Worldcrunch
TEL AVIV — With Israeli students returning to school this week, Calcalist decided to ask a few how they spent what turned out to be an unusual summer holiday, given the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Seven weeks of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza and Hamas rocket attacks aimed at targets in Israel have […]
Sectarian differences have long created problems for some marriages among Shia, Sunni and others. But with the death and hatred of war, romantic tragedies abound.
The U.S. has a poor record on Iraq, but it’s optimistic that cooperation with the country’s new prime minister can help him win the war against terrorists and restore regional stability.
President Barack Obama’s decision on the limited U.S. intervention in Iraq seems to have no long-term strategy behind it. Even Obama seems to know that.
A view from afar on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the Jewish-American lobby looks all too much like the Cuban-American lobby.
TEL AVIV — Don’t know where to run when you hear the sirens? Want to send a distress signal in an emergency to security forces or assure your family you’re okay with a tweet? Here is a list of the latest smartphone applications that are getting downloaded during the current military “Operation Protective Edge,” as […]
It is becoming harder and harder to even imagine an end to the cycle of anger and vengeance.
Children as young as four are the main breadwinners for some families in the Syrian capital.
Without infrastructure and trade that arrives from Israel, the situation in Gaza would be even worse. So the lines are left open, even as bombs and missiles fly in every direction.
BAGHDAD — Ten years ago, this was a park for children. The young boys of Adhamiya, a Sunni district in Baghdad, used to come here to play soccer. Now, this bare patch of land on the bank of the Tigris river is a makeshift cemetery. A forest of tombstones grew during the darkest years of […]
In rural Idlib, marriage offices are fixing people up, but some say they’re exploiting the lonely during wartime by selling desperate women to overseas men.
Things were getting heated in West Berlin in the summer of 1967. The conflict was escalating between the government and the West German student movement, peaking with the police shooting dead a young protester just one month before we went there. This photo shows the ongoing construction of the Berlin Wall, six years after the […]
DAMASCUS — In Syria, it’s business as usual. Despite the desolate landscape of destruction that loyalist troops leave behind and the sanctions imposed by Western countries, a few entrepreneurs in the power’s sphere of influence are still amassing profits, say experts of the Syrian regime. They are lifting the veil on part of this occult […]
Compared to ancient times, the world is a relatively peaceful place right now. Strangely, this has begun to push economists to study the historical costs and returns of war.
As Islamists gain ground in Iraq and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appeals for help, the U.S. says it will only help if he first resigns. But it’s not the only reason why his regime may fall.
The Islamist radical group’s conquests in Iraq could help it take control of parts of eastern and northern Syria it had been forced to abandon.
BEIJING — With President Barack Obama’s recent announcement that the United States will remove all military forces in Afghanistan by the end of 2016, American foreign policy is preparing to turn a page full of blood and tears. But this also may mark the beginning of another era: when China will play a prominent role […]
-OpEd- PARIS — Let’s be honest, Syria’s June 3 presidential election was nothing but a giant government-orchestrated masquerade. Bashar al-Assad will remain president of Syria, a country whose population has been largely decimated, as the three-year-long conflict has turned the country into a battleground for international jihadists from Shia and Sunni Islam, with the direct […]
Hundreds of thousands of Libyans fled to Tunisia after the 2011 revolution that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. A visit with those who mourn the fallen dictator, including his relatives.
Italy is often a point of arrival in Europe for immigrants from troubled points east and south. But most will eventually wind up in northern destinations. What have they seen? What will they find?
-OpEd- PARIS — How often are war crimes being committed in Syria? Is it every time a helicopter from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime drops a barrel bomb on a school, a hospital, an apartment block? Every time a fighter-bomber launches a strike in the middle of a town? Or every time a group of Islamist […]
DAMASCUS — Despite relative calm after months of heavy fighting, Syrians returning home to the Damascus suburb of Barzeh are finding their homes in need of repairs that are often too pricey to take on alone. At the beginning of the year, in besieged suburbs of Damascus and in rural villages within the province, local opposition officials signed temporary cease-fire agreements with the Syrian government. Rebel fighters put down their weapons and, slowly, civilians were allowed to return to the long-embattled neighborhoods. Barzeh, a northwest suburb of the Syrian capital, was one of the first communities to recognize a cease-fire […]
French photojournalist Camille Lepage was killed at the age of 26 in the Central African Republic. Despite her youth, her passing leaves a huge hole in crisis reporting. Memories from a German friend and colleague.
