Israel

Thursday

Peter Jones

How the ancient Greeks tackled treaties

Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement. Though the ancients would have employed oaths, the practical ancient Greeks often ensured there was a flexibility about them: the real world might intervene. For example, treaties between city-states were agreed between opposing generals. Hostages were exchanged, oaths sworn and the terms of the treaty widely inscribed on stone and bronze pillars, but it was citizens who oversaw the treaty’s maintenance. In a Greek democracy, however, there was no saying how, under the influence of different leaders, policy might change and annul a treaty at a stroke. Then again, though treaties could be sworn to last forever, ‘circumstances’ were very unlikely to remain

Tuesday

Michela Wrong

The psychological toll of being constantly tracked and harassed

In late 2018 a Saudi journalist living in exile in Canada, who liked to work out in between recording YouTube critiques of his government, ordered some protein powder online. When a text message landed on Omar Abdulaziz’s smartphone notifying him of a DHL delivery, he clicked on it without hesitating. The portrait Deibert paints is a million miles away from the Cold War binary world of John le Carré The DHL invitation was fake digital bait. By clicking on it, Abdulaziz had enabled Pegasus, a spyware program designed by a now infamous Israeli company, NSO Group. It proceeded to hoover up his emails, contacts, photos and WhatsApp exchanges, which included

Thursday

Paul Wood

The Donald’s plans for the Middle East

The former US president Jimmy Carterdied, at the age of 100, just before news of an imminent deal to free the last of Israel’s hostages in Gaza. Carter’s presidency was crippled by his own hostage crisis, American diplomats held captive in Tehran. Freeing them became his administration’s highest priority, and he worked on it for every single one of the 444 days the crisis lasted, often to the exclusion of anything else. By contrast, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, resisted massive domestic pressure to do a deal for his hostages in order to pursue the war aim of destroying Hamas. You could call this statesmanship, or something else, but

Thursday

Tanya Gold

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre contains terrible art – but is filled with magic

For a press tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the Church of the Resurrection, the Mother of churches, site of the last four stations of the Cross – you must apply to the Patriarch. This being Jerusalem, there are three: the Latin, the Armenian and the Greek Orthodox. The process of accreditation is like a scene from an Olivia Manning novel. If you receive an acknowledgment of your email from the Greek Patriarchate – the Latin and the Armenian were otherwise engaged – you turn into Greek Patriarchate Street and present yourself at the Patriarchate palace. It is pale limestone, silent, a home to spoilt

Neve Gordon

Israel must leave Syria

As I walked through Vienna last weekend, I happened upon several protests organised by Syrian refugees celebrating the downfall of Bashar al-Assad, the butcher from Damascus. People were singing, some even crying, as they rejoiced the end of the father-and-son al-Assad dictatorship, which had lasted 53 years.   The protestors had not yet seen the images of tens of thousands of released political prisoners, the slaughterhouses, or the underground torture chambers, but they had already seen enough. They were among the 12 million people who were displaced during the Syrian civil war and many of them undoubtedly had family members or close friends who had been among the over half million

Tuesday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Iran’s axis is dying

From the hilltop viewpoint at Misgav Am, Israel’s northernmost kibbutz in the Upper Galilee, the view into southern Lebanon is a panorama of uncertainty. Less than a full day after Assad was finally defeated in Syria, I stand at and look down at the rubble of the Lebanese buildings destroyed in the recent fighting, as close to the Syrian border as the IDF will allow. Beside my feet, spent bullet casings remind me that less than two weeks ago this peaceful spot was a frontline position. The shell of a bombed-out nearby community viewpoint serves as a silent witness to the RPG attacks Hezbollah regularly launched on civilian homes and

Saturday

Charlie Gammell

Will the Syrian Civil War create another ISIS?

