Briefs
Friday, April 18th, 2025
At JCPA, Oded Ailam pens “Why Israel Should Embrace its Role as a Regional Power”.
A country that acts like a leader attracts others. Countries prefer to affiliate with a strong, stable power that leads with purpose and confidence. By projecting strength, not just militarily but diplomatically and economically, Israel can become a pole of attraction in the Middle East – for states, investments, and influence.
I’d like to see stronger initiatives to partner with similar countries. Finland to me seems a great target for seduction. About the same size, also fiercely independent, innovative, threatened — as liberals they lean pro-Palestinian but with better engagement I think they could be shown where true liberalism lies.
Tuesday, February 4th, 2025
In Mosaic, A pair of important lengthy pieces of where we’re at in Israel: The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7 by Shany Mor, and To Save Itself from International Isolation, Israel Must Hold On to the West Bank by Rafi DeMogge. While both are problematic — DeMogge drums in a two-step argument that territorial withdrawals are actually harmful to Israel diplomatically but is thin on other points, and Mor throat-clears by it seems to me unfairly presenting the settler movement as irrational before focusing on the failure of peace-processing — together they touch on each other to paint a developed picture of the situation.
The idea that a Palestinian living in Palestinian territory under a Palestinian government is somehow a refugee from Palestine is a deadly contrivance, the work of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Shany Mor, The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7
Saturday, October 19th, 2024
The path out of loneliness is always a path of action.
Bret Stephens, If Israel Is Alone, What Do We Do About It?
Monday, September 30th, 2024
Netanyahu speaks in English directly to the Iranian people. Portentously, given the newfound utter credibility he has after the last month of military voodoo, he says: “When Iran is finally free — and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think — everything will be different.” Italics mine.
One thing does give me pause: that this is really a speech for a United States President to make. Maybe though I’m thinking too small and it is actually an Israel-scale job to take on Iran while the USA focuses on the larger-power horizon. Maybe it’s actually a fine one-two posture where the USA is willing to defend Israel to the point of insisting others contribute, then is unhappy yet ultimately tolerant when Israeli goes on the offensive. But regardless, you go to war with the army and allies you have.
Tuesday, August 6th, 2024
Former Labour (then Kadima) minister Chaim Ramon points out the Likud’s folly in tacitly supporting Hamas, partially in an effort not to interfere against Palestinian violent splintering. I admit guilty in supporting this in-retrospect-too-clever-by-half approach. The Right was guilty of supporting religious Palestinians just as before them the Left was guilty of supporting secular ones, misguided by the notion that they just want what we want, ie, to just get on with it, building things and having as good a time as possible.
Sunday, June 23rd, 2024
1948
Benny Morris
First bought and read a dozen years ago, and mostly forgotten, I returned to Benny Morris’s 1948 now during the post-October 7th Israel-Gaza conflict, for which 1948’s War of Independence serves in a number of ways as a distant mirror. Although 1967’s Six Day War seems to loom larger in consciousness, 1948 was the big one, the epoch-definer.
Even back then, Israel labored under a diplomatic situation where it was held back from victory. This time around the Palestinians have different weapons: no Arab armies, but lopsided savagery, projectile warfare, a dedicated sponsor and participant in Tehran, Western cultural cognitive decline, and lawfare from a corrupted globalist establishment. The book, with its encyclopedic ambitions, suffers from one sin of history: it does not elicit mental images of many of the events it describes, such as the battles around Gaza between Israel and Egypt. That said, it’s a vital primer.
Sunday, June 16th, 2024
At a meeting between US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and a group of senior Arab officials about a month ago, a shouting match reportedly ensued between the UAE and Palestinian delegates. I find it so encouraging that there is a body in the Arab world that seems insistent on calling a spade a spade and treating people equally and with respect no matter who they are, and not instrumentalizing the Palestinians to some nonsensical end, nor fatally coddling them no matter their viciousness. The UAE’s path-beating instills me with hope.
Thursday, June 6th, 2024
Salem Alketbi in The Jerusalem Post on Arab do-nothing-ism vis-a-vis Gaza. It’s great to hear this pragmatic, humanist voice coming from the UAE.
