by Peter Speetjens | 18/07/2018 | Art & Culture, Middle East
Hassan Hajjaj gives you the Orient In all its warmth and colors. Yet his is not a nostalgic Orient that stood still in time. No, his orient has fully come to grips with modernity. His does not fear or resent it, but embraced and enriched it. Hassan talks about...
by Peter Speetjens | 11/07/2018 | Middle East
When Narendra Modi became the first Indian prime minister ever to set foot in Israel in July 2017, he made a quick stop at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the World Zionist Organization and spiritual father of modern Israel. The 67-year-old placed a small...
by Peter Speetjens | 06/12/2017 | Middle East
The Dutch chapter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement recently asked me to write an essay for Art, Solidarity and Palestine, a day of conferences and debate about the pros and cons of an Israeli boycott due to be held on 29 November, the United...
by Peter Speetjens | 11/09/2017 | Middle East
MIDDLE EAST EYE; Sept 2, 2017 Text Peter Speetjens What’s a life worth? That is the question that came to my mind when Canada’s Supreme Court awarded former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr $8.4m in damages earlier this summer. It produced a wave of...
by Peter Speetjens | 10/07/2017 | Middle East
This month 150 years ago, Mark Twain left New York aboard a retired Civil War vessel named The Quaker City for a “pleasure trip” across Europe and the Middle East. Aged 32, Twain was not yet the Twain we know today. Born in 1835 as Samuel Clemens, he was a young...
by Peter Speetjens | 10/06/2016 | Middle East
“Alexis de Tocqueville is one of the greatest political thinkers of all time” – so I was told as a young law student at Erasmus University some two decades ago. It is a statement that will not surprise many people in the West. Born in Paris in 1805, the French...
