MENA Minorities

Mein Buch "Die Drusen in Libanon und Israel" wurde in der April Ausgabe (Band 110, Heft 2) der Orientalistischen Literaturzeitung von Dimitry Sevruk (Uni Bamberg) besprochen:

Armenier in Syrien: Erst kamen die Osmanen, dann der "Islamische Staat" von Raniah Salloum, Spiegel Online

Firas Maksad from the University of Maryland has an opinion piece about the situation of the Druze in Suwaida' on the German online-portal Qantara  (run by the Deutsche Welle ). The author follows the same line of argument as in his article published last year in Foreign Affairs : i.e. the Druze are a potential ally of the west against ISIS and could be a game changer in Syria. Makasad modified his argument a little, while in his 2014 piece he also implicitly proposed the Druze as an ally against Assad, now it is mere alone about the coalition against ISIS. Even though I fully agree with the author that the Druze are increasingly drifting away from the regime, I consider a break off with Assad and therefore a game changer role as very unlikely-remember the regime is still the biggest power in Syria. Even though its position in Suwaida' is weaker than ever before a Druze break off with Assad might only happen if the overal situation changes dramaticly against the regime's a...

In Syria's war, Alawites pay heavy price for loyalty to Bashar al-Assad by Ruth Sherlock, The Telegraph (...) Many Alawite villages nestled in the hills of their ancestral Latakia province are all but devoid of young men. The women dress only in mourning black. "Every day there at least 30 men returned from the front lines in coffins," said Ammar, who spoke to the Telegraph using a pseudonym to protect himself and his family. "In the beginning of the war their deaths were celebrated with big funerals. Now they are quietly dumped in the back of pick-up trucks." The Syrian government has not published official figures on its war dead . Syrian state television mostly fails to broadcast news of Alawite soldiers killed, instead playing up the deaths of their Sunni comrades, in a bid to shore up Sunni support. A report by the opposition Syrian Network for Human Rights published at the end of last year found that pro-government fighting gro...

Elections are over and the 20th Knesset already assembled last week. We have discussed the non-Jewish candidates (some of the Druze won't categorize themselves as Arabs) of the Zionist parties before - the following have been elected: Ayoob Kara (LIKUD) Zouheir Bahloul (Zionist Union) Hamad Amar (Yisrael Beiteinu) Issawi Frej (Meretz) Since the Zionist Union only reached 24 seats Druze candidate Saleh Saad didn't make it into the Knesset for now, but he has good chances to enter on a partial tenure during the next years. For Akram Hassun, who is also two seats away from a mandate but in a way smaller party, I am not very optimistic. Again we see an overrepresentation of the Druze in the Zionist parties with two out of four MK's while they constitute only 10 per cent of the Arab-Israeli population. Let's have a closer look at the new Arab Joint List and its MK's. The list is composed of the following: The  HADASH gathering (which is dominated by the I...

In Syria the mainly Ismaili city of Salamiya (Hama province) is threatened to be taken over by the Islamic State: Deadly rocket barrage  hits Syrian Ismaili town , Now