Malcolm Kerr was a distinguished scholar of the Middle East and the Arab world. He was the president of the American University of Beirut and wrote a book in 1965 called The Arab Cold War.
In 1984, he was assassinated by two gunmen outside his office. He was 52.
You can learn more about Malcolm Kerr at the link.
In 1974 and 1975, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger flew back and forth between Middle Eastern capitals. These trips were accompanied by the media and were short in length. The media who flew with him coined the term “shuttle diplomacy” to describe it.
As a result of Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy, three deals were formed. You can read about those deals at the link.
By ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.
In part because my father was murdered by an Arab, I’ve made an effort to understand the impact of U.S. policy in the Mideast and particularly the factors that sometimes motivate bloodthirsty responses from the Islamic world against our country. As we focus on the rise of the Islamic State and search for the source of the savagery that took so many innocent lives in Paris and San Bernardino, we might want to look beyond the convenient explanations of religion and ideology. Instead we should examine the more complex rationales of history and oil—and how they often point the finger of blame back at our own shores.
The United States’ continuing involvement in the Middle East has been contributing to the regional instability more often than not.
In 2014, Chas W. Freeman discussed the U.S.’s continuing issues in its foreign policy with regards to the Middle East at 23rd Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference. You can read these comments at the link.
KAL’s cartoon: The Middle East is in turmoil. And it’s getting worse
On November 13, 1986, President Ronald Reagan went on TV to discuss the Iran-Contra scandal and reveal the full extent of the Iran-Contra plans to the American people.
After this reveal, those in the State Department who had worked in the Middle East quickly fell under suspicion of helping with the plot. You can read on at the link to learn more!
On this day in 1991, the Madrid Peace Conference, or the meeting between Israel, the United States, as well as various Middle Eastern states to come to a peace agreement, began.
It was a very difficult meeting to arrange (read more about that work here), but just getting the Israelis and the Arab states to the table was only the beginning.
Read on at the link to get an inside look at the Madrid Peace Conference.
A Photographer in Search of People
Last year, Italian photographer Massimo Sestini shot the photo above of refugees and migrants fleeing North Africa and the Middle East for Europe. Now he wants to find them.
“There were 500 people on that boat, so I would like to launch a worldwide campaign to ask them all ‘Where are you?’ so that I may continue my photo reportage on migration, and further help [shed light] this dramatic issue,” he tells Time.
Sestini, who won a World Press Photo award for this image, has set up a page on his Web site in hopes of tracking those he originally photographed.
Image: Asylum seekers traveling by boat off the coast of Africa on the Mediterranean, by Massimo Sestini. Select to embiggen.
