It was on December 30, 2006, that the world witnessed the execution of one of its most infamous figures – Saddam Hussein. The former Iraqi dictator had been in American custody since his capture in a hiding spot north of Baghdad on December 13, 2003. His death marked the end of an era, not just …
The year 2010 quietly closed one chapter of Middle Eastern history and violently opened another. What began as scattered frustrations over unemployment, corruption, and rising prices soon erupted into one of the most consequential political movements of the twenty-first century. The Arab Spring did not start in a palace or a parliament, nor was it …
On December 13, 2003, the long and obsessive hunt for Saddam Hussein finally came to an end in a quiet, unremarkable farmhouse on the outskirts of Tikrit, the dusty region that had once served as the heartland of his power. For nearly eight months after the fall of Baghdad, the former Iraqi dictator had vanished …
On November 29, 1947, the world watched as the United Nations General Assembly cast one of the most consequential votes in modern geopolitical history. Resolution 181, the plan to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states with Jerusalem placed under international administration, became a watershed moment in the conflict that continues to shape the …
On October 6, 1973, while much of Israel stood in solemn silence for Yom Kippur—the holiest day in the Jewish calendar—the sound of shofars in synagogues was drowned out by the roar of jet engines, tank treads, and artillery fire. It was a day that began in fasting and prayer but descended into chaos and …
August 2, 1990, began like many blistering summer days in the Middle East—dry, cloudless, and heavy with heat. But by the time the sun set over the Arabian Peninsula, the world had changed. In the dark early hours of that day, Iraqi tanks rolled across the Kuwaiti border in a swift and brutal invasion ordered …
On May 15, 1948, as Israel celebrated its birth, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began a long, painful journey into exile. What for some marked a new beginning, for others became the end of home as they knew it. They call it al-Nakba—”the catastrophe.” By the time the guns quieted, over 700,000 Palestinians had fled …
