israel Archives

Tuesday

7 November 2023

Alan Dershowitz: when Israel must consider the nuclear option

From our US edition

Professor Alan Dershowitz is one of Israel’s most prominent defenders outside the Jewish state. He has just written — in record time — a book about the events of October 7: War Against the Jews — How to End Hamas Barbarism. It will be published next month and will argue, among other things, that the Hamas attack “has required Israel to consider its nuclear option as a last resort to assure its survival.” I spoke to Professor Dershowitz and asked him first, about another of the book’s arguments, that there should be no absolute distinction between civilians and combatants in Gaza, but instead “a continuum of civilianality.” "It existed in Nazi Germany," he said.

Friday

3 November 2023

Cockburn

White House announces effort to counter Islamophobia as antisemitism rises

From our US edition

War is raging in Israel and Kamala Harris is holding down the home front with the same political aplomb she handled the border crisis — that is to say, poorly. With thousands of lives lost in Israel and an increasing number of antisemitic attacks in the US, Harris is proud to announce the White House's new program to target... Islamophobia. “Taking on hate is a national priority. Today, @POTUS and I are announcing the country’s first National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia. This action is the latest step forward in our work to combat a surge of hate in America,” Harris shared in a post on X Wednesday evening. https://twitter.

Thursday

2 November 2023

Ben Domenech

Does Joe Biden have an Israel problem?

From our US edition

Welcome to Thunderdome, where for the first time some cracks are showing in the emphatic Democratic support for Joe Biden. Even with his many widely apparent defects as a candidate and a president, Biden’s support from strong Democratic constituencies has remained largely consistent throughout his tenure. The loss of Independent support at this juncture is rationalized away by many Democrats, who feel that once Donald Trump is presumably the GOP nominee, they’ll be able to get all those leaners in the center back in the fold. But now, thanks to his policy choices on Israel, Biden is suffering a major blow among a significant Democrat constituency made more important given its geographic concentration in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania: Arab Americans.

Bruce Anderson

The world is a mess. Why not find escapism through wine?

In most children’s stories, the good characters live happily ever after. Works suitable for older readers tend to greater realism. Even ‘Gaudeamus Igitur’, that most joyous of drinking songs, presses the case for carpe diem. ‘Get stuck in to your pleasures laddie,’ it seems to be saying, ‘before it is too late.’ With the world in such a mess – less carpe diem than dies irae – the case for a vinous route to escapism might seen persuasive. Housman seemed to think so. ‘Could man be drunk for ever,’ starts one poem, then all would be well. Not for long. ‘But men at whiles are sober/ And think by fits and starts/ And if they think they fasten/ Their hands upon their hearts.

Wednesday

1 November 2023

Lionel Shriver

What did Hamas think was going to happen?

Much misfortune the woebegone couldn’t have seen coming: a raging fire in the house next door that spreads to yours. The invention of some kooky technology called ‘the internet’ that puts your travel agency out of business. Yet other calamities are foreseeable. If you suddenly stop filing tax returns without a good excuse – like, dying – it’s a virtual certainty that the all-seeing computer will come after you. So when compounding fees and interest leave you skint, our sympathies are apt to be scant. What did you think was going to happen?

The Spectator

Letters: policing pro-Palestinian rallies isn’t an exact science

Call for common justice Sir: Rod Liddle’s piece on the true desires of Palestinians was rare in its acceptance of the complexity of aspiration (‘What Hamas promised its electorate’, 28 October). People cleave to those who stand for their best hopes. They voted for Hamas. Rod ends saying only Israeli Arabs in his experience did not loathe Jews. Why would they? Presumably being the right side of the ‘peace’ wall, they had no fear of losing their birthright to illegal settlers acting in defiance of UN resolutions with official acquiescence. If the Israeli rule of law could have extended to the occupied West Bank Arabs, then there would be no indefensible double standard. It is clearly a missed opportunity and did not need a ‘two state solution’, just common justice and sense.

