Diplomacy

Ian Buruma on Brussels. I found it a pretty exciting city so when I saw this article I jumped on it (plus I vaguely remember being impressed by something else this fellow wrote) and it’s pretty sweeping and fun.

The New York Times attempts to embarrass Trump’s new appointment by linking to eight of incoming American Ambassador to Israel David Friedman’s columns in Arutz Sheva as if his words alone are enough to horrify. I for one though agree with everything he writes in these, except perhaps in “Time to Regroup on Iran” where he suggests hitting Hamas harder — not sure about that. I’m with him on J Street, and there’s great stuff on what he dubs the two-state narrative.

New British prime minister Theresa May’s first major decision was the nuclear plant at Hinckley Point and it seems she took the easy way out.

In Commentary Magazine Lazar Bergman summarizes Netanyahu’s cautious, patient geopolitical successes. And in the same issue, this more biographical piece by Seth Mandel.

The tale of USA vs Israel on Iran.

Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, talks to Die Zeit about Germany’s own debt relief and the proper way forward now.

In case it’s of interest/relevance, a translation of Hamas’s charter.

Some strategic implications for Israel of Hamas’s tunnels and rockets by JCPA.

By looking the other way and unconditionally supporting and arming Maliki, President Obama has only lengthened and expanded the conflict that President Bush unwisely initiated, argues — nay, explains — a US official who saw it all. A must-read.

In tandem with Robert Kagan’s recent piece on post-WW2 Pax Americana, Lee Smith suggests Obama is (mistakenly) pursuing a balance of power rather than hegemonic arrangement in the Middle East.

Perhaps the most frightening thing about this much-lauded essay on America’s post-WWII hegemony is that it was written at all, that our world order is receding so far so fast that we, or at least Robert Kagan, can see outside it.

Jonathan Spyer bracingly articulates the Right’s two fundamental arguments for the inevitability of the failure of John Kerry’s Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Dore Gold recounts Iran’s first ‘charm offensive’: its use of the tactic of khod’eh, ie, “tricking one’s enemy into a misjudgment of one’s true position”, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini waged a successful deception campaign from exile in Paris.

Galei Zahal (IDF Radio)‘s Arab Affairs correspondent looks acutely at the Syrian civil war from Hezballah’s perspective. It’s all-out Sunni-Shiite confrontation.

Peres and the Pope as covered by the Voice of America (Reuters). This meeting has not gotten much coverage.

The power shvitz in the basement of the Finnish embassy in Washington.

Dore Gold’s Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs summarizes the gradual thawing of China-Israel relations as China matures.

Jeffrey Goldberg interviews a very articulate, reasonable-sounding President Barack Obama prior to Netanyahu’s visit.

There’s a name for something I’ve always wanted to do and lacked the gumption and follow-through and doubted it: Radical Honesty. The FAQ.

An argument that at the euro summit Cameron overplayed his hand.

“European “normality” was based to a large extent on West German “abnormality”. Now that the reunified Germany is becoming more “normal”, it is undermining European “normality.” A sobering analysis of Deutsch affairs by Tony Corn.

Despite Libya, what matters now is Syria, namely defeating Iran there.

What’s there to disagree with in The Third Man, Elliott Abrams’ account of the Obama-Bibi-Abbas fracas.

Walter Russell Mead waxes deep on Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. “…The people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul.”

Walter Russell Mead on George Mitchell’s retirement: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not and was never comparable to Northern Ireland.

Syria’s about to join the UN Human Rights Council. Well.

The fault line runs between George Mitchell and Dennis Ross.

Ruth Lapidoth, Professor Emeritus of International Law at the Hebrew University, on the legalities of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Note how long the Turks had Gaza: 400 years — far far longer than anyone else around today.

Complete common sense by Hussein Ibish on the Israeli & Palestinian future.

Fisking Petraeus.

Israel-Iran war games at the Saban Center. Game simulation — such a powerful way to think.

Robert Kagan expounds dispassionately on the Obama Administration’s unhinged approach to world affairs.

Finally, the piece of news I’ve been after, and it comes from Yossi Klein-Halevi in TNR“: According to an Israel Radio poll on March 16, 62% of Israelis blame the Obama administration for the crisis, while 20% blame Netanyahu. (Another 17% blame Shas leader Eli Yishai.)

George Mitchell with Charlie Rose for 52 whole minutes on the current Israeli-Palestinian situation. Great man… A few days later Elliott Abrams responds.

Elliott Abrams encapsulates a year of the Obama Administration on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It ain’t pretty, but it does have the merit of being so feckless as to be irrelevant, thereby not interfering with the real progress on the ground.

Some quickly digestible nuggets of imperial wisdom from Byzantium, as channelled by Edward Luttwak in Foreign Policy.

Boogie Ayalon articulates the bottom-up approach to the Israel/Palestinian conflict.

If ever the US has been close to achieving potentially terminal self-marginalization in the Middle East, it is now, under Obama. By Michael Young, opinion editor, Lebanon’s Daily Star.

Sharper in style than his dad, John Podhoretz slices open Obama’s new “honest” Israel policy.

Joe Lieberman points out the unprecedented convergence of concerns about Iran among Arabs and Israelis alike — and that some of the strongest alliances in history have been forged among old antagonists when confronted by a new, common threat.

Mark Steyn isn’t even trying to be funny any more. In “The End of the World as We Know It”= he expresses what I’m thinking and feeling, that we’re in deep trouble because Americans voted impetuously and like spoilt children for a Feelgood o’Balma that’s going to stop feeling good mighty fast as Americans realize that given the choice, and if you can’t have both, it is indeed better to be feared than loved — and in America’s case, better for everyone.

The title of Krauthammer’s latest, “It’s Your Country Too, Mr President”, seems borderline treasonous. (Not that I don’t agree.)

Condi Rice, for the hour, on Charlie Rose. What a babe at 54. “The United States is too big a country, too important a country, too gracious a country to have permanent enemies.”

Tom Friedman gets aboard the 3-state solution (though he calls it 5-state). My only complaint is his notion that Israel withdraw from all settlements in the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem. Why should these areas be Judenrein? This issue, reciprocal minority rights, to me is the real inflection point, not Palestinian right of return.