war - and his sights are set on Rome. With Christendom divided, Suleyman the Magnificent has his hand on its entrails. From the palaces of Istanbul to the blood-soaked fields of Central Europe and the scorched coasts of North Africa, The Lion House pioneers a bold new style of eye-witness history to tell a true story of power at its most glittering, personal and perilous.

After 9/11, the Ayn Rand Institute predicted that the prevailing ideas about morality would undercut our foreign policy and cripple us in action. In the op-eds, essays, blog posts, and interviews featured in this audiobook, you will hear that those predictions have proved correct. Can we end the Islamist menace and secure our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on earth? Yes - easily - if we adopt the right philosophic ideas to guide our foreign policy.

This book uncovers the narratives of Iranians, mainly women, who lead Iran's fight for liberation. Their firm pursuit of justice compelled me to capture their extraordinary journey, transcending borders and beckoning worldwide attention. This work is more than a mere story; it's a heartfelt plea to the world, urging champions of freedom to unite. The persecution of Iran's writers, stifling of voices, and incarceration of activists reverberate as part of a systemic oppression that erodes our shared humanity.

The Muslim Brotherhood, or Ikhwan, has engaged in terrorism, assassinations, and anti-Western, anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence for almost a century - yet few Americans realize how powerful they really are. While we focus on al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah, it's actually the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's oldest, most influential, and most anti-American Islamist group, that has become the preeminent voice and power in the Muslim world.

The symbol of the Jewish State was the noble pioneer draining the swamps and making the deserts bloom: the legendary kibbutznik. So what ever happened to the pioneers’ dream of founding a socialist utopia in the land called Palestine? Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel draws listeners into the quest for answers to the defining political conflict of our era. Acclaimed author David Leach revisits his raucous memories of life as a kibbutz volunteer and returns to meet a new generation of Jewish and Arab citizens struggling to forge a better future together.