Articles by: "Schlomo"
Forgetting Palestine

Israel is approaching another parliamentary election, and Palestinians have barely been mentioned. The vote comes at a time when the United States is pushing its poorly conceived economy-focused ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan. With the Israeli–Palestinian …

No economic peace for Palestinians

Last month, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, unveiled an ambitious plan to strengthen the Palestinian economy, in the hopes that billions of dollars in investment will open the way for …

Don’t feed the Donald

What do French President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have in common? For one thing, they both believe that, by stroking US President Donald Trump’s fragile ego, they can coax him into …

Israel doubles down on illiberal democracy

It’s Bibi again. Having unapologetically allied with a racist, Jewish-supremacist party, Benjamin Netanyahu has secured a fourth consecutive term as Israel’s prime minister. The Union of Right Wing Parties says Netanyahu promised it both the …

Maduro’s useful idiots

In his 1982 Nobel lecture, the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez condemned the West’s insistence on ‘measuring us with the yardstick that they use for themselves’ and ‘forgetting that the ravages of life are not …

The ideology trap

President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency at the southern border of the United States—where there is no emergency at all—in order to access funding to build the wall that he promised his supporters …

The Trumping of the Middle East

US President Donald Trump may be mercurial, but he does have a doctrine. As his speech in September at the United Nations General Assembly again confirmed, Trump rejects multilateral institutions and liberal values in favour …

Anti-Semitism has a new name

Over the centuries, Jews have been blamed for all sorts of ills in Christian and Muslim societies, from the Great Plague of the 14th century to the financial crashes of modern times. In 1903, The …

Global conflict in a new age of extremes

The late historian Eric Hobsbawm described the 20th century as the ‘age of extremes’, in which state socialism led to the gulag; liberal capitalism led to cyclical depressions; and nationalism led to two world wars. …

The disruptive power of ethnic nationalism

In July, Israel passed a controversial new ‘nation-state law’ that asserted that ‘the right [to exercise] national self-determination’ is ‘unique to the Jewish people’ and established Hebrew as Israel’s official language, downgrading Arabic to a …