Israel

After six years of fierce fighting and with hundreds of thousands dead, the Syrian civil war finally appears to be settling down. The country is now divided into various pockets of influence, with Turkish-backed rebels in the north, US-backed Kurdish forces and their allies in the east and the Syrian regime and its Iranian-backed militias in the centre and the capital, Damascus. This now gives Iran, with the influence it already has in Lebanon and Iraq, a sphere of authority stretching from Tehran to the Mediterranean Sea. The spread of Iranian influence in the region is largely a result of the country's ability to capitalise on the tumultuous recent history of the Middle East.

The Saudi town of Awamiya — like so many countless cities across Iraq, Syria and Yemen that are witnessing an unleashing of the ancient hatred of Sunni for Shia — now exists in name only. Last month, days before an assault on its Shia inhabitants by the Saudi regime, the UN designated it a place of unique cultural and religious significance. But under the guise of fighting Iran-backed terror cells, the Saudis then subjected Awamiya’s entire civilian population to the indiscriminate use of fighter jets, rocket-propelled grenades, snipers, heavy artillery, armoured assault vehicles and cold-blooded executions. More than a dozen Shia, including a three-year-old boy, were killed. Hundreds of young men were rounded up.

Spain, Finland, Russia: in the space of a few days, Europe is reminded, yet again, that terrorism – like the virus it is – kills brutally, indiscriminately and, critically, transnationally. On Thursday, August 17, a van rammed into crowds of people in Barcelona’s Las Ramblas boulevard – a hub of tourism and social life. Thirteen were killed with dozens more injured. The atrocity was followed by a knife attack the very next day in the Finnish city of Turku, which killed two people and injured eight. Another knife attack, this time in the Siberian city of Surgut on the 19 August, injured eight. Islamic State has claimed responsibly for all the attacks. In a democratic society based on liberal values it is impossible to stop every madman that wishes us harm.

Until its liberation in the Six-Day War, Jews were not allowed to climb beyond the seventh step outside Ma'arat HaMachpelah, the Cave of the Patriarchs. Despite being built on land purchased by Abraham almost 4000 years ago, despite being the burial place of the patriarchs and matriachs of Judaism, despite the stone walls around the location being erected under King Herod, successive Arab and Islamic occupiers forbad Jews access to their second holiest site. Unesco has kicked Jews back down the steps. The UN body nominally responsible for promoting peace through culture has voted to designate Ma'arat HaMachpelah a Palestinian heritage site. It is a grim act of historical revisionism, an effort to negate the millennia-old Jewish connections to the tomb and the surrounding land.

Israel’s Channel 2 news station improbably made history last week by airing a brief interview with an obscure policy wonk named Abed al-Hamid Hakim. The subject was the blockade of Qatar imposed by the Saudis and a couple of other despotic Sunni Arab rulers to punish the country for its ties to Iran, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. It obviously wasn’t what Hakim had to say — religion should not be used to justify violence and extremism; we should all try to live in peace and harmony — that aroused interest. Rather, it was where he was sitting when he said it: Jeddah, the commercial capital of Saudi Arabia. For the first time ever, here was a Saudi national being interviewed live on Israeli TV, complete with Hebrew subtitles.

In 1981, when President Reagan lifted the grain embargo on the Soviet Union, Washington Post columnist George F. Will went on to complain that the Reagan administration 'loved commerce more than it loathed communism'. Well, yes. American conservatives have, more often than not, put commercial interests before ideological ones. Sometimes the two even coincide. For all his bluster about the dangers of Islam, Donald Trump seemed to have a dandy time in Saudi Arabia these past few days before he jetted on to Israel. The $110 billion arms deal that he signed with the Saudis, coupled with their promise to invest in Blackstone Group to boost American infrastructure projects, offers the Saudis a way to buy influence in Washington directly.