An Aleppo ear-nose-and-throat specialist had to suddenly face the treating of war’s horrific injuries, especially after a government barrel-bomb offensive began there in December.
France’s May 1954 defeat in this battle in north Vietnam marked the beginning of the end of centuries of Western colonialism. A visit to the battle scene that should have been a warning to others.
A teenage girl living in one of Syria’s besieged cities shares her stories of life in a time of war. She dreams of getting an education, but the ongoing violence has destroyed local schools.
The two Nordic countries, one of which shares a long border with Russia, have so far been carefully neutral as Moscow flexes its muscles. Could NATO membership be the answer?
It will take the international community years to recover from the trust Russia violated over its illegal interference in Ukraine. But Putin and his close collaborators will never be punished.
The competing sides, both globally and regionally, will never see Ukraine’s reality the same way, so deep are the historical and cultural divides. Analysis from Kiev.
In Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest source of cocoa beans, illegal cultivation has spread into Mont Péko National Park, threatening both wildlife and the well-being of children.
-OpEd- I too can play the game of “I won’t think about that, so it can’t exist,” like a character tells himself in Delirium, the novel by Colombian writer Laura Restrepo. Indeed, such mental games are a national character trait. The country’s principal cinema chain Cine Colombia refused last December to show a short trailer […]
The inside story of the Syrian army photographer assigned to log images of the victims of torture. One day, he’d seen enough, and joined the opposition – photos in hand.
LOIKAW — Decades of armed conflict in Myanmar make it one of the worst-hit countries for landmines. Six years ago, the Karenni National People’s Liberation Front established a prosthetics factory in Karenni state, near the border with Thailand, to help people who have been disabled by landmines. The special feature of this enterprise? All of the people working at the factory are landmine victims themselves. One of them is Kyaw Win, a former soldier with the Karenni Army who has been fighting a separatist battle with the Myanmar military for decades. While on the battlefield, he stepped on a landmine […]
BANGUI – Bibiane had a dreadful night. As torrents of rain came beating down on the capital of the Central African Republic, this 28-year-old mother, her two children, her parents and her seven brothers and sisters tried in vain to gather under a single canvas sheet, pocked with holes. Still, compared to the 35,000 to […]
DEIR EZ-ZOR — On a pitch-black night, we wait in our taxi on the embankment. A fighter informs us there are wounded on the bridge, and that his comrades are trying to reach them. The official name of this deadly crossing — Siyasiyeh Bridge — has been discarded in favor of something much more apt: the bridge of death. Syria’s eastern city of Deir ez-Zor is effectively divided, split between government-run and opposition-held areas. The rebels briefly gained an upper hand when they captured the Siyasiyeh Bridge in late January, effectively cutting off regime supplies to the adjoining province of […]
HAMA — Most young women in Syria probably grew up dreaming of someday having a beautiful, magical wedding. But in wartime, many women, assuming they are able to wed at all, are settling for ceremonies that are a far cry from what they imagined. “My biggest fear was that we would book a restaurant and no one would show up,” says Sarah, a newlywed from Hama. She had planned to get married at the end of the summer. But plans are hard to make in Syria these days. Roads are so dangerous that chances are slim a mailed invitation will […]
NEW YORK — The U.S. government has come in for severe criticism about its use of drones, as many claim that it is violating one of the central tenets of international humanitarian law: Under no circumstances should civilians be the target of military operations. Any country that deliberately crosses that line is guilty of war […]
Among only five Latin Americans on Forbes Magazine’s presitigious annual index of the most powerful is El Chapo, a legendary Mexican drug kingpin poisoning the entire region.
Peace is a process, never a single event. Negotiations for peace are always far more complicated than the public understands, and the results are not always miraculous. Even so, the majority of modern conflicts — 80%, according to the School for the Culture of Peace in Barcelona — eventually end after negotiations. The school’s reports […]
SAINT-GIRONS — Jean Benazet is still in shock. In the early morning of Sept. 9, he discovered 30 of his sheep lying motionless at the bottom of a cliff. It was clear right away that they had all fallen to their death. He and his herd had been spending the season in the summer pastures […]