Israel

In 2015, I was nearly beaten by a far-right mob in Jerusalem. Thursday night’s riot in the holy city reminded me a lot of that evening. Thankfully, this time, nobody died, but that same feeling of tension, anger and violence was in the air. My run in with the mob began at a small vigil to protest against the murder of a family at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. For some reason they decided we were ‘left-wing protesters’ — the police were able to encircle us but could do nothing to stop the bottles being thrown, the spit, the curses. Our crowd of attacks moved on, beating any Arabs they

Benjamin Netanyahu has a problem: he doesn’t have sufficient support to form a coalition. With 20 days left to complete this near impossible task, he is desperate; and, when backed into a corner, Netanyahu looks to Iran as his saviour. The timing of the recent explosion in Iran’s Natanz’s nuclear facility – and particularly the fact that Israel has done little to dispel the notion that it was to blame – suggests that the motivation was at least partially political.  This isn’t to say the attacks on Iran aren’t normally motivated by interests of national security. The threat of a nuclear-capable Iran is substantial: according to Iran, the Natanz nuclear site holds

Boris Johnson’s announcement about vaccine passports was met with criticism from backbenchers on both sides of the political spectrum. The scheme was described as potentially ‘discriminatory’ with warnings that it may lead to a ‘two-tier’ Britain. Labour leader Keir Starmer even said the use of vaccine passports is ‘not British.’ Given the deep suspicion towards national identification cards, this did not come a surprise. But if the government eventually chooses to use vaccine passports, some lessons from Israel’s experience may be helpful. Despite their cultural differences, the Israeli and British publics are protective of their democratic rights and liberal freedoms Israel has been giving digital certificates to people following their second

Elections are supposed to settle things. That’s the idea, at least. Politicians argue, take decisions and pursue the policies they want to, but there comes a day when they have to answer to the public and face their judgment. A day after Israel’s fourth parliamentary election in two years, no verdicts are forthcoming, not even in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial. The votes are still being counted, but it looks once again to be an awkward draw. Neither Netanyahu nor his rivals are expected to be able to form a governing coalition. Elections in Israel have become like the difficult season of a long-running comedy, when the producers try

In 2018, the Czech President Miloš Zeman promised in a speech on the 70th anniversary of the founding of Israel to do everything in his power to move the Czech embassy to Jerusalem. Last week, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš finally opened an official diplomatic office in the Holy City. With Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu claiming that Israel has ‘no greater friend in the Eastern hemisphere’ than the Czech Republic, the move has underlined Central Europe’s divergence from the EU when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The official Czech Embassy still remains in Tel Aviv – but the nation has gone against EU policy by becoming the bloc’s second

Israel has been working closely with other countries and international companies, developing and producing vaccines against Covid-19. At the same time, the Middle Eastern country is rapidly improving relations with its Gulf neighbours, the latest evidence being the appointment of a new UAE ambassador to Israel. A major shift has taken place in Israel — 20 years ago the country was under siege from terrorists, with bus bombings rocking Jerusalem and terror attacks in the heart of Tel Aviv. Just a few years ago Israel was fighting a major war in Gaza against Hamas, a war that is the subject of an inquiry by the International Criminal Court. For many years Israel

Visit certain parts of the West Bank and you’ll encounter mansions owned by senior officials in the Palestinian Authority (PA). By any standards – let alone those to which ordinary citizens are accustomed – they are impressive, with arches, colonnades and tall windows. If you’d been watching them in recent weeks, you might have seen vaccines being quietly delivered to these residences in unmarked cars, having been skimmed off the supply intended for medical workers. Those, at least, were the allegations made by a number of Palestinian human rights and civil society groups. Last week, the Palestinian health ministry was forced to come clean. In a statement, the ministry admitted

The decades since the Islamic revolution have weighed heavy on the people of Iran. Living in fear, under extreme levels of surveillance and oppression, ordinary citizens have seen their quality of life plummet and their horizons shrink, as their country became an international pariah. Those who dared to protest have been brutally repressed by regime goons with knives, axes and heavy weaponry. And while forced to suffer the deprivation of draconian sanctions, hardworking families could only look on as their despotic leaders splurged billions of dollars on military meddling overseas. When the senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar boasted in December that the regime had given him £15.8 million of government

Coronavirus rates in Israel right now are among the highest in the world. But that didn’t stop the Israeli government from lifting its strict lockdown and, yesterday, reopening most of its retail economy. Non-essential shops, shopping centres, libraries and museums reopened to the general public after being closed for more than six weeks, despite the fact that daily cases and hospitalisation numbers remain at pretty much the same levels as when the lockdown began. The streets were packed as people tried to catch up on nearly two months’ worth of shopping. The reason – or, perhaps, the justification – for this reopening is Israel’s successful vaccination programme. An astonishing 90

The Mossad is not known for its touchy-feely approach. Whether it was the kidnap of Adolf Eichmann in the sixties, hunting down and executing the Black September terrorists in the seventies and eighties, or dispatching a Hamas chief while disguised as tennis players in a Dubai hotel in 2010, the agency has built a reputation as the most feared secret service in the world. Yet its underlying moral imperative in this most morally difficult of professions must not be overlooked. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan used to show spies about to embark on a mission a photograph of his grandfather kneeling in front of Nazi soldiers before they shot him.