What remains unspoken about the Arab role in Gaza is the lack of a collective political vision for a solution to the crisis, despite the fact that it has been ongoing for over seven months. Instead, they have settled for official face-saving statements, while refraining from calling a spade a spade and without playing any real role in saving the Palestinian people from the ruthlessness of the Iran-backed Hamas faction.
Tuesday, May 7th, 2024
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour writes on Middle Eastern history, Arab intellectual life, philosophy, Jewish history, and Middle Eastern politics. He calls his Substack “The Abrahamic Critique”.
Sunday, May 5th, 2024
Benny Morris, prescient in 2008:
Many Israelis feel that the walls — and history — are closing in on their 60-year-old state, much as they felt in early June 1967, just before Israel launched the Six-Day War.
Thursday, April 25th, 2024
In contrast with the Jonathan Freedland piece I linked to earlier, Armin Rosen’s survey “The Israel-Gaza war has changed everything: The norms of war are being rewritten in real-time” in Unherd is simultaneously more detailed yet more humble.
Much of what’s happened since October 7 is without any real precedent … we are deep into the unknown, and were there long before this past week. The sides have notched accomplishments that are both novel and gruesome enough to demand real analytic humility…
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024
In Mosaic Magazine, a sweeping history of Israel v. Lebanon by Raphael BenLevi.
Israel’s geography currently provides it with reasonably defensible borders on three sides: the Mediterranean to the west, the Sinai Desert to the south, and the Jordan Valley to the east. Israel’s northern border, however, is not defined by a sea, a vast desert, or even a major river. Rather it is a man-made line that cuts through mountains, valleys, farms, and forests. This has been the case since antiquity, making the northern border of ancient Israel the hardest to defend.
The article mirrors one that I linked to from exactly three months ago on Gaza by Jean-Pierre Filiu in Foreign Affairs.
Friday, March 29th, 2024
Good to see Amos Atza-El, Mr Middle Israel as he self-declares, still at it, this time on Russia and how Putin’s romance with the Jihadis echoes Stalin’s with the Nazis.
Sunday, March 17th, 2024
From what looks like his regular chair in his cluttered leafy office, Dan Schueftan — or should we call him Dr Dugri — provides a primer on Israel (dugri meaning something like English’s plainspokenness or brass tacks).
Reading up on Schueftan however, despite all the sagacity he seems the intellectual architect of much of the present misery, having advocating for unilateral withdrawals.
In retrospect one might be able to guess that this would be the general thrust of his advice, given his mercurial impatient demeanor; and that he gets the listener’s acquiescence — perhaps in Ariel Sharon’s case against their better judgment — with his many “ok?”s.
Thursday, March 14th, 2024
The worst news I’ve seen in a while [Hebrew]: The head of a Gaza clan has been assassinated by Hamas for collaborating with Israel. We need to not be fuckups in this crucial endeavor: empowering, enabling and ensuring acceptable alternatives to Hamas is the capstone to victory; all the battlefield victories come to naught without it and we are back to square one alongside some demolished buildings and bereaved locals.
Monday, February 19th, 2024
Forget a 2-state solution: emulate the Emirates! In English, Mordechai Kedar explains a political horizon to Arutz Sheva. Update: In the wake of Bibi’s outline for post-war Gaza announced just a few days later, Kedar seems prescient, so much so that either he has the Cabinet’s ear or was tasked to float the notion.
As Rumsfeld say, if you can’t fix problem, make it bigger. So what we’re going for is not a 2-state nor even a 3-state but an 8+ statelets solution! I wonder if the Biden Administration will grudgingly go along with this. You know what, I’m guessing they will. Viva la chamulot!
Monday, February 12th, 2024
The New York Post has published a post by Mordechai Nisan advocating that Gazans leave. After October 7th this position — “transfer” in Israeli parlance — went from the extremist fringe to being I think the unspoken mainstream preference among Israelis.
The world power with the strongest ideological opposition to transfer — apart from the Arabs still wanting to keep it as a bludgeon against Israel — is probably the USA, as it seems to go against the American grain of self-determination for peoples. But if the West Bankers manage to make a go of it — highly unlikely but still — then former Gazans could always migrate there again eventually if the call to return remains strong.
