West Asia

On June 14, fifty international organizations marked the fifth anniversary of the Israeli siege on Gaza by calling on Israel to end its blockade of the small, impoverished strip.

On June 3, Palestinian national soccer team member Mahmoud Sarsak completed 80 days of a grueling hunger-strike. He had sustained the strike despite the fact that nearly 2,000 Palestinian inmates had called off their own 28-day hunger strike weeks ago.

The age of revolutionary romance is over. Various Arab countries are now facing hard truths. Millions of Arabs merely want to live with a semblance of dignity, free from tyranny and continuous anxiety over the future.

Israel’s colonization policies are entering an alarming new phase, comparable in historic magnitude to the original plans to colonize Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem following the war of 1967.

A representative of the Philippine parliament visits Syria to bring home overseas workers caught in the civil war.

The Afghans are a proud people with a long and formidable history of resistance to foreign occupation. The fact that they have always prevailed, however, should not distract from the horror they still routinely experience.