“Daddy, I thought you were coming home after Bayram,” read somber headlines in newspapers across Turkey Oct. 10, capturing the sentiments of the daughters of a soldier killed by a PKK ambush in southeastern Turkey. Bayram is the three-day celebration that started Oct. 12 to mark the end of the month of Ramadan. It is custom for fathers, sons, brothers and husbands fulfilling their military duties to return home on Bayram to briefly visit their loved ones, and bring presents and candies to children. The last two weeks have seen the assassination of 30 soldiers in the perilous southeastern border [...]
Toward the end of August, French President Nicolas Sarkozy ushered in a new phase in the diplomatic negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program by calling for tougher sanctions against Iran. In the event that the U.N. Security Council should prove incapable of taking action, Sarkozy demanded that the Europeans take action themselves: unilaterally. It is only by applying massive economic pressure, Sarkozy argued, that “a catastrophic alternative” could still be avoided: “either the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran.” At the same time, Sarkozy pressured the French energy companies Total and Gaz de France to forego any further investments [...]
JERUSALEM — Ever since this June’s open warfare between rival Palestinians of Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the accusations, recriminations, smears and hoaxes have been flying wildly in the Palestinian Territories. In addition to the violence that still pits supporters of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, against followers of the more secular Fatah, the parties have launched elaborate publicity campaigns to bolster their own side and discredit the other in the eyes of fellow Palestinians and the rest of the world. One of the hoaxes, designed to make Fatah look more reliable to the West and to Israel, [...]