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024
“Expert, unbiased global coverage,” the Financial Times claims. But this so-called Long Read on Gaza, “What will be left of Gaza when the war ends?” is undersourced, underdeveloped and quite biased indeed — it could have been published in any freebie and seems inappropriate for a leading £59/month newspaper. “I heard [the Israelis] shot the horses,” one Gazan is quoted. But did the Israelis in fact do so? Nobody bothers to check. Yet the statement remains, dangling potently at the end of a paragrah. The term “Hamas” appears very infrequently, and when it does, is in bland terms, eg, “Hamas won Palestinian elections and in 2007 ousted Fatah”. The term “terror” appears only once, quoting Tzachi Hanegbi’s op-ed in a Saudi newspaper.
Monday, November 6th, 2023
Kobi Michael and Gabi Siboni write:
The Gaza war is also a historic opportunity to dismantle UNRWA, which is an active partner in perpetuating the conflict by fostering the ethos of armed resistance, the demand for the return of refugees, and incitement against Israel.
And the next step:
The sole course of action vis-à-vis Hezbollah must be its complete and utter destruction.
Wednesday, October 25th, 2023
Aha, more spot-on clarity from Tablet magazine in “America Needs a Decisive Israeli Victory” by Raphael Benlevi.
America is being tested no less than Israel; the outcome will determine whether regional states will ally with America or with China and Russia. In other words, the Gaza war will determine whether the American-led order in the Middle East is still sustainable, or rather a relic of a historical period whose time has passed.
Take heed, o Wall Street Journal Editorial Page and Commentary Magazine: your might is being eclipsed!
Thursday, October 19th, 2023
To paraphrase: “What do you all think sovereignty means? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.”
Monday, October 16th, 2023
In The Wall Street Journal, poetic justice from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who suggest “each of these countries should be called on to take ownership of their terrible decisions” by taking in Gazans:
- Iran: Hamas’s chief financier and arms supplier
- Turkey and Qatar: material and financial support [to Hamas]
- Malaysia: a haven for Hamas in years past
- Algeria and Kuwait: cheered on Hamas’s violent and brutal tactics
One wag (I’ve been reading so much I can’t remember who) deliciously suggested Ireland. [Update 2023 Oct 19: Scotland!
Now, forcible population transfer, or ethnic cleansing to use the pejorative language, is a terrible thing — it’s what Meir Kahane was banned from the Knesset for advocating — but Allah help the jackals we have entered war footing, wherein historic generational changes occur.
(That said, these proposals are historic and controversial enough to warrant nitpicking. The authors write:
Civilians are seeking to flee in advance of the fighting…
This is a bit disingenuous, as the IDF has been instructing the population in northern Gaza for days now to head south.
The Rafah crossing on the Egypt-Gaza border is open.
This seems false, it’s most definitely closed, though there is talk of it opening this afternoon for a few hours.)
For decades Palestinians have absurdly been calling themselves refugees even while sitting on territory they control and maintaining refugee camps with nary a tent on their own territory. Ditto the contradictory simultaneous accusation of both occupation and apartheid. So, as it goes for what you wish for, herein lies a lesson: be careful what you lie about.
Sunday, October 15th, 2023
So much, so much to say and catch up on. Here’s a start: Victor Davis Hanson’s “An Annotated Guide to American Middle East Madness”. Events have caught up with VDS’s dark predictions and he has dropped the dark sardonic tone for straightforward exposition.
Thursday, October 5th, 2023
From the Center for Peace Communications, a thinktank led by Dennis Ross, this amazing litany of regional grassroots cooperation with Israel.
Friday, March 10th, 2023
In Rome, Netanyahu speaks to La Repubblica. “What we can do is protect our freedoms,” he says, “using force if necessary, for as long as possible…” This is the second time in recent weeks I’ve heard the great man introduce this concept of existence as temporary. Not that it’s not true, but it’s unusual to hear a national leader speak that way. Intimations perhaps of his own mortality. Anyway, I love that he is coming with a vivid clear ask: Roma, recognize Yerushalayim.
