Israel

Wednesday

The Spectator

Introducing the MAGA-za Strip

President Donald Trump warned Hamas that there would be “hell to pay” when he returned to the White House if the terrorist organization continued to hold the hostages that it and Gazans have held for almost 500 days. Around eighty hostages, living and murdered, remain in Gaza.Last night, Trump laid out what “hell to pay” could look like: a potential American takeover of the Gaza Strip, maximum pressure against Iran and arms shipments to Israel.Trump, who famously compared the Arab-Israeli conflict to a “real-estate deal” in 2015, proposed a radical reshifting of the entire region, alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — the first foreign leader he’s hosted in person in the White House in his second term.

Tuesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump’s inner real-estate developer targets Gaza

As he settles into the Oval Office for a second time, Donald Trump is thinking big or, if you prefer, bigly, at least when it comes to geopolitics. The Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada were already in his sights. Now add the Gaza Strip. It seems that Trump may be on the verge of granting it statehood as well as Canada. Who gets to be #51 and #52?  On Tuesday evening, Trump doubled down on his smash-and-grab foreign policy, announcing that the United States “will take over the Gaza Strip.” He didn’t stop there. “We’ll own it and be responsible,” Trump said, vowing to “create an economic development that will supply an unlimited number of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Do a real job.”  Gee willikers!

gaza

Thursday

Eleanor Harmsworth

What’s the matter with Columbia?

It was the first day of the spring semester when masked individuals burst into the classroom, shouting and throwing posters at students. As they yelled, the professor asked the protestors calmly, and in Arabic, to leave. The class was on the History of Modern Israel, the campus was Columbia University, and the protestors were part of the highly engaged and increasingly extreme “Palestine liberation” movement. It transpired that the masked students did not speak Arabic, that they did not intend to engage in a dialogue, and their primary concern was causing disruption and documenting that disruption for social media.

Palestine
Peter Jones

How the ancient Greeks tackled treaties

From our UK edition

Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement. Though the ancients would have employed oaths, the practical ancient Greeks often ensured there was a flexibility about them: the real world might intervene. For example, treaties between city-states were agreed between opposing generals. Hostages were exchanged, oaths sworn and the terms of the treaty widely inscribed on stone and bronze pillars, but it was citizens who oversaw the treaty’s maintenance. In a Greek democracy, however, there was no saying how, under the influence of different leaders, policy might change and annul a treaty at a stroke. Then again, though treaties could be sworn to last forever, ‘circumstances’ were very unlikely to remain so accommodating.

Tuesday

Michela Wrong

The psychological toll of being constantly tracked and harassed

From our UK edition

In late 2018 a Saudi journalist living in exile in Canada, who liked to work out in between recording YouTube critiques of his government, ordered some protein powder online. When a text message landed on Omar Abdulaziz’s smartphone notifying him of a DHL delivery, he clicked on it without hesitating. The portrait Deibert paints is a million miles away from the Cold War binary world of John le Carré The DHL invitation was fake digital bait. By clicking on it, Abdulaziz had enabled Pegasus, a spyware program designed by a now infamous Israeli company, NSO Group.

Friday

Roger Kimball

How will Trump take on the administrative state?

By the time you read this, the first raft or two of Donald Trump’s executive orders will have been promulgated. No one outside the charmed circle of his close advisors knows what is coming down the pike, but all indications are that the orders will be energetic and far-reaching. Colin Powell would probably have pulled out the phrase “shock and awe.” Most observers believe that there will be robust attention to immigration, the border, energy, regulation, taxes and the conduct of elections. There will probably also be orders touching the fate of some 1,500 people charged in connection with the self-guided tour of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. I would not be surprised if there were also orders regarding the conduct of some of the prosecutors involved in those cases.

administrative

Thursday

Paul Wood

The Donald’s plans for the Middle East

From our UK edition

The former US president Jimmy Carterdied, at the age of 100, just before news of an imminent deal to free the last of Israel’s hostages in Gaza. Carter’s presidency was crippled by his own hostage crisis, American diplomats held captive in Tehran. Freeing them became his administration’s highest priority, and he worked on it for every single one of the 444 days the crisis lasted, often to the exclusion of anything else. By contrast, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, resisted massive domestic pressure to do a deal for his hostages in order to pursue the war aim of destroying Hamas. You could call this statesmanship, or something else, but it is a kind of victory for Netanyahu.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Is Biden working to sabotage Trump’s transition?

