Netanyahu

In her new memoirs, 107 Days, Kamala Harris recounts that in July 2024 she had an important meeting about Israel and the Gaza Strip. Harris, who was running for the presidency, hoped to show that she could pressure Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu into reaching a ceasefire with Hamas. “Netanyahu’s hooded gaze and disengaged demeanors,” she writes, “made it clear to me that he was running out the clock." His only goal was a temporary ceasefire and to undermine the Biden administration. “He wanted Trump in the seat opposite him,” Harris recalls. “Not Joe, not me. Netanyahu wanted the guy who would acquiesce to his every extreme proposal for the future of Gaza’s inhabitants and add his own plan for a land grab by his developer cronies.

The handsome pages of The Spectator World’s July issue readers will find an essay of mine arguing that the United States doesn’t win wars anymore because we don’t even understand what a modern war is. From the French Revolution to the Cold War, and in the long, warm afterglow—thankfully, non-nuclear—of Cold War success, Western elites have tended to think about wars in terms of regimes and ideologies. Winning a war is all about changing the opponent’s regime so that it endorses one’s own ideology: turning a “dictatorship” into a “liberal democracy” through the magic of bombs and bullets.

As the military helicopter carrying Edan Alexander - the last remaining American hostage held by Hamas – landed on top of the Tel Aviv hospital, the crowd gathered below erupted in cheers of pent-up relief. Edan, now 21 years old – but just 19 when he was captured, was finally free following 594 days in captivity. After spending almost two years underground the American-Israel looked pale and traumatized. But remarkably he walked off the helicopter unaided. His mother, then his father, practically leaped into his arms. There was dancing and singing in the crowd around me outside the Ichilov hospital, people waved Israeli and American flags. One of them was Tslil Ben Maruch, Edan’s aunt. “I have three young kids at home, all of whom love Edan.

A drone exploded in a sleepy Israeli seaside town yesterday. The target of the attack was Benjamin Netanyahu. By luck, the drone missed its target – Netanyahu’s home – and no one was hurt in the explosion. Hezbollah launched three drones from Lebanon toward Caesarea. Two were shot down by the Israel Defense Forces but, worryingly, the third arrived undetected. Sirens, which are supposed to warn civilians of an impending attack, did not sound, meaning no one knew they should seek refuge in a bomb shelter. The Israeli Prime Minister claimed he was not at home when the drone hit. An Iranian – or Iranian-backed – assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister (or other senior figure) would change the game completely.