There are unintended consequences, and then there are unintended consequences. What we are seeing in Syria, as Aleppo and Hama fall (and Homs braces itself) to a coalition of anti-regime forces whose DNA is to be found in al-Qaeda et al, is an unintended consequence of Israel’s bombardment in Syria of Iran-funded pro-Assad groups, and the pulverising of Hezbollah in Lebanon. An unintended consequence of the weakening of Iran and its Axis of Resistance. For the three pillars on which Bashar al-Assad props up (for the time being) his murderous kleptocratic narco-state – Iran, Hezbollah and Russia – are, respectively, on their ‘best’ behaviour in the hope of talks with

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Beware the Qataris

I feel some sympathy for the British royal family because of the ghastly people they are forced to meet. The late Queen had to greet Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe. This week the King and Prince and Princess of Wales had to meet the Emir of Qatar and his wife. True to form, the state media in Britain managed to miss every major problem with this. The BBC did say that there might be protests around the visit because of Qatar’s record on ‘LGBT rights’. But more troubling is that Britain should ever have welcomed the leadership of such a sordid, terrorist-supporting statelet. It’s troubling that

Thursday

Arieh Kovler

The leak that’s haunting Netanyahu’s government

Early September, days after the gruesome discovery of six murdered Israeli hostages in a tunnel in Gaza, a dramatic scoop appeared in Bild. The German newspaper had obtained a secret internal Hamas document, supposedly obtained from Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s personal computer, that revealed Hamas’s hostage negotiation strategy. The document claimed that Hamas was deliberately exploiting the divisions in Israeli society, manipulating the families of the hostages to help blame Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for not making a deal. A day earlier, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle had posted another story based on sensational Israeli intelligence: a claim that Sinwar was planning to smuggle himself and some hostages out of Gaza into Egypt via tunnels

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Storm Bert, Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire and Putin gives cockatoos to North Korea

Home A white paper outlined measures to counter economic inactivity (which had risen by September to 41.2 per cent among those aged 16 to 24): everyone aged 18 to 21 would be offered an apprenticeship, training, education or help to find a job; Jobcentres would be rebranded as the National Jobs and Careers Service. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: ‘What I haven’t heard are many alternatives’ to the tax rises imposed by October’s Budget; she was speaking to the Confederation of British Industry. A petition on the parliament website, accusing Labour of breaking promises and calling for a general election, gathered more than 2.7 million signatures; ‘There

Monday

Nigel Biggar

What the ICC gets wrong about Israel

Legal reasoning is only as good as the ethical concepts it uses. That’s why the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and former defence minister is basically flawed. The ICC claims reasonable grounds for believing Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant guilty of the war crimes of ‘intentionally and knowingly depriv[ing] the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival’, creating ‘conditions of life calculated to bring about [their] destruction’. The grounds are these: Israel’s failure to facilitate relief ‘by all means at its disposal’ and to ‘ensure that the civilian population… would be adequately supplied with goods in need’ amounts to a

Friday

Arieh Kovler

There may soon be peace in Lebanon

If the leaks and briefings are to be believed, Israel is getting ready to end its war in Lebanon. With the US pushing hard, and after a successful military campaign, reports say that Israeli leaders are looking to make a deal. Lebanese Hezbollah joined Hama’s war against Israel on 8 October, 2023; around 100,000 Israeli civilians have evacuated the border area. Almost immediately after Israeli troops moved into the Gaza Strip, determined to oust Hamas and release the hostages captured on 7 October, there were negotiations, brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the USA, to try and reach some kind of deal that would free the hostages and end the war. Apart

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Tax rises, a cheddar heist and snail delivery man gets slapped

Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeatedly mentioning an inherited ‘£22 billion black hole’, raised taxes by £40 billion in the Budget, while saying she was abiding by Labour’s manifesto promise not to increase taxes on ‘working people’. A big hit came from increasing employers’ contributions to national insurance; the threshold at which it begins to be paid was reduced from £9,100 to £5,000. But income tax and NI thresholds for employees would be unfrozen from 2028. Capital gains tax went up; stamp duty for second homes rose. Fuel duty would again be frozen. The non-dom regime was abolished. Tobacco went up; a pint of draught went down

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

When will Sally Rooney boycott Britain?

