With it kicking off in Gaza again, I thought I’d post an unpublished article I wrote in late 2009 about what I called the New Year’s War in Gaza. Some of the observations are understandably dated, but I think the piece is still relevant. At eleven o’clock Saturday morning, on December 27th 2008, the New […]
For many in the Arab world, the Sykes-Picot Agreement is what the Yalta conference was for many conservatives in the United States during the Cold War. It is a betrayal of a people seeking freedom, a damning indictment of Great Power politics, and the source of all the problems in the Middle East. As with […]
Last summer, when perennial concern about Iran’s nuclear programme grew hysterical, Ron Tira, a noted Israeli strategic thinker, wrote that the importance of an attack on the country was not the operation itself but manipulating international reaction. ‘It is necessary to examine Israel’s response to different events, for example, the Turkish flotilla to the Gaza […]
Although I will persist in my series on Iran, I think the announcement today of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has made academic any discussion of military strikes. Netanyahu will not order an attack in the next week, at least; and there will not be one for a year at most, if […]
I have wanted to write about Iran since I started the blog months ago, and now would seem appropriate with Jeffrey Goldberg reopening the debate on whether the United States should attack the country to stop its nuclear programme. He has examined in depth the anxiety felt by Israel about the prospect of Iran acquiring […]
Melanie Phillips has written a blistering attack on the Prime Minister and his foreign policy, accusing him of everything from cowardice to incompetence but stopping short of sodomy. As crazy goes, the diatribe is pretty crazy. David Cameron is ‘dangerous’ to the national interest, as shown by his speech in Turkey on Tuesday. He praises […]
I had wanted to move this blog quietly away from Israel for a bit to broaden its horizon, but I’m drawn back by this poll on the flotilla incident. To me, it illustrates a few things. Those Israelis polled have seemingly divorced the use of force from strategy, which is highlighted by three of the […]
November 16, 2012
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