In 1999, Ehud Barak defeated Benjamin Netanyahu with the slogan, “Too many lies for too long!”. While a similar disdain exists today, do you think that it was inevitable that Benny Gantz would go into government with Netanyahu even after the stalemate of three elections? Netanyahu is a highly intelligent and crafty politician. Over the … Read more
Yigal Amir, Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, will celebrate his 50th birthday on May 23, according to the English date. He will have spent almost half his life in prison and has not shown a scintilla of remorse for his act. Coming from a devout Yemenite family, his primary and secondary schools were charedi but he unusually … Read more
LAST WEEK, DAVID FRIEDMAN, the US ambassador to Israel, gave a flurry of interviews to explain and justify the possible annexation after July 1 of part of the West Bank by the new Netanyahu-Gantz government. In an article in the New York Post, he was clearly upset about a recent proposal in Foreign Policy magazine by Philip H. … Read more
“ISRAEL WILL NOT ALLOW IRAN to achieve nuclear weapons and will continue to act methodically against Iran’s attempts to militarily entrench on our borders.” So spoke prime minister Netanyahu at last week’s Israeli cabinet meeting. Was this simply another attempt by Netanyahu to deflect attention from his own woes? His current trial for breach of trust, … Read more
In normal times, the election of the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition would be front-page news in Britain. In the age of the coronavirus, Sir Keir Starmer’s election as Labour party leader was more of a media whimper. Yet it spelled the end of the far Left’s control of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn and signals a shift to more rational policies … Read more
THE ISRAELI NGO Peace Now’s Settlement Watch project has documented settlement building and expansion on the West Bank for several years, utilising official statistics and analysis of aerial photographs. Its latest report of settlement activity for 2019 suggests that the construction of units on the West Bank is 25 per cent higher under Donald Trump … Read more
Review of Avi Shilon’s The Decline of the Left Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process Published by I. B. Tauris 2020, pp. 341 In an epoch of reaction, racism and populism, many ask how did Israel lose its way? Why did the traditional Israeli Left decay? Why did the … Read more
Hosni Mubarak’s long life encompassed the history of both modern Egypt and modern Israel. A young pilot serving in King Farouk’s forces, he embraced the revolution of 1952 which ousted the monarchy and brought the Free Officers Movement to power. The dominance of the military through its leaders — Mohamed Neguib, Gamal Abdul Nasser and … Read more
The emergence of Sinn Féin as a major political force in last week’s election in Ireland is a watershed in the onward march of Irish republicanism towards a united Ireland. Like the Conservatives on the mainland, dissatisfied voters who felt left behind deserted the major parties and turned to Sinn Féin. Even so, like the … Read more
During the last decade of his life, Qassem Soleimani emerged from the shadows and was promoted as a noble and self-effacing warrior, an Iranian Napoleon who would recreate a new Persian empire — a Shia crescent from Mashad near Turkmenistan to the Mediterranean in Lebanon. Soleimani’s story was that he was recognised as a military … Read more