Joel Beinin provides clarity and insight into the politics of the US embassy move to Jerusalem in our latest MERO.

"The storm of opposition to President Donald Trump’s December 6, 2017 announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital was predictable, and has been, so far, ineffectual. More consequentially, in the following week Israeli forces killed four and wounded ten Palestinian protestors in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There were demonstrations around the worl...d—in Cairo, Beirut, Tehran, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Istanbul, Tokyo and in several European and American cities. The European diplomatic community was exceptionally aroused but has done nothing substantive. There will likely be a reprise of such protests if, as he announced he “may” do, President Trump travels to Israel to inaugurate a US Embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, coinciding with the seventieth anniversary of Israel’s establishment."

Preservation or Plunder? In our latest MERO, Arbella Bet-Shlimon situates NYT correspondent Rukmini Callimachi and her team's transfer of "the ISIS files" to the United States in a long history of Iraqi heritage removal:

"Even more concerning, some of the NYT’s defenders in discussions about the ISIS files have portrayed Iraqi critics of the paper as insufficiently grateful for the intervention of wiser Americans, a notion that echoes the privately expressed sentiments of Le...onard Woolley and Gertrude Bell a century ago. For instance, Kirk H. Sowell, a consultant who publishes the risk newsletter Inside Iraqi Politics (for which Al-Tamimi is a contributor), initiated an exchange with me in response to a defense of the NYT’s Iraqi critics that I had written on Twitter. He opened with a tweet reading, “Point me to the Iraqi newspaper which does in-depth investigative journalism & I’ll happily read it.” Puzzled by the relevance of this comment to a statement about the ethics of removing archives for private ownership, I asked Sowell, “Just to be clear: your take is that Iraqis should stay quiet about their archives being taken to the U.S. because they don’t yet have the means to establish a [NYT]-caliber paper?” He responded, “Absolutely.” (Callimachi herself “liked” this last tweet.)"

Save the DATE:

MERIP is proud to be collaborating on this initiate called "The Latin East" with NACLA and Jadaliyya:

On April 27 - 28, 2018, NACLA, MERIP (Middle East Research and Information Project), and Jadaliyya will convene scholars, artists, and activists for a two-day international conference at New York University to explore new and longstanding links between Latin America and the Middle East. Contributors will consider social movements, cultural exchanges, politica...l and economic institutions, and transnational solidarity and diaspora politics in light of the Arab spring and winter, and against the backdrop of nearly two decades of left wing governance in Latin America.