26 July 2023 Israel: The End of Democracy? By Gwynne Dyer The protesters in Israel came out every week for seven months to fight what they saw as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s assault on democracy, but they lost. On Monday Netanyahu’s coalition government passed a ‘Basic Law’ that effectively ends the ability of the Supreme […]
5 July 2023 Israel: Mowing the Lawn Again, but with Malice Aforethought By Gwynne Dyer The two-day Israeli military incursion into the Palestinian city of Jenin in the northern West Bank (12 Palestinians killed, one Israeli dead) seems at first glance like just another example of ‘mowing the lawn’. That’s what the Israeli Defence Forces
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29 March 2023 Israel: The Fascists and the Fanatics By Gwynne Dyer Imagine that Donald Trump had been the president of the United States, in office and out and in and out and in yet again, for more than half of the past 25 years. What would the US look like today? Well, that’s about
1 March 2023 Israeli Pogrom By Gwynne Dyer The dictionary definition of ‘pogrom’ is “an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” So there is something deeply strange about hearing ‘pogrom’ used in Hebrew to describe
Israel Predictions Gwynne Dyer Here are a few fairly safe predictions for what will happen in Israel in the next year. Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu will not go to jail. The independence of the Israeli court system will be destroyed. Judges’ decisions will be made subject to veto by politicians. (That’s why Bibi will
26 October 2022 Israel: Yet Another Election By Gwynne Dyer Israeli voters are indefatigable. The election on November 1st will be the fifth in just three-and-a-half years, and yet the turnout is still likely to be around 70%. That’s especially remarkable because all five elections have really been about the same question: should Binyamin ‘Bibi’
22 June 2022 Israel: It’s All About Bibi By Gwynne Dyer There was a rare moment of grace in Israeli politics last Monday, as Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid announced they would dissolve their extraordinary coalition and pitched Israel into its fifth election in three and a half years. The coalition
23 May 2021 First, three lies. The Gaza offensive has yielded “unprecedented military gains,” said Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz. The ceasefire on Friday amounted to a “victory” for the Palestinian people and a defeat for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, said a Hamas official. But the ceasefire brings “genuine opportunity” for progress, said US
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Israel’s new two-headed government, with Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister, was supposed to be sworn in on Wednesday. Then suddenly the inauguration was postponed by one day to accommodate a quick visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. What brought Pompeo so far for so short a time? It obviously wasn’t the declared agenda
As British newspaper magnate Viscount Northcliffe said: “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.” Men don’t bite dogs every day, however, and the news media need ‘content’ every day just to hold the ads apart. So often