President Joe Biden has taken actions that will make former and President-elect Donald Trump’s transition into the White House difficult, slowing him down with federal rules and other roadblocks, according to inside sources and Trump himself.  Last week, Trump talked to reporters outside of Mar-a-Lago about the departing Biden administration.  “They’re trying everything they can to make things more difficult,” Trump said.  He also told reporters that Biden was being “sneaky,” despite the current president’s public pledge to cooperate with the incoming administration’s transition into the White House.  “They try to be sneaky,” Trump said at a press conference.

Thursday

Spectator Editorial

The heterodox cabinet

As Inauguration Day approaches, the second Trump administration is staffing up. The president-elect’s picks are more or less what everyone expected, outside of a few curveballs. To be honest, the lack of outrage from Trump critics is the big surprise: apparently Trump Derangement Syndrome is a passing fever; even many who’ve argued against him seem to see some logic in the administration of outsiders he’s been signaling he’ll pick for years. In Washington, where almost nothing changes from administration to administration, these cabinet picks might actually be able to effect some meaningful disruption. In almost every role that matters, Trump has opted for a nominee who has been an extreme critic of the very body he or she is set to oversee.

cabinet
beirut
Fin de Pencier

A shaky truce in Beirut

There was an Israeli drone buzzing over Beirut at 8 a.m. on November 27, four hours after a ceasefire was signed and the shooting stopped. It soon disappeared and a feeling of elation set in. It was the best day we had in months. The Christmas spirit was palpable in Gemmayzeh, a Christian neighborhood in central Beirut. Christmas decorations were going up and the bars were packed that night. Lebanese in the diaspora who’d canceled their holiday trips to Beirut rebooked that day. But the Lebanese also know how to manage their expectations — they always hedge good news with dread. The agreement lays out an initial sixty-day truce, during which Hezbollah is required to withdraw its forces north of the Litani river, and the Lebanese Army is to take its place.

Thursday

Tanya Gold

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre contains terrible art – but is filled with magic

From our UK edition

For a press tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the Church of the Resurrection, the Mother of churches, site of the last four stations of the Cross – you must apply to the Patriarch. This being Jerusalem, there are three: the Latin, the Armenian and the Greek Orthodox. The process of accreditation is like a scene from an Olivia Manning novel. If you receive an acknowledgment of your email from the Greek Patriarchate – the Latin and the Armenian were otherwise engaged – you turn into Greek Patriarchate Street and present yourself at the Patriarchate palace. It is pale limestone, silent, a home to spoilt cats.

Neve Gordon

Israel must leave Syria

From our UK edition

As I walked through Vienna last weekend, I happened upon several protests organised by Syrian refugees celebrating the downfall of Bashar al-Assad, the butcher from Damascus. People were singing, some even crying, as they rejoiced the end of the father-and-son al-Assad dictatorship, which had lasted 53 years.   The protestors had not yet seen the images of tens of thousands of released political prisoners, the slaughterhouses, or the underground torture chambers, but they had already seen enough. They were among the 12 million people who were displaced during the Syrian civil war and many of them undoubtedly had family members or close friends who had been among the over half million Syrians who had been killed. It was a rare moment of total jubilation.

Tuesday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Iran’s axis is dying

From our UK edition

From the hilltop viewpoint at Misgav Am, Israel’s northernmost kibbutz in the Upper Galilee, the view into southern Lebanon is a panorama of uncertainty. Less than a full day after Assad was finally defeated in Syria, I stand at and look down at the rubble of the Lebanese buildings destroyed in the recent fighting, as close to the Syrian border as the IDF will allow. Beside my feet, spent bullet casings remind me that less than two weeks ago this peaceful spot was a frontline position. The shell of a bombed-out nearby community viewpoint serves as a silent witness to the RPG attacks Hezbollah regularly launched on civilian homes and buildings since it started its war on Israel in October 2023.

