Articles

As we have seen previously, Gibran Khalil Gibran was a multifaceted artist – at once poet, thinker, writer, and highly gifted painter. Although he is best known in the West for his literary work The Prophet , published in numerous languages, his pictorial work is equally remarkable and was recognized during his lifetime. “Art is the expression of thought through brush, chisel, pen, or song. It is the divine spark that burns within each of us.” “I would like to paint what lies at the very depths of the human heart.” Gibran showed an aptitude for drawing from childhood. In 1904, his first drawings were exhibited at Fred Holland Day’s studio in Boston, thanks to Mary Haskell, his mentor. In 1908, encouraged by her, he enrolled at the Académie Julian as well as in Auguste Rodin’s studio in Paris in order to refine his painting technique. This encounter with Rodin marked a turning point in his vision of the human body. Rodin himself compared Gibran to William Blake. Like Blake, Gibran illustrated his own texts, seeking to create a “total” work in which word and image echo one another.

It is no coincidence that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which celebrates on this twenty-fifth of May the eightieth anniversary of its independence, has become one of the cornerstones of Arab security, or of what remains of it. All the theories that had underestimated Jordan have ended up in the dustbin of history, for it has become clear that this country has never lost its regional role. Jordan has held firm despite all the internal tremors and storms it has weathered, and despite the profound upheavals the region has undergone. In 1921, the very year in which the Emirate of Transjordan was proclaimed, a conference was convened in Cairo bringing together the foremost figures of British policy under the chairmanship of Winston Churchill. Lawrence of Arabia was among those present, as were most of the British experts on Arab and Iraqi affairs and regional matters generally, Palestine above all. Foremost among these was Lady Gertrude Bell, then regarded as the most influential British figure in Iraq and the one who wielded the greatest sway over that country. It was Bell who drew the current map of Iraq and played a decisive role in bringing the Hashemites to Baghdad and crowning Faysal ibn Hussein as king.

South Lebanon witnessed another escalation Tuesday night and again Wednesday, while at the regional level, Pakistan continues to quietly work to try to defuse a conflict that threatens to spiral out of control at any moment, given the exchange of threats between Washington and Tehran. The Israeli military conducted a series of deadly airstrikes and artillery attacks over the past twenty-four hours against numerous Hezbollah positions and infrastructure in villages and sites in southern Lebanon. According to the latest toll released by the Lebanese Ministry of Health, these attacks killed at least 20 people over the past 24 hours, including 13 alone in the village of Deir Qanoun el-Nahr.

My experience with memoir literature has generally been unrewarding, and this holds particularly true for the first volume of the memoirs of former Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa, entitled The Missing Narrative (Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2015). From its lyrical, subjective, and impressionistic opening, the book appears to promise the reader a work of personal reflection, only to draw him into a reading of political history written with an unqualified bias toward the Assad regime and the figure of former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad. Assad between Political Mythology and Image-Making

To commemorate the Palestinian Nakba as an annual ritual in which the memory of that land's dispossession from its original inhabitants, and its colonisation by the Israeli entity, is revisited does not truly convey that the Nakba is still ongoing — when in fact it is. As though this people had not suffered enough from displacement, destruction and defeat, the facts themselves are now transmuted into questions that appear legitimate in the eyes of public opinion while being, at their core, far removed from reality. Among these questions, widely in circulation across Western media — and in which any guest daring to defend the Palestinian cause finds themselves ensnared — is the following: “Do you recognise Israel’s right to exist?” The UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, was perhaps the one who addressed this matter most shrewdly, when she replied: “Nobody asks Italy or Spain, or any other state in the world, to justify its right to exist!”

After announcing on Monday that he had canceled a planned attack on Iran at the last minute, which was scheduled for the following day, US President Donald Trump threatened again on Tuesday to strike Iran if no agreement was reached. For its part, the Iranian military responded by threatening Washington to open "new fronts" if their attacks resume. From the White House, where he was showing journalists the construction site of the East Wing of the presidential headquarters, Trump reiterated that he hoped he would not have to wage war. "But we might have to give them another big blow. I'm not sure right now," he said.