Links for the days between X-mas and New Year

The leftist Israeli site +972 chose a person of the year. And the winner was 'the settler', as settlers are the big winners in Israel these days, according to +972.

Blogger Darth Nader describes the different types of Syrian rebels.
Navigating the Syrian Opposition

Nathan J. Brown,professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, describes in detail all that went wrong with the Egyptian revolution. Not really many new insights, but a thorough analysis.

Joseph Massad (Columbia University) about aspects of Zionism that mostly remained in the shadow: Zionism, anti-Semitism and colonialism 

Jerome Slater: What to make of Khaled Meshal. 
 Slater, professor emeritus in political science at the state university of New York, analyses the recent speech by the Hamas leader. He himself also gives a link to a larger article he recently wrote for Harvards Belfer Center about Israel and Hamas.
By the also other posts by Slater on his blog are quite interesting, like for instance the most recent sting he administered to Tom Friedman of the New York Times.