Saturday, March 4th, 2023
David Goldman, back on form, untangles Türkiye’s high-wire new stratagems that leverage its centrality every which way. But I don’t know, this all seems too clever by half and could unravel fairly instantly.
By the way, for ages Goldman was talking about how Türkiye was collapsing and becoming a vassal state to China. But of course, course-corrections happen among the living. For me as someone who believes Goldman is pretty prescient, it’s reassuring that he updates his views.
Tuesday, January 10th, 2023
Senior Saudis tell an American delegation they are ready for normalization with Israel, but first they want normalization with the United States, writes JINSA’s John Hannah in The Jerusalem Post after the visit.
Saturday, December 3rd, 2022
A History of the Israeli Army
Ze'ev Schiff
Author Ze’ev Schiff provides a matter-of-fact overview, probably not too different from many other books of Israeli military history, though I did learn that it was probably Arafat who precipitated the Six Day War. The edition I read was published a decade after the first publication, in the midst of the Lebanon War, about which the author is caustic and upset yet manages to end the book on an optimistic note, wishing Lebanon serve at least as a lesson for future non-endeavors.
Friday, October 14th, 2022
Tony Badran explicates the terrible maritime deal that Israel signed with the Lebanese. It seems to me they just locked in Bibi’s reelection.
Monday, October 10th, 2022
To form an opinion on the wedge of maritime territory wedged between Israeli and Lebanon, some googling revealed:
- “Lebanon-Israel maritime border dispute” at Global Security with a nice map
- “Lebanon-Israel maritime border dispute picks up again”, June 16th, 2022 by the Atlantic Council
- “Lebanon’s Maritime Boundaries: Between Economic Opportunities and Military Confrontation” by Daniel Meier at St. Anthony’s College, University of Oxford [pdf]
- “Revealed: Lebanon, Israel considering ‘gas resource swap’ to settle sea border dispute” by William Christou
at The New Arab - “What’s at stake in the Lebanon-Israel maritime dispute?” by William Christou at The New Arab
Tuesday, September 6th, 2022
The Mufti, Qadaffi, King Hussein — I’m vastly enjoying season 2 of the Israeli TV documentary series Enemies (streaming requires an Israeli IP). One thing I can’t help but notice is the impressive living rooms in which the interviewees — mostly military intelligence vets — sit. None of them are in apartments, all have leafy window views, there’s a lot of wood, and most of them aren’t furnished like typical Israeli dwellings. I guess these aren’t military men, they’re men and women of the world.
I can’t tell if I enjoy Israeli docs because they’re so good, or merely because I’m the target audience. If it’s the former, and I think it is, they really should be selling them subtitled to wider audiences, say to Netflix and Amazon Prime.
It’s great, this pounding away at Israeli history, each episode a different prism.
Friday, August 12th, 2022
Hamas stays out of the fray in Israel’s latest Gaza blow-up, further fractalizing the Palestinian movement.
Saturday, July 16th, 2022
At the Washington Institute, they note that popularity among Arab populations for the Abraham Accords remains low and that — surprisingly — it’s highest among… Palestinians!
Tuesday, May 17th, 2022
Not only is it newsworthy that Israeli company Watergen is installing its drinking water generators in Syria, but that (opposition web site) Syria TV reported the fact.
Thursday, April 14th, 2022
In an interview on Israel’s national broadcaster Kan, this is a fair-minded well-informed backgrounder on Temple Mount tensions.
Monday, March 28th, 2022
It’s time to catch up: the UAE’s foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed (a son of the UAE’s founder) speaks in his rather nice English accent at the close of the Negev Summit in Sde Boker.
Tuesday, March 8th, 2022
Full transcript of Mohammed bin Salman’s interview with Graeme Wood of The Atlantic — and JCPA’s take on it:
This is the first time the Saudi crown prince has publicly referred to Israel as a “potential ally.” He also spoke about Iran in a different tone. In an Atlantic interview four years ago, Bin Salman compared Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to “Hitler” and said Iran was leading the “axis of evil.” This time such talk was replaced by calling the Iranians “neighbors” of Saudi Arabia.
