Five months before his inauguration as president, Massachusetts Senator John F Kennedy addressed a Jewish convention at the Statler Hilton Hotel in…

On 23 October 1956, a university student riot in Budapest snowballed into a popular revolt against the Hungarian People’s Republic, a Soviet…

On 21 November 1935, large crowds of Palestinians in Haifa came out to pay their respects to the Syrian cleric Izz al-Din al-Qassam, who had been…

“He just looked at me...and smiled.”This is how Lance Corporal Eddie DeFranco, who was on guard duty at the Multinational Forces Headquarters in…

On 18 October 1925, colonial France bombed the ancient city of Damascus. This was in response to a revolt against it from the nearby Druze Mountain…

Golda Meir was Israel's first — and last — female prime minister and first president of a political party in Israel, Mapei (now Labor, headed by…

“I talked to (Ambassador Simcha) Dinitz in Washington at all hours of the day and night. Where is the airlift? Why wasn’t it underway yet?” writes…

In his memoirs, former Syrian prime minister Fares al-Khoury says that when serving as MP in the Ottoman Parliament during World War I, he met with…

On 9 March 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser hosted a mini-summit in Cairo, attended by President Shukri al-Quwatli of Syria, King Saud Ibn Abdul…

Saturday, the ninth of September, marked the 47th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s death. It used to be a big occasion in China. Still, it seemed like a…