I have a question for Sally Rooney. Why are you perfectly happy to engage with cultural institutions in the UK, despite the various mad wars us Brits have waged in recent years, but you dodge like the plague cultural institutions in Israel because Israel is fighting a war in Gaza? Rooney, the celebrated Irish author of chick lit for people with PhDs, has reportedly put her name to a letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions that are ‘complicit in genocide’. Hundreds of other writers with virtue to advertise have apparently signed too. Arundhati Roy, Percival Everett, Rachel Kushner and others all say they will forswear Israeli ‘publishers,

Thursday

Douglas Murray

The ICC’s rogue prosecutor

Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of 7 October, went to meet his maker last week. Having spent a year being pursued through the underground tunnels of Gaza that he had built, he finally put his head up above the surface in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah. The world that had told the IDF not to go into Rafah was once again proved wrong. Sinwar was killed in an exchange of fire by a 19-year-old Israeli soldier who was not even in uniform on 7 October. People inside the ICC were annoyed by the way Khan made himself a sort of ‘world policeman’ A couple of days after Sinwar’s demise, I

Wednesday

The Spectator

Letters: Why does the Navy have more admirals than ships?

Pointless laws Sir: The leading article ‘Wrong problem, wrong law’ (19 October) makes cogent points about the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill, in particular pointing out that it would probably not have made any difference had it been in force at the time of the Manchester Arena bombing, and that if passed it will impose disproportionate and often unmanageable burdens on venues such as churches and village halls. There is, in truth, a wider point here: most legislation is either counterproductive, useless or both. All legislation has five aspects: (1) A real purpose. This may be to achieve the ostensible purpose of the legislation, but is often really to make

Sunday

Limor Simhony Philpott

Iran is playing a dangerous game

A drone exploded in a sleepy Israeli seaside town yesterday. The target of the attack was Benjamin Netanyahu. By luck, the drone missed its target – Netanyahu’s home – and no one was hurt in the explosion. Hezbollah launched three drones from Lebanon toward Caesarea. Two were shot down by the Israel Defense Forces but, worryingly, the third arrived undetected. Sirens, which are supposed to warn civilians of an impending attack, did not sound, meaning no one knew they should seek refuge in a bomb shelter. The Israeli Prime Minister claimed he was not at home when the drone hit. An Iranian – or Iranian-backed – assassination of the Israeli Prime

Friday

Nicholas Hopton

The Iranian diplomat trying to stop Armageddon

‘The embassy is being invaded. The ambassador has had to lock himself in his office upstairs, and there are people on our balcony. Your government is responsible for the safety of our diplomats and embassy. We will hold you accountable…’ The voice at the other end of the line was calm, though there was no mistaking the underlying aggression. ‘The Vienna Convention is very clear about the responsibility of host countries for diplomatic missions.’ I received that call in the autumn of 2017, when I was coming to the end of my second year as Britain’s ambassador to Iran. A large group of demonstrators had been campaigning loudly outside the

Sunday

Jonathan Spyer

Where does Lebanon go from here?

Israel’s overt ground intervention into Lebanon is now entering its third week.  So far, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have advanced just a few kilometers in and established control in a number of locations across the border.  The IDF itself has described its ground action on the border as consisting of ‘limited, localised and targeted raids.’  Standing at a border observation post a few days ago, my impression was that this description appears accurate, at least for now.  Looking across to the towns of Bint Jbeil, Maroun a Ras, Ain Ebel and Ait a Shaab, we heard the occasional sound of artillery cannons.  Twice, we saw interceptions of ordnance fired

Wednesday

Fiona Bruce

How I keep Question Time audiences under control

Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love – or it’s supposed to be. William Penn, good Quaker that he was, wanted his city to be a place of religious and political tolerance; a haven for those who’d been persecuted for their beliefs. There are quotations inscribed on walls everywhere about the power of love, selflessness and charity. Given how vicious and divisive this presidential election is, the message seems lost on both parties. I flew out to Philly this week for a special Question Time episode, the first time the programme has been to the US since 2008. One of our panellists has had to pull out at the last