Tag Archives: Israel

The new UN report on deaths in Gaza makes for Grim Reading. According to the admirable work of UN data sleuths, details close to 10.000 of the official 40.000+ deaths have been added. These are only the direct victims; indirect victims (starvation, stress, sickness) are omitted. One of the findings is that, unlike during earlier periods of war in Gaza, killing is indiscriminate. Many of the victims were women and children (graphs). The youngest victim was one day old, and the oldest was...

Israel is on a dangerously self-destructive course.  The brutality of the Gaza campaign is antagonizing allies and making it difficult for regional players to continue normalizing relations.  The prospects for a durable peace are dimming at the same time that the policy of military supremacy that provided a modicum of security over the past two decades looks increasingly unsustainable.  Netanyahu clearly deserves much of the blame for what is...

Some thoughts on recent developments . . . Elite persuasion and its limits News reports suggest that President Biden got Speaker Mike Johnson to put a Ukraine aid bill on the floor of the House through good, old-fashioned persuasion:  Biden and his team convinced Johnson it was the right thing to do by sharing intelligence with him.  Biden didn’t berate Johnson in public.  I suspect he flattered Johnson in private. Knowing how to deal with...

My latest post at Substack examines the state of play in Gaza after six months of war. Fair to say, it is truly horrible. But more importantly, there is now overwhelming evidence that Israel has deliberately and systematically violated international humanitarian law. These violations could amount to genocide.On 28th March, the International Court of Justice decided that the situation in Gaza had significantly worsened since its original order in January imposing six "provisional measures"...

Dear friends, I said I wouldn't post any more on this site. But Elon Musk doesn't like me posting Substack links on Twitter. And Substack itself is a mess. The home page looks amateurish, and new posts don't even appear on it until they've amassed enough views to push down previous posts. It's an absurd way of organising a site. So I have decided in future to post links to my Substack posts here. Hopefully this will mean you can find them more easily, both on Google and Twitter. Some of my...

The useful content of this post on a topic where I have no expertise is this link to a Twitter thread by Gen Mark Hertling (retired) who has a whole lot of expertise and is also very smart and reasonable. The thread is brief. I suggest reading it. I also quote one tweet here: “There will be an IDF incursion. Hamas will prove better than many expect in repelling the IDF advance. Unfortunately, I also believe the fight will last a long time, will...

For the past few days I have been wondering if Netanyahu has a plan for responding to the Hamas terror killings, or if he’s just temporizing.  More and more, it seems like he is just skating in front of the breaking ice.  If this is right, it’s one more misdeed for which he and his cronies need to be held accountable. Any competent military would have a carefully worked out contingency plan for all-out war against Hamas.  That plan would take into...

Israel Pays For Bibi’s Successful Campaign Against The JCPOA Iran Nuclear Agreement  In the last few days for the first time in many years, northern Israel has been on the receiving end of rockets fired out of southern Lebanon, the territory under the control of the Shia Hezbollah group long supported by Iranian interests, although apparently, some think that it was Palestinians living in this area who fired the rockets. Even if it was, clearly...

What happens if the two premises on which Israel and America’s grand Iran strategy is founded are proven false? ‘What if’ maximum pressure fails either to implode the Iranian state politically, nor brings Iran to its knees, begging for a new ‘hairshirt’ nuclear deal? Well …? Well, it seems that Netanyahu and Mossad were so cocksure of their initial premise, that they neglected to think beyond first move on the chess board. It was to be checkmate in one. And this neglect is the cause of the...

Putin apparently conflicts with the Stavka (Russian General Staff) and Foreign Ministry.(Xi is facing similar pressure from the PLA (People's Liberation Army) over what it perceives as Western aggression in the South China Sea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.)Dances with BearsPUTIN ENDORSES NETANYAHU FOR RE-ELECTION – SHOIGU AND LAVROV REACT John Helmer