Published in the Jerusalem Report, issue dated 29 April 2024           Antisemitism in the UK has reached a level only surpassed in the 1930s, when Oswald Moseley and his blackshirt thugs, mimicking Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party, dominated Britain’s political scene.  There is one major difference between then and now. Today the state of Israel exists. Moseley, like Hitler, based his political philosophy on identifying the Jewish people as the source of all the world’s economic and social ills.  In a telegram to Hitler sen ..read more

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 15 April 2024: Like his fellow national leaders, King Abdullah of Jordan is well aware of the danger that Iran – a non-Arab entity – poses to his nation and the Arab world generally.  Its aim to dominate the region, both politically and religiously, and its actions in support of these objectives, unite much of the Arab world, and give it common cause with Israel.  Ever since Hamas’s murderous assault into Israel on October 7, Jordan has been attempting to manage and curb widespread opposition to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.  Perhaps ..read more

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 1 April 2024 Six months into the Gaza war, and world opinion – widely in support of Israel’s initial onslaught on Hamas following the horrendous events of October 7 – has steadily hardened and turned.  Appeals for a pause in the fighting have grown ever more strident, culminating in the Resolution passed on March 25 by the UN Security Council calling for an immediate ceasefire.  The Resolution, while also demanding the immediate and unconditional release of all the hostages held by Hamas, did not link the ceasefire call to the hostage release ..read more

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 26 March 2024             On March 17 a delegation of EU leaders visited Cairo and announced that the EU Commission had decided to provide Egypt with finance totaling $8.1 billion (some 32 billion shekels) over the three years 2024 – 2027.  Amidst the flurry of self-congratulatory statements, neither side specified what one particular tranche of the package was for. That Egypt needs the money, it goes without saying. The country has been in economic difficulties for years. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine made matters w ..read more

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 11 March 2024   National elections were held in Iran on March 1.  The results were underwhelming. It took three days for the electoral authorities to count the votes and consider the results.  On March 4 Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi told a news conference in Tehran that of Iran’s 61 million eligible voters, only some 25 million had deigned to participate.  The resultant turnout of 41% would be the lowest ever recorded in post-revolution Iran. Even so, the BBC published comments from voters skeptical  of the official announcement ..read more

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 4 March 2024               The Houthis – whose flag proclaims, among other things, “Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews” – operate from the chunk of west Yemen they have seized from Yemen’s internationally recognized government (IRG).  It is a well-populated area which contains the capital Sana’a and a great length of coastline bordering the Red Sea, including the vital port of Hodeidah.  For the past ten years the Houthis, intent on extending their grip to cover the whole country, have been locked in a civil ..read more

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 26 February 2024 Hamas seems intent on building up a fighting force inside Lebanon.  Early last December news emerged of a large-scale recruitment drive by Hamas in and around the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.  Dubbed “The Al-Aqsa Flood”  – in line with the name given to the October 7 massacre – the recruitment program was aimed at young men aged between 17 and 20.  There are 12 UNRWA refugee camps in Lebanon, housing some half-million Palestinian refugees as defined by UNRWA – namely a hugely inflated number of patrilineal de ..read more

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 19 February 2024               The term “total victory” has been on prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lips a great deal recently. It has about it the ring of the phrase adopted by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at Casablanca in the middle of World War Two – “unconditional surrender” – implying that the Allies would be content with nothing less than the complete and utter defeat of the Nazi enemy.  There would be no armistice, no haggling over the terms of a cessation of hostilities.  Unconditional s ..read more

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 13 February 2024           One-time US President Harry S Truman kept a slogan on his desk: “The buck stops here”. The idea was to remind himself daily that, as the nation’s leader, he intended to take ultimate responsibility for what happened under his watch. There would be no “passing the buck”, no denying responsibility or laying the blame elsewhere..           This is the principle at one time observed pretty universally by any chief executive. Heads of organizations took it for granted that they were respo ..read more

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 30 January 2024:             Christmas and the New Year celebrations had come and gone, and still the phone lines between US President Joe Biden and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, remained ominously  silent.  Very nearly a full month without contact had elapsed when, on January 19, Biden picked up the White House phone and asked to speak with the Israeli prime minister.             The call was occasioned by remarks made by Netanyahu the day ..read more