The perfect Christian state is not the so-called Christian state – which acknowledges Christianity as its basis, as the state religion, and, therefore, adopts an exclusive attitude towards other religions. On the contrary, the perfect Christian state is the atheistic state, the democratic state, the state which relegates religion to a place among the other elements of civil society. (More…)
Single men are not often the priority for refugee assistance programs, but they are vulnerable in their own ways. Federica Marsi reports on the difficulties that lone Syrian men in Lebanon face accessing aid and protecting themselves from exploitation. (More…)
The United States is at a crossroads, one that few on the left thought would arrive at as recently as last week. The election of Donald Trump to the presidency is the harbinger of the most severe crisis to face the democratic institutions of this country since the late 1850s. (More…)
When we moved to No. 14 Nahmani Street, our tenants were a gentleman of the distinguished Sephardic Chelouche family and his adored French wife Paulette. She was, of course, attractive, always carefully made up and dressed. Her face brightened up with a big smile and a wink whenever she saw me playing in the garden, as she looked out of her bedroom window. (More…)
Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump is about to stomp into the White House and slap his surname onto the front of the place. Trump has been elected on a platform to end free trade, seal the border with Mexico and get tough on Muslims at home. (More…)
As fighting intensifies in the area around Syria’s Khan Eshieh – the so-called “camp of return” – and UNRWA draws parallels with the Yarmouk camp in Damascus, thousands of Palestinian refugees who call Khan Eshieh home face displacement for a second time. (More…)
When Paula, aged 15, announced her engagement to Franz, elder sister Selma was horrified. Instead of congratulating her, Selma slapped her sister’s face. Nevertheless, Paula and Franz married and had a daughter, Käte. (More…)
A new global bromance has begun: Trump, Putin, Orbán, Kaczynski, Johnson. These powers that be, who now control the planet, could not be more xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-woman, anti-queer, and ultranationalist. How could we have ever allowed that to happen? We’re all guilty of permitting the rise of the far right all over the world. (More…)
Finally, the May government has been challenged on its Brexit plans, but not in the way many of its opponents would hope. The challenge has come in the form of a ruling by the High Court. (More…)
With the new markets, which he opened at the point of the bayonet, and with the plunder of the continent, Napoleon returned to the farmer class with interest the taxes wrung from them. These taxes were then a goad to the industry of the farmer, while now, on the contrary, they rob his industry of its last source of support, and completely sap his power to resist poverty. (More…)
The United States intervened militarily in Syria under the premise of the “war on terror” and the fight against ISIS, but their presence is actually helping the Syrian government. (More…)
My father’s birth certificate tells us that he was born in Germany in the Westphalian town of Hörde, on the 15th of December 1877, the son of Herz Weinberg, and of Johanna Weinberg née Alsberg both of the “Israelitisch” faith. (More…)