On a visit to Oxford a few weeks ago, Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative, (Walter Münchau writes), made an interesting remark: “Diplomacy is the art of managing double standards.” Münchau illustrated its inherent hypocrisy by contrasting the enthusiasm...
The paradox is that Team Biden – wholly inadvertently – is midwifing the birth of a “new world.” It is doing so by dint of its crude opposition to parturition. The more the western élites push against the birthing – through “saving Zionism”;...
Alon Pinkas, a former senior Israeli diplomat (well plugged in at the White House), says aloud the “reality” about Israel which he underlines cannot be hidden further: [There are now] two [Jewish] states – with contrasting visions of what the nation should...
The core issues at the heart of release of hostages held in Gaza were two: A complete cessation to the war and full withdrawal of all Israeli forces. Netanyahu’s position was that whatever the hostage outcome, the IDF would return to Gaza and that the war there might...
The Transformation is accelerating. The harsh, often violent, police repression of student protests across the US and Europe, in wake of the continuing Palestinian massacres, exposes sheer intolerance towards those voicing condemnation against the violence in Gaza....
Theodore Postol, Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at MIT, has provided a forensic analysis of the videos and evidence emerging from Iran’s 13th April swarm drone and missile “demonstation” attack into Israel: A “message,” rather than an...
(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...
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