Quotes About Middle East

In the 19th century, when Muslims were looking at Europe as an example, they were independent; they were more self-confident. In the early 20th century, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the whole Middle East was colonized. And when you have colonization, what do you have? You have anti-colonization.

You have expressive nationalism, I mean very identity driven, which shaped each other a lot of that in the Middle East.

Control over the production and distribution of oil is the decisive factor in defining who rules whom in the Middle East.

I respect those who say that the United States should simply withdraw from the Middle East, but I don't respect them for anything but their honesty.

The malleability of truth was another disorienting thing that had crept into his world. There were hours of video and thousands of pages of documents demonstrating Barnett's history of opposing U.S. operations in the Middle East. But it didn't matter. All she had to do was get on TV and deny it. For her supporters, history would be erased.

By the time the plan's wheels touched down on a desolate stretch of desert runway, the sun had cleared a ridge of mountains and revealed a land the color of dust. The single building that served as a terminal was squat and seemingly of the same dust. The Middle East? Eliza wondered. Tattooine? A sign, handpainted, was illegible in exotic, curling letters. Arabic, at a guess. That probably eliminated Tattooine.

Women, on the other hand, were easy targets. Any time things started to go wrong in the Middle East, women suffered for it first. A fundamentalist revolution couldn't instantly fix a national economy, but it could order women into the veil. If

The Bedouin was troubled by a familiar bundle of Middle Eastern bogeys: America in general and the CIA in particular; Jews, or if not Jews, then Christians; women's sexuality—both the fear of a "past" and the dread of present emancipation signaled by the absence of a veil.

the books faithfully represent the apocalyptic vision known by the unwieldly name of dispensational premillennialism—a vision that, among other things, misdirects relations between real-life Jews and born-again Christians, and in the worst case could bend the future of the Middle East.

If, in monotheism, God is man, man is God. Why does God look suspiciously like the ruling class? Why is Jesus, a Jewish guy from the Middle East, blond and blue-eyed? There

If, in monotheism, God is man, man is God. Why does God look suspiciously like the ruling class? Why is Jesus, a Jewish guy from the Middle East, blond and blue-eyed?

Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us forty years into the desert in order to bring us to the one place in the Middle East that has no oil!

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Between the Mediterranean and the borders of Iraq, in what was once Palestine, there are now two countries, one Jewish and one Arab, and there is no room for a third. The Palestinians must find the solution to their problem together with that Arab country, Jordan, because a 'Palestinian state' between us and Jordan can only become a base from which it will be more convenient to attack and destroy Israel.

America's decline would set in motion tectonic shifts undermining the political stability of the entire Middle East.

People in the Middle East may consider the U.S. an evil hegemony that has tainted their culture, but when I look at the growth of racial and ethnic tolerance and understanding in my generation in the U.S., and see those sentiments make it around the world, it makes me feel proud.

It is my Middle Eastern hat and my attachment to Israel that ultimately inspires my support for Obama. I know he understands that neither Israel nor America can afford four more years of Iran and the radical Islamists gaining strategic leverage in the Middle East.

No matter what's happening in the Middle East - the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment - the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.

As a geographic location, Greece offers the best bases in the NATO Alliance from which to operate in the trouble spots of the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries; one of them is Saudi Arabia. We didn't know how to deal with it. And the problem spread all over the world.

In many countries in the Middle East - and this is changing in the wake of the Arab Spring - but for a long time, censorship of books and film was a very big deal. There were books you couldn't buy; things with political content would be censored, but there were some genres of books and film that the censors just didn't understand.

None of us is certain about the outcome of the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring is over. The days of the protesters with laptops and BlackBerrys in Tahrir Square are long gone.

Let's remember that the revolution in Tahrir Square was not anti-American, it was not anti-Israeli, it was for democracy and freedom. That's a good thing.