JERUSALEM — With Condoleezza Rice in town and multiple meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in recent weeks, there is little doubt that the season of peace has come again to the Middle East: Peace, as in peace process. Few people, however, seem persuaded that an end to the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is at hand. In fact, the word one hears more often these days is “Intifada” — as in Palestinian uprising; as in a new outbreak of deadly violence between the two sides. That may seem odd, considering that top-level government officials from the United States, [...]
Last Sept. 11, German state-owned television ZDF marked the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by broadcasting a prime-time documentary titled “September 11, 2001: What Really Happened.” By enticingly implying a discrepancy between what the film itself repeatedly terms the “official version” of 9/11 and the reality of the events, the mere title of the film already provides obvious grist for the mill of what might best be called “alternative” 9/11 conspiracy-theorizing: “alternative” because in the legal sense of the term, the 9/11 attacks were in fact the product of a conspiracy. On the ZDF Web page promoting the documentary, [...]
“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 [...]