Wednesday

25 October 2023

The Spectator

Democrats and the media unite against new GOP speaker

From our US edition

It took a few weeks, but Republicans got their act together and did the impossible: elected a new speaker of the House, Louisiana’s Mike Johnson. Johnson and his team have an incredible amount of work ahead of them — from funding the government to fundraising for House Republicans. What’s particularly noteworthy to me in the hours ahead of Johnson becoming speaker is the all-out effort Democrats and their media mouthpieces are making to define him — mostly by spreading provable misinformation. Johnson’s Democratic counterparts on the Judiciary Committee immediately lashed out at him for being a member of the Freedom Caucus, which is an outright lie.

Cindy Yu

Keir Starmer’s Israel problem is growing

13 min listen

Today, Keir Starmer held a long meeting with some Muslim Labour MPs over their concern on his stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict, first ignited by comments he made on LBC which seemed to justify Israel's electricity and water blockade of Gaza. The Labour leader has made huge progress to move his party on from the reputation of anti-Semitism forged during the Corbyn era – but can he find a middle way to please all wings of his party on this deeply emotive issue? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Cindy Yu.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: Tory by-election misery, ‘jihad’ chants and emergency aid

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, on his return from Israel (where he spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister) and to Saudi Arabia (where he spoke with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince), told the House of Commons: ‘Hamas is not only a threat to Israel, but to many others across the region. All the leaders I met agreed that this is a watershed moment. It’s time to set the region on a better path.’ Twelve Britons had died in the Hamas attack, and five were missing. Of the blast at Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital on 17 October, which killed numbers of people into the hundreds, he said it was likely to have been caused by a missile fired from within Gaza. He announced £20 million extra in emergency aid to Gaza.

Rod Liddle

What Hamas promised to its electorate

Things you do not hear very often, number one: a pro-Palestinian protestor denouncing Hamas for the barbarity of its incursion into Israel on 7 October, appalled at the savagery of those attacks upon children, grandmothers, etc. It may seem as if, in saying this, I am stating the obvious – because support for that pogrom was, I would suggest, strong among some of those carrying Palestinian flags on marches through London and elsewhere. Six Arab language journalists were suspended by the BBC when it was discovered that they retweeted messages glorifying in that day’s murder. They were not members of Hamas. Ordinary Palestinians interviewed, cowering in the rubble of Gaza, were not quoted condemning the attacks which led directly to their present misery.

Peter Mandelson

The Tories didn’t lose Mid Bedfordshire – Labour won it

In 1975 I travelled as an undergraduate to Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and finally to Israel. I visited refugee camps and met a Palestinian militant, Bassam Abu Sharif, who had been blinded in one eye by a Mossad parcel bomb. I talked to policymakers in each country and heard a range of Israeli opinion. On return I wrote in the Jewish Chronicle of the need to address the plight of the Palestinians caused by their displacement. I made the case in favour of a two-state solution five years before the 1980 Venice declaration on Palestinian statehood. One of today’s many tragedies is that Hamas’s barbarism has pushed that solution even further from grasp. In principle, it remains the only way to end the chaos.

Peter Oborne

Britain should back a ceasefire

Six weeks ago, I invited Ahmed Alnaouq, a young diplomat who recently joined the Palestinian mission in London, to stay for a cricket weekend in Wiltshire. He resisted all entreaties to play the game but was in every other way a delightful guest. On Sunday, Ahmed learnt that his family in Gaza has been wiped out by an Israeli bomb. His father, siblings, and more than 15 nieces and nephews had all been killed. Twenty-three dead, no injuries. Another brother was killed by an Israeli bombing in 2014. His mother died three years ago because, he says, Israel denied her medical treatment. When I sent him a text message saying that he and his family were in my thoughts and prayers – it felt hopeless, but what else can one say? – he replied: ‘My family is gone Peter. All of them.

Toby Young

Why I don’t trust the BBC’s Trusted News Initiative

You almost certainly haven’t heard of the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), although you probably should have. It’s a BBC-led consortium of the world’s most powerful news, social media and technology companies that seeks to cleanse the internet of ‘disinformation’. It carries out this mission by doing its best to discredit sites that challenge the prevailing narrative on topics like lockdowns, Covid vaccines, electoral fraud, the Ukraine war and climate change. It was founded in 2019 by Jessica Cecil, a senior BBC executive who, in 2021, was part of the Counter Disinformation Policy Forum, a shadowy group of ‘experts’ convened by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to monitor criticism of the government’s pandemic response.