Saturday

Charlie Gammell

Will the Syrian Civil War create another ISIS?

From our UK edition

There are unintended consequences, and then there are unintended consequences. What we are seeing in Syria, as Aleppo and Hama fall (and Homs braces itself) to a coalition of anti-regime forces whose DNA is to be found in al-Qaeda et al, is an unintended consequence of Israel’s bombardment in Syria of Iran-funded pro-Assad groups, and the pulverising of Hezbollah in Lebanon. An unintended consequence of the weakening of Iran and its Axis of Resistance. For the three pillars on which Bashar al-Assad props up (for the time being) his murderous kleptocratic narco-state – Iran, Hezbollah and Russia – are, respectively, on their ‘best’ behaviour in the hope of talks with the US, broken, or extremely distracted.

Friday

Daniel DePetris

Trump is already the diplomat-in-chief

The United States only has one president at a time. Until January 20, that’s Joe Biden. But President-elect Donald Trump and his skeleton foreign policy team are waiting in the wings, plotting policy behind the scenes on issues — Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, Middle East peace — that have stymied the Biden administration for the last year. In fact, Trump is already influencing the respective calculations of allies, partners and adversaries before he even steps foot in the Oval Office. And Biden’s advisors seem perfectly fine with it. Trump fancies himself as a master negotiator, somebody who’s inherently skilled at poking, pressuring and sweet-talking the opposite side of the table until he gets what he wants.

diplomat

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Beware the Qataris

From our UK edition

I feel some sympathy for the British royal family because of the ghastly people they are forced to meet. The late Queen had to greet Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe. This week the King and Prince and Princess of Wales had to meet the Emir of Qatar and his wife. True to form, the state media in Britain managed to miss every major problem with this. The BBC did say that there might be protests around the visit because of Qatar’s record on ‘LGBT rights’. But more troubling is that Britain should ever have welcomed the leadership of such a sordid, terrorist-supporting statelet.

Thursday

Arieh Kovler

The leak that’s haunting Netanyahu’s government

From our UK edition

Early September, days after the gruesome discovery of six murdered Israeli hostages in a tunnel in Gaza, a dramatic scoop appeared in Bild. The German newspaper had obtained a secret internal Hamas document, supposedly obtained from Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s personal computer, that revealed Hamas’s hostage negotiation strategy. The document claimed that Hamas was deliberately exploiting the divisions in Israeli society, manipulating the families of the hostages to help blame Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for not making a deal.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Storm Bert, Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire and Putin gives cockatoos to North Korea

From our UK edition

Home A white paper outlined measures to counter economic inactivity (which had risen by September to 41.2 per cent among those aged 16 to 24): everyone aged 18 to 21 would be offered an apprenticeship, training, education or help to find a job; Jobcentres would be rebranded as the National Jobs and Careers Service. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: ‘What I haven’t heard are many alternatives’ to the tax rises imposed by October’s Budget; she was speaking to the Confederation of British Industry. A petition on the parliament website, accusing Labour of breaking promises and calling for a general election, gathered more than 2.

Monday

Nigel Biggar

What the ICC gets wrong about Israel

From our UK edition

Legal reasoning is only as good as the ethical concepts it uses. That’s why the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and former defence minister is basically flawed. The ICC claims reasonable grounds for believing Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant guilty of the war crimes of ‘intentionally and knowingly depriv[ing] the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival’, creating ‘conditions of life calculated to bring about [their] destruction’. The grounds are these: Israel’s failure to facilitate relief ‘by all means at its disposal’ and to ‘ensure that the civilian population... would be adequately supplied with goods in need’ amounts to a violation of the ‘fundamental rights...

Thursday

Ben Domenech

Ta-Nehisi Coates, the DEIty

A decade ago, in June 2014, the Atlantic published a cover story with a simple declarative title: “The Case for Reparations,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The piece had taken him two years to write, and the work paid off — with praise sweeping through the ranks of media, prizes from the most prominent elite institutions. The piece was named the “Top Work of Journalism of the Decade” by New York University’s journalism institute. It was hailed as a rare piece of writing which pushed open a cultural dialogue about a controversial subject.

Coates