(This paper is the basis of a talk to be given at the 25th Yasin (April) International Academic Event on Economic and Social Development, HSE University, Moscow, April 2024) In the summer following Israel’s 2006 (unsuccessful) war on Hizbullah, Dick Cheney sat in his...
We stand on the cusp of what might be termed Chaotic War. Not the formula used by Israel often in the past to intimidate adversaries; this is different. Israeli reporter Eddie Cohen said, in the wake of the attack on the Iranian Consulate: “We are very...
US Democratic Party support for Israel is fast fissuring – an “ideological tremor,” Peter Beinart (editor of Jewish Currents) calls it. Since 7 Oct “it has become an earthquake” – a “Great Rupture.” This concerns the fusion of Liberalism to Zionism that long has...
Charles Michel, the European Council President, has called on Europe to switch to a “war economy.” He justifies this call partly as urgent support for Ukraine, but more pertinently, as the need for relaunching the (beached) European economy by focussing on the defence...
Looking back to what I wrote in 2012, in the midst of the so-called Arab Spring and its aftermath, it is striking just how much the Region has shifted. It is now almost 180° re-orientated. Then, I argued, “That the Arab Spring “Awakening” is taking a turn,...
Alon Pinkas, a former senior Israeli diplomat, well-plugged into Washington, tells us that a frustrated White House finally has “had enough.” The rupture with Netanyahu is complete: The Prime Minister does not comport himself as “an U.S. ally”...
“Tuesday’s local elections were a flashing warning light for Israel. The ultra-Orthodox parties, the religious Zionist groups, and the far-right, racist parties – organized in a few communities and scored gains that are disproportionate to the true size of the groups...
Israel’s dual strategy for Lebanon is to exert pressure through direct raids to instil fear amongst the wider population, whilst deploying diplomatic pressure to purge Hizbullah – not just from the border, but from regions beyond the Litani River (some 23 kms to the...
In a speech on Tuesday, Hizbullah leader Seyed Nasrallah said that the Party will continue the border offensive until at least the Gaza massacre stops. The war in Gaza however, is far from over. And Nasrallah warned that even were a ceasefire to be reached...
The US is edging closer to war with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, a state security agency composed of armed groups, some of which are close to Iran, but which for the main are Iraqi nationalists. The US carried out a drone strike in Baghdad, Wednesday that...
“The Iranians have a strategy, and we don’t,” a former senior U.S. Defence Department official told Al-Monitor: “We’re getting bogged down in tactical weeds – of whom to target and how – and nobody’s thinking strategically.” The former Indian diplomat MK...
Israel is boxed-in, as is becoming very evident to many Israelis. One Israeli correspondent (formerly a Cabinet Secretary) illustrates its nature: “The meaning of the 7th October default is not only the loss of lives … but mainly the potential transformation...
The late Ariel Sharon, a long-time Israeli military and political leader, once confided to his close friend Uri Dan that, “the Arabs had never genuinely accepted the presence of Israel … and so, a two-state solution was not possible – nor even desirable.” In the...
China and Russia have been remarkably quiet, watching carefully the global tectonic plates shifting around in response to the “two wars” (Ukraine and Israel’s “multiwar”). Really it is not surprising; both states can sit back to simply watch Biden and his team persist...
A strange ennui and distracted attention envelops the West today. Hat-tip to Simplicius’ Bones of Tomorrow, in which he reflects on a Culture that has become debased; its lures that used to trap us into the “Myth of the West” lie withered, as patently false...
One major theme of Homer’s Iliad – which somehow seems as fresh and as vivid today as when first written – is its description of how even the greatest of states in Western civilization fail to reclaim what they lose. “Attempts to repair one loss lead only to...
Biden smirked and responded, “I know”, when told by a guest that Netanyahu is drawing the U.S. into a civilisational conflict – and further that Netanyahu blames him (Biden), complaining that the White House wants to block Israel from getting at the root of...
A number of serious commentators – one being U.S. Professor Victor Hanson – are warning: “Brace yourself for what’s coming in 2024”. Hansen sees bad omens darkening the future. Is he exaggerating? Perhaps not. One cannot but notice how bad tempered Americans and...
The allegory is one in which a scorpion depends on the frog for its passage across a flooded river, by hitching a lift on the frog’s back. The frog distrusts the scorpion; but reluctantly agrees. During the crossing the scorpion fatally stings the frog swimming the...
Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who famously led France’s opposition to the Iraq war, recently described the term “Occidentalism” (currently the prevalent sentiment in much of Europe) as being the notion that “the West, which for five centuries...
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