Peter Jones

Homer’s take on theology

The Hamas charter does not mince its words: ‘The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”’ A return to the ancient pagan gods would surely be an improvement, but the modern world adopts the Hamas line. Consider the current deities of the bigots whose opponents, hiding behind a clearly sacrilegious belief in rational argument, must be condemned to eternal cancellation. The Greek and Roman gods of myth were far more accommodating. Take Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the first works of what we call western literature (c.700 bc).

Bryan Appleyard

No one should trust the camera in the age of AI

This war is being fought with pictures more than words. The poignant shots, often selfies, of families, children, even babies, who were to become victims of Hamas butchery, the wailing mothers and children on stretchers in Gaza, the missile strikes and collapsed concrete buildings. We know politicians on all sides lie, but photography is a mechanical process; these pictures must, surely, be the truth? Almost all these photos have been taken with mobile phones. To a rough approximation, everybody now has a smartphone. There are said to be seven billion smartphones in use around the world – there are only eight billion people. (Sales of what we used to know as cameras have crashed by 85 per cent.

Charles Lipson

Time for Biden to change course from Obama’s failed Middle East policies

From our US edition

When a long-silent former president finally speaks out, the public listens. So do foreign leaders, especially when the former president is closely tied to the current one. That’s why Barack Obama’s comments on the war in Gaza attracted attention. Anyone who remembers President Obama’s foreign policy knew what to expect: criticism of Israel and a delicate dance around Iran’s malign behavior. In fact, he did not mention Iran at all. He totally ignored their role. His audience expected him to add a few words of moral self-righteousness, warning Israel about future civilian casualties, as if Israeli Defense Forces hadn’t taken enormous and costly steps to avoid them.

Friday

20 October 2023

Freddy Gray

How is Joe Biden handling the Israel-Palestine crisis?

27 min listen

This week Freddy speaks to Dennis Ross, former Middle East coordinator under President Clinton and current Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. They discuss Biden's visit to Israel this week, how his policy towards the Middle East borrows from Trump and Obama, and how we can discern between the public posturing and private desires of Middle Eastern states.

Thursday

19 October 2023

Daniel DePetris

Biden’s Oval Office address was a sales pitch

From our US edition

A primetime address in the Oval Office is the pinnace of presidential speechifying. Ronald Reagan used the room in 1986 to console the nation after the Challenger blew up on live television. George W. Bush declared the global war on terrorism there. Donald Trump leveraged the weight of the Resolute Desk as he talked to Americans about a deadly but mysterious virus called Covid-19 for the first time.  Tonight, it was Joe Biden’s turn. The topics, the wars in Ukraine and Israel, couldn’t be more different with respect to the players, the stakes or the circumstances leading up to them. Even so, Biden tried to convince the American people on the idea that the two wars were one and the same.

Ben Domenech

A return of the hawks?

From our US edition

Welcome to Thunderdome, where a week and a half after the chilling attacks on Israel, the American people have had time to digest the scenes from across the world — from the Middle East and fiery scenes at embassies, to protests on campuses and now on Capitol Hill, fueled by lies from progressive Democrats — and their concern is enormous. The polls show 85 percent of Americans are concerned the Israel-Gaza conflict will erupt into a wider war in the Middle East. And while supermajorities of Republicans, Democrats and Independents still believe it's important to support Israel, Republicans approve of sending Israel weapons by a roughly twenty points more than other factions. (The Quinnipiac numbers are here.

Juan P. Villasmil

Protests and confusion follow the Gaza hospital blast

From our US edition

On President Biden's last-minute trip to Israel Wednesday, the commander-in-chief pledged America's support to the Jewish state alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Following what the world’s media covered as Tuesday’s massive explosion of the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital in Gaza, Jordan abruptly canceled a summit set to be held in Amman with leaders from Egypt and Palestine. The country’s king, Abdullah II, called off the four-way summit, blaming the Israeli Defense Forces for the explosion that, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, killed around 500 Palestinians. The Jordanian demanded an immediate end of Israel’s offensive, labeling the event a “shame on humanity.