Do you get angrier and angrier with every lie and cover-up on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi government, its Arab allies and paid foreign propagandists, and the American president? If you do, I suspect this is because Khashoggi achieved in his life and death something that nobody else in modern history has been able to achieve: Ordinary people, media figures, and politicians throughout the world now appreciate how it feels to be treated like a helpless idiot by an Arab power elite that believes it can manage its citizens with brutality and disdain, without any accountability or consequences.

BOSTON — I have followed closely in the United States the unusually sharp reactions to the apparent abduction and possible murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This is as heartening as it is unusual. It may also miss the point about the deeper meaning of Jamal Khashoggi’s life and work.

The streets of Amman today appear calm and everyone seems to be going about their business as usual. But just two months ago, the country faced massive protests which mirrored others it had seen before. The script of the May-June events developed along the usual lines: public protests over price increases made the king dismiss the government, freeze price increases, name a new prime minister, and ask for fresh reforms.

Taxes rise and the cost of living and austerity measures are stoking demands for Jordan's prime minister to resign.

BEIRUT — The tripartite Anglo-American-French missile strikes against targets in Syria that aimed to punish the Syrian government and deter it from using chemical weapons should briefly stop the use of these barbaric instruments of war, as has happened previously. Despite this achievement, in the context of the wider, older, and continuing American and European militarism in the Middle East, these attacks generate mixed feelings, because they fail four critical tests of efficacy, legitimacy, credibility, and the wider Syrian war context.

Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif's proposal for moving towards new security arrangements in the Middle East is an important gesture that should be read in two contrasting ways, for it faithfully reflects the Arab region's double perception of Iran as a noble friend, or a deceitful menace. 

BEIRUT — For most of the past two centuries, Egypt has been the epicenter, litmus test, proving ground, and mother of cultural and political trends across the Arab region — so we should all be worried by the events of the past month that systematically throttled, indicted, intimated, detained, and otherwise politically eliminated potential serious candidates to oppose Field Marshal-President Abdelfattah Sisi in this year’s presidential election.

BEIRUT — The start of another calendar year brings with it the opportunity to look back and look ahead to try to understand the trends that define our Arab region. I have spent the last year steadily researching what I call in shorthand the 4 Ds that define the underlying trends that have slowly brought our region to its fractured and often traumatized state today: state dysfunction, socio-economic disparity, citizen political disempowerment, and individual and collective human despair.

BEIRUT — The crushing irony for Palestinians today is that their cause remains widely supported by over 120 governments and billions of ordinary men and women around the world, yet the Palestinian leadership is a case study in hapless incompetence that verges on national shame. This was confirmed again this week as the Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) issued a policy statement after days of deliberations that is a sad example of meaningless clichés uttered by aging men whose track record of political achievement is empty — and astoundingly so, in view of the massive and sustained support around the world for Palestinian national rights.