Both the European and Western Left, as well as their Arab counterparts, have received their share of criticism regarding their policies on the Syrian war. While some intellectual debates among the different factions of the Left indicate differences in policy outlooks, a majority of these groups remain united in their embrace of Syria’s Assad and his Russian enabler, Vladimir Putin. Hussam Itani’s essay “Imperialism First!: European Leftists Abandon Anti-Fascist Legacy to Embrace Putin and Assad,” which appears in the forthcoming issue of Al Jadid, centers on how the European Left abandoned the struggle against fascism, and instead turned its energies to fighting U.S. imperialism.

Gibran, Rihani and Naimy: East-West Interactions in Early Twentieth-Century Arab Literature
By Aida Imangulieva, translated by Robin Thomson
Anqa Publishing, 2009

Aida Imangulieva’s book “Gibran, Rihani & Naimy: East-West Interactions in Early Twentieth-Century Arab Literature” is a translation of the Russian version, which was published shortly before her death in 1992. It focuses on three of the most prominent members of what Imangulieva calls “the Syrio-American School,” named after the then-Syrian immigrant writers who left their homeland (now Lebanon).