Tom Gross – Mideast Media Analysis

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Other latest Mideast Dispatches: here

* Recent dispatch (1): Note (& Dr. Seuss’s and Boris Johnson’s Passover greetings)

* Recent dispatch (2): Hunting for books in the ruins: How Syria’s rebel librarians found hope

* Recent dispatch (3): Too much democracy in Israel? (& Israelis still can’t make up their mind about Netanyahu)

* Recent dispatch (4): “What I learned in Iranian prison” (& US airstrikes kill 22) (& Israeli nuclear expansion?)

* Recent dispatch (5): Syrian sentenced for crimes against humanity; Iran leader: Cartoons must show women in hijab (& Amazon bans “When Harry Became Sally”)

* Recent dispatch (6): Israel buys Russian covid vaccine for Syria in exchange for captured woman (& are normalization talks between Syria, Israel underway?

* Recent dispatch (7): “We’re handing Afghanistan to the Taliban”; middle class Afghans being assassinated in the run-up to US withdrawal

* Recent dispatch (8): Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death: remembering Otto Dov Kulka

* Recent dispatch (9): Netanyahu in court; & Top Iranian cleric: People who are get covid vaccine “become gay”

* Recent dispatch (10): Iranian diplomat sentenced to 20 years for bomb plot in France (& democracy activist killed yesterday on Iranian orders)

* Recent dispatch (11): ‘My Aunt Had a Dinner Party, and Then She Took Her Guests to Kill 180 Jews’ (& other items)

* Recent dispatch (12): Palestine goes to the polls: “Now he switches cars between his Mercedes-Benz S350 and a Toyota Land Cruiser”

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Writer Ariana Neumann (Venezuela / Prague / London)

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Novelist Max Gross: When Google meets shtetl

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Alan Dershowitz on his life, career and the state of America

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: New York Times columnist Bret Stephens

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Palestinian journalist Issam Ikirmawi (CNN, Al Jazeera, etc)

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Jamie Fly, From Trump to Biden: US foreign policy and party politics moving forward

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Violinist & Holocaust survivor Bela Dekany

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Times of Israel editor David Horovitz

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Mostafa Elostaz on Palestinian issues

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Lawyer Zoe Johnson

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Shmuel Bar

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Pianist Evgeny Kissin on music, the Yiddish language, Israel and the Soviet Union

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: The last Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: John O’Sullivan, Margaret Thatcher’s trusted advisor

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Filmmaker Hossein Amini (grandson of ex-PM of Iran)

* Recent video / Conversations with friends: Writer David Pryce-Jones

* Recent profile (1) / “A leftist in the fight against left-wing lies”: Profile of Tom Gross in the German daily Die Welt

* Recent profile (2) / Tom Gross profiled in the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat

* Video interview (3) / A conversation with Tom Gross about his life and childhood: growing up surrounded by cultural and literary luminaries in London and New York; Sunday brunches with Elvis Presley’s songwriter; crossing Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin with his grandmother during communism; sitting across the breakfast room from Carlos the Jackal; visiting Prague as a student to bring Vaclav Havel materials from London in the months before Havel helped overthrow communism; Tom helping the Roma when almost no one else would; Tom’s close relationship with his godmother Sonia Orwell (the model for Julia, the heroine of her husband’s masterpiece ‘1984’); being in Manhattan on 9/11; the Mideast; the importance and legacy of the Holocaust; and other matters

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A selection of TV interviews

The Media & ‘Fake news’

The Arab world

America & the Mideast

Britain & the Mideast

Britain under attack

Brexit

Israel & BDS

The future

* Are we today close to the reality of the novel “1984”?

A selection of articles

Media criticism

The New York Times

* The New York Times: All the news that’s fit to print?

The BBC

UK media’s global reach

News or Fake news?

Terrorism and radicalism

Palestinian issues

Israeli issues

The Arab world, Iran & Turkey

Syria

The Kurds

* The case for a Kurdish state

Iran

Turkey & The Gulf

Brexit & The Mideast

* Brexit and its Effect on the Middle East

U.S. politics

Human Rights

The Holocaust

Provocative cartoons

Photos essays

Videos: fun and serious

“Tom Gross is probably Europe’s leading observer of the Middle East” -- Former Pentagon official Michael Rubin

“Tom Gross’s dynamic dispatches bring to light stories that matter. He’s a one-man news agency of the most impressive kind” -- Former Arab Affairs editor for the BBC Magdi Abdelhadi, Cairo

“I read dozens of websites about the Middle East but I find new and important information at Tom Gross’s. You can’t skip his dispatches” -- Former U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams

“Tom Gross does an important job in bringing to our attention some of the most interesting articles published in various media outlets. His comments and analysis are very informative” -- Khaled Abu Toameh, Palestinian affairs correspondent, Jerusalem Post

more ...

Iranian women post photos free of hijab – but only for a few seconds

Hundreds of Iranian women defied strict rules requiring them to cover their heads in public, by sending photos of themselves without headscarves to a special Facebook page. They face arrest if identified. They quickly put their hijabs back on after taking the photos.

Interviews with human rights heroes

The wife of Saudi Arabia’s best known political prisoner, liberal blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes, speaks out.

A schoolgirl who escaped Boko Haram in Nigeria describes her ordeal. Michelle Obama is among those campaigning to #BringBackOurGirls. Most remain in captivity.

An interview with a former French Islamic State hostage in Syria, who was held with the U.S. and British hostages who were beheaded, including Jim Foley and Steve Sotloff.

This is the impassioned plea which the first female Yazidi MP in Iraq’s parliament, Vian Dakhi, made to draw the world’s attention to the plight of Yazidi girls forced into sex slavery.

Egyptian liberal dissident and former political prisoner Maikel Nabil is one of the moderate centrists that Egypt needs.

North Korean defector and freedom campaigner Hyeonseo Lee has risked her life by criticizing one of the world’s most oppressive regimes.

At the grave of Yasser Arafat in Ramallah. Arafat was no human rights hero, rejecting a Palestinian state, setting back peace efforts, and keeping some unpleasant company.

Meanwhile on campus…

Incitement to kill Jews made by masked Palestinian students at a “moderate” American-partnered university: A series of photos exclusive to this website from Al-Quds campus.

And on a happier note…

News from the Middle East can be depressing. Here is something more upbeat: people across the region record themselves singing along to the Pharrell Williams’ hit “Happy”.

Happy in Tel Aviv

Happy in Jerusalem

Happy in Beirut

Happy in Gaza

Happy in Tehran

The Iranians who created this “Happy” video were arrested and subjected to harsh detention. Police chief Hossein Sajedinia told the official ISNA news agency that the “vulgar clip” had “harmed public chastity”. Iran’s state TV broadcast a program showing the men and women in the video (which had become a hit on Iranian social media) confessing to their “crime” on camera. In response, Pharrell Williams wrote on his Facebook page that “It is beyond sad that these kids were arrested for trying to spread happiness”.

Latest Mideast Dispatches: here