mideastmessenger.com

 Steve Rhodes, flickr.
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, spoke yesterday at the UNITY conference of minority journalists about his recent overseas trip to the Middle East and Europe.
 I covered the talk! Check out what he had to say.

 PHOTO: Lebanese youth hoist up Hezbollah flag. Paul Keller, flickr.
Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah swapped the remains of Israeli soldiers captured in a summer war two years ago for five Lebanese prisoners held by Israel.
Shortly after being released, the five Lebanese prisoners prayed at a slain Hezbollah leader’s grave, vowing to continue their fight against Israel. […]

I don’t think I’ve ever written a stranger headline than the one for this blog post. But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a bizarre and disturbing story.
In standard Al Jazeera style, the news network ran a May 5 story on Gazans having to burn baby chicks due to power shortages. The […]

PHOTO: Palestinian hip hop group DAM performs at a party. From left to right, Tamer Naffar, Mahmoud Jreiri. Agnes Varnum, flickr.
Hip hop blasts and booms from the clubs young Americans frequent on weekends. Besides for dancing, however, hip hop and its cousin, rap, have served as ways to transmit political, cultural and societal commentary.
The Chicago Palestine Film Festival at […]

PHOTO: Nof Zion, an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, Franz Elzenbaumer, flickr
Israeli President Ehud Olmert just gave the OK for 750 housing units to be built in the West Bank settlement of Givat Ze’ev.
Olmert has barred ministries from approving new settlements without his approval, but this expansion will not likely go over well with Palestinians. Settlements are a […]

PHOTO: Hamas supporters, eremi, flickr
Hamas’ current control of Gaza made the Bush administration extremely unhappy. When the group wrenched power from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a coup last year in the summer, sanctions were imposed on Gazans, supplies were stopped, funding from nations across the world stopped flowing in and the tiny territory was […]

PHOTO: Palestinians march in Tulkarem in support of prisoners, International Solidarity Movement-North Carolina, flickr.
Al Jazeera reported that Palestinian prisoners have complained of torture by the Palestinian Authority after the death of a Hamas religious leader, Majd al Barghouthi. PA authorities deny this claim, but four men who were arrested with al Barghouthi say they were […]

 PHOTO: Israelis protest the deportation of Liberian refugees, Shachaf Polakow, flickr.
Israel has detained about 200 asylum seekers after a raid in Tel Aviv. Many of them are from Darfur, an area of Sudan that has been in the grips of war and a situation many have labeled genocide. The raid followed a statement made by […]

PHOTO: Jerusalem, Premasagar, flickr
Even board games can’t escape the contentious Arab-Israel conflict. Hasbro recently found that out  the hard way. An employee reacted to complaints from people who said the “Jerusalem, Israel” label unfairly omitted Palestinian rights to the city. The removal of Israel made Jerusalem the only city on the board without a country.
Soon thereafter, people […]

PHOTO: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, World Economic Forum, flickr. 
George W. Bush can’t be too happy about this. The prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, held talks with Iran in Tehran. The Al Jazeera article says he is “the most senior UAE official to make a bilateral […]