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Blaming intelligence and military failure for the Oct. 7 assault diverts attention from Israel’s real weakness — a distracted and divisive political leadership that ignored the fact that people just a few miles across the border are confined in a living hell.
Iran says European courts have ordered repayments of $1.7 billion more of its money frozen in Western banks, which risks being transferred to help fund Hamas’ war with Israel. Other observers suspect the news is meant to stop financial panic in Tehran.
Russia has both the means and potentially motivation for triggering mayhem in the Middle East, including the benefits of distracting the West from its war in Ukraine.
In response to the attack by Hamas, Israel promises to eradicate the group, but what does this really look like? With the promise of a high toll in human lives and the complex network of the Gaza Strip, an operation to retaliate against Hamas may be even more difficult that one may think.
Hamas’ unprecedented onslaught has hit Israel at a moment of weakness. But the attack could unite a divided Israeli society against a common enemy — and finally end the terrorist organization’s rule.
Hamas has launched an unprecedented attack against Israel, killing at least 700, mostly civilians, and taking scores of hostages. Even if the Islamist group has always made clear it sought Israel’s destruction, the questions loom as to why now, and how it managed to pierce the enemy’s defenses.
Iran denies direct involvement with the Hamas assault on Israel, even if it has given it its full backing and praise, and has offered support over the years. The specter of Israel striking Iran is driving fears that the war is bound to spread across the region.
There will be a before and after to October 7, 2023, so unprecedented and traumatic have the events of the last 48 hours been for Israel, followed by massive retaliation. We can already draw several lessons from this.
The signing of the Oslo Accords 30 years ago was followed by a failure that set back the very idea of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. A look back at this historic episode and the lessons we can learn from it today.
Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo joins a handful of former military and political leaders who have decided to break the taboo on using this infamous word, as a result of the political radicalization of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.
The Israeli government’s aggressive bid to curb judicial powers fits into a bigger picture of the degradation of liberal democracy worldwide.
The Israeli army’s operation last week in the Jenin camp was particularly striking in its scale and violence, further undermining any hope of appeasement in the region or the newfound alliance with Arab countries, or even among American Jews. What if Israeli politics, instead, was inspired by the nation’s Netflix series scriptwriters?
Israel’s military operation in Jenin is the latest escalation of bloodshed. Once again, the language of violence has prevailed because there is no political solution on the horizon.
The Ukrainian Embassy in Israel says the current Israeli government is inching closer to Russia, while doing nothing to help Ukraine. A look at what may be driving the shift.
Despite the official “consensus” by Arab League nations to welcome Syria back to the organization after 12 years of suspension, several key countries were opposed on principal — including key questions still open in North Africa.
A Palestinian has died from a hunger strike in an Israeli prison, exacerbating the cycle of violence in the region. Israeli’s protesting Benjamin Netanyahu”s right-wing government have little to offer to resolve the eternal crisis of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Praise in the West has been heaped on the popular protests in Israel that have halted undemocratic judicial reform proposed by the Netanyahu government. But this supposedly noble fight for democracy doesn’t apply to 20% of its citizens, not to mention the policies carried out in the Occupied Territories.
France, Israel, United States: these three democracies all face their own distinct problems. But these problems are revealing disturbing cracks in society that pose a real danger to hard-earned progress that won’t be easily regained.
In a speech in Paris, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, denied the existence of the Palestinians, sparking angry reactions in Ramallah, Amman and Brussels. But Israel’s extreme right is not afraid of provoking a violent crisis with the Palestinians.
Israel’s judicial reforms by its far-right government have been met by widespread protests. Now the country risks breaking long-formed bonds with key allies in the West.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power with the most right-wing government in the country’s history has revealed a deep schism in Israeli society between settlers and secularists.
By challenging Israel’s constitutional system and launching a crackdown on the Occupied Territories, Benjamin Netanyahu is playing a high-stakes game opposed by half his country and the country’s allies. It can’t last much longer.
After forming a governing coalition with right-wing extremists, will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu face a chill in relations with the West? The reshuffled geopolitical cards offer a fair share of paradoxes.
Right now, according to a joint survey of Israelis and Palestinians, hopes for a peaceful solution of coexistence simply don’t exist. The recent spate of violence is confirmation of the deepest kind of pessimism on both sides for any solution other than domination of the other.
It is still not clear what was the exact target of an attack by three armed drones Saturday night on an arms factory in central Iran. But it comes as Tehran authorities appear increasingly vulnerable to both its foreign and domestic enemies, with more attacks increasingly likely.
… and it runs much deeper than Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government.
The Polish-French writer Marek Halter addresses a letter to Israel’s leader warning him against the undercurrents of his government that threaten the very essence of the Jewish state.
Less than a week after being sworn in for the sixth time as Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu was defied by a highly charged visit his far-right coalition ally, Itamar Ben-Gvir, made to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, that has enflamed the entire Muslim world. Netanyahu has a choice to make.
More and more French wine growers are interested in the mechanics of growing grapes and producing wine in the world’s most arid regions—like Israel. Climate change is pushing the wine world to imagining all possibilities, including the most extreme.
Russian speakers represent 15% of the Israeli population. And now, the war in Ukraine is bringing long-simmering tensions in their community to the surface.
Orthodox women are not allowed to go to the cinema and their film screenings are often interrupted by protesters. But in Israel, there is a booming audience for their films and a big cultural shift is happening.
On the same day that Bethlehem’s Mayor Anton Salman inaugurated the Christmas holiday season earlier this month with an impressive fireworks display and tree lighting in the town square, residents of the West Bank city’s three refugee camps — Aida, Dehaishe and Jibrin, also known as Azza Camp — continued their daily protesting against the Palestinian Authority. The protests, which have included burning tires and blocking roads, aim to gain the release of several Palestinians arrested by Palestinian security forces for waving banners of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine during the funeral of 14-year-old Amjad […]
The peace accords signed between conservative Arab states and Israel are the start of an inevitable opening for the Middle East, and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan means a new post-American, post-oil future.
The current spiral in the Middle East is a stinging reminder for the world, and particularly the United States under Joe Biden, that the violence will always return.
The Israeli Prime Minister has taken his cue from a bold predecessor, Menachem Begin, to curb Islamic Iran’s regional presence and nuclear threat by any means necessary.
The COVID-19 crisis has upended normal routines and led some young Haredims to drop out of school, experiment with drugs and distance themselves from family.
An Israeli law enacted in mid-2017 amounts to a de facto salary cut for African asylum seekers, plunging the community into a financial crisis.
The Silicon Wadi, as Israel’s tech sector is known, has a penchant for creating innovative new companies. But rather than grow to maturity, they’re often sold off early to larger, foreign firms.
-Essay- CAIRO — As someone who fully supports the Palestinian cause, it is challenging to write an article about boycotting Israel for fear of being dragged into the particulars of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In a world that is very much manipulated by biased media, it is hard to resist the urge to first rebut Israel’s […]
Slated to open in 2020, Israel’s National Blood Services Center is a high-tech insurance policy to ward against existential threats such as chemical attacks.