Wednesday, January 26th, 2022
JINSA pleads with Biden to accept the gift of much Middle East peace bequeathed him:
Now is the time for Biden to up his game and remove all doubt that widening the circle of Arab-Israeli peace is one of his highest priorities. How? Name a special presidential envoy for normalization. Next, convene a summit meeting at Camp David with the leaders of Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan to establish an ongoing forum for building a new regional security architecture with Israel as an integral member.
Militarily, take advantage of the almost limitless opportunities now available to slowly but surely build Arab-Israeli defense ties as the result of Trump’s decision a year ago to move Israel into U.S. Central Command’s area of operations, alongside the armed forces of almost all of the United States’ Arab partners. Make last November’s naval exercises in the Red Sea the first in a regular series that draws in more Arab states over time and involves air, sea, land, and cybersecurity domains. Integrate Israeli forces and capabilities as much as possible into the multinational task forces that the U.S. Navy already leads to uphold freedom of navigation in the region, defend its vital maritime chokepoints, and combat the malign activities at sea of Iran and its network of terrorist proxies.
Thursday, January 20th, 2022
The most important Abraham Accords peace dividend so far: the beautiful Dubai, Dubai, Dubai by Israeli comedienne Noam Shuster-Eliassi. Israel’s biting satire — mocking Arabs and Israelis alike, and in Arabic leavened with Hebrew (or is it vice versa) — has more of a chance of freeing the Middle Eastern masses than in retrospect the US Armed Forces and State Department ever had. As Frank Herbert kind of say: he who control the comedy control the universe.
Tuesday, December 14th, 2021
Abu Dhabi leader Mohamed bin Zayed will visit Israel, reports Israel’s Globes.
Monday, November 29th, 2021
Ehud Yaari reports for Israeli TV that Iran claims it can build offensive atomic weaponry after all. Yaari doesn’t understand why this u-turn is not a global headline.
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2021
Apple has disabled its shopping cart in Turkey, the Mac press is reporting, including MacRumors. This could be the mother of Turkish crises, and Turkey is a pivotal enough country that this may affect others. [Update 2021 Nov 30: Sales have been restored at a 25% increase.
David P. Goldman has been writing about a Turkish economic implosion for years — by 2018 he was already examining some consequences.
Sunday, November 21st, 2021
In a landmark trilateral initiative, the UAE will fund Israel and Jordan’s water-for-power deal. This is the way.
Sunday, October 3rd, 2021
Leaked papers reveal King Abdullah of Jordan has spent some $106m on Anglospherian homes. While it’s nice he chooses Malibu and London — and why not — might the story spur domestic unrest?
Saturday, October 2nd, 2021
As rather beautifully cogently introduced by The Center For Peace Communications, Yossi Klein Halevy has written a book that invites replies, and which serves, uniquely as far as I know, as the exquisite Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor: A New Conversation About Narratives and Peace website.
Friday, August 13th, 2021
What’s with Bahrain’s DERASAT thinktank signing an agreement not just with an Israeli counterpart, Jerusalem’s JCPA, nor even with two, also Herzlia’s AEI Abba Eban Institute for International Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center, but now with three, adding Tel Aviv’s INSS. That doesn’t seem right to me; pick a counterpart.
On the INSS web site, the visit warrants not just the top story position but the heading “Special Announcement”. At JCPA it’s no longer the top story but the headline is prefixed “History:”. The Abba Eban Center doesn’t seem to have a news facility. Yet over at DERASAT, the post about the agreement with the JCPA (which a few days later is no longer even discoverable on their website) did not contain the word “Israel”. And there’s no mention at all of the two more recent agreements.
Saturday, August 7th, 2021
In this Al-Jazeera coverage of the protests comprising the anniversary of the Beirut explosion, the word “Hezbollah” doesn’t appear at all.
Sunday, July 4th, 2021
Friday, June 11th, 2021
Jordan and Israel need to exchange electricity for water. Jordan can produce green solar-powered electricity at 60% of the cost that Israel can, while Israel is the world leader in processing sea water into drinking water. Jordan is in dire need of more water due to a massive influx of refugees who aren’t going anywhere, while Israel needs green electricity to power those desalinization plants.
