Israel

Why this Iranian assassination is all about Trump

The news that Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen ‘father of the bomb’ Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi, met his end in a hail of bullets near Tehran today comes as no surprise. As with so many things these past four years, this is all about Trump. Whoever carried out the hit, it is all but certain that Trump gave it the nod. Once again, he is trying to put a stamp on the Middle East that Biden will find difficult to scrub out. His actions would hardly be without precedent; Obama, Clinton and Reagan all made last-gasp moves in the region to shape it in their image. But none of these Presidents were anywhere

King Bibi’s pandemic problem

‘They are S-C-A-R-E-D’. So said Binyamin Netanyahu in a famous 1999 election campaign speech, referring to the media. Now he is the one who is scared. The political mastermind who has been Prime Minister for the past eleven years stands to lose his crown. Israel’s political crisis of 2019-2020 saw three general elections without producing a clear winner. Eventually, asserting a need for national unity to combat the pandemic, Bibi masterfully managed to form a coalition under his leadership while dividing the main opposition party, Blue and White. Under the rotation agreement, Bibi is to step down after two years and be replaced by Blue and White leader, Benny Gantz.

James Delingpole

Is AppleTV’s Tehran the new Fauda?

If you love Fauda — and of course you do — you’re in for a long wait for season four, which isn’t due to arrive on Netflix till 2022. That’s why I had such high hopes for Tehran, which is written by one of Fauda’s co-authors Moshe Zonder. What, after all, could there possibly be not to like about a hot female Mossad agent struggling to survive after a botched mission in the hostile Iranian capital, where all Israelis are seen as emissaries of ‘Little Satan’? It starts promisingly, once you’ve got over the technical difficulties of signing up to Apple TV. (For some reason, my characters now speak with

The Foreign Office has lost the plot in the Middle East

Last Friday the UN Security Council rejected any extension of the arms embargo on Iran. That embargo — imposed in 2007 — began to get phased out after the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. But a ‘snapback’ provision was put in place intended to allow the return of all such sanctions should Iran violate the terms of the deal. Iran has been violating those terms for some time, but on Friday, when the United States hoped that its allies would join it in deploring this fact, only the Dominican Republic voted with it. The UK, like France and Germany, chose to abstain. On the question of whether Russia and China should

Have Arab nations forgotten about Palestine by accepting Israel?

The Palestinians are entering one of the most precarious periods in their nation’s history. The normalisation of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is only the beginning as other Arab and Muslim states are expected to follow. Yesterday, Haidar Badawi Sadiq, spokesman for the Sudanese foreign ministry, confirmed talks between Khartoum and Jerusalem and predicted a treaty before the end of the year. Today, Sadiq was fired and the ministry denied all knowledge of secret negotiations. Maybe Sadiq spoke out of turn; maybe he jumped the gun; maybe he floated the test balloon that he was told to. No matter. Whether Sudan is next or later is not

Netflix’s Caliphate is all too frighteningly plausible

Sweden is now properly celebrated as the Land that Called Coronavirus Correctly. But in the distant past, those with long memories may recall, it had a less flattering reputation as the Land Absolutely Ruddy Swarming With Jihadists. Caliphate — an eight part Swedish-made drama on Netflix — takes you back there in vivid and compelling detail. Partly, it’s an edge-of-seat thriller about a major terrorist attack on Swedish soil —from its conception in Isis-held Raqqa to its execution (or its foiling by the security services: I haven’t got there yet so I don’t know) by a mix of radicalised locals and hardened Isis killers flown in from Syria. Partly, it’s

Why Benjamin Netanyahu has outlasted all his political rivals

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signed a coalition agreement, after a year of uncertainty and three elections, to create a government that should keep him in power for at least another year and a half. If all goes well with his corruption trial, set to begin on May 24 after a postponement due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he will have outwitted his opponents once again and remained in office more than a decade. How does Israel’s leader keep going when his own party never gets more than 35 seats in the country’s 120-member Knesset and he seems to have alienated parties on the left, right and centre? Netanyahu has

Israel’s antibody breakthrough

The Israeli government is reporting this morning that the country’s Institute for Biological Research has made a breakthrough in the development of a potential treatment against SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19. Scientists there have isolated a ‘monoclonal neutralising antibody’ which could potentially neutralise the virus after infection. The antibody was obtained from the blood of an infected patient. It is called monoclonal because it is generated from a single cell – which could allow vast quantities of the antibody to be produced quickly. Is it the breakthrough that could make all the difference? Treatment of novel viruses with monoclonal neutralising antibodies has been under development for some time, notably

Israel’s draconian lockdown isn’t doing enough to stop coronavirus

An Israeli startup called Vocalis Health is working with the country’s National Emergency Team to conduct a trial using voice samples to identify coronavirus. It is one of many innovative approaches being trialled in Israel as the country is radically transformed by the battle against the virus. The Israeli Ministry of Defence’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development said this week that the study with Vocalis Health would look at voice recordings and use artificial intelligence to help identify carriers of the disease. ‘These recordings will then undergo data analysis using neural networks.’ The idea is that an algorithm that would identify characteristics associated with symptoms of the virus. The obvious

The UN should be ashamed of its anti-Israel boycott list

I knew if we waited long enough, the United Nations would make itself useful. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has produced a handy catalogue of companies that supporters of Israel can give their business to. Of course, this was not Michelle Bachelet’s intention. Bachelet is the commissioner and before that she was an exquisitely unpopular Chilean politician and head of UN Women, the all-girl Ghostbusters of UN agencies that fights global mistreatment of women by putting out hashtags and putting Saudi Arabia on its executive board. Now Bachelet has released ‘a database of all business enterprises involved in certain specified activities related to the Israeli

Quassem Soleimani’s terror lives on for Israelis

Quassem Soleimani is dead but in Israel fear of his warped legacy lives on. The Iranian general was key to his country’s strategy of developing networks of militant groups throughout the Middle East. These organisations are all held together by one thing: a common hatred of Israel. And a month after Soleimani was killed in an US drone strike, Israel is worried that its nemesis’s objective might soon become reality. Soleimani was the mastermind of Hezbollah’s programme in Lebanon aimed at adding a deadly new weapon to the group’s arsenal. The intention is simple: to take ‘stupid’ (unguided) missiles and add GPS technology to make them accurate. Whereas in previous

Critics are wrong to scoff at Trump’s Israel-Palestine deal

‘In business, when I have a tough deal, people would say, “This is tougher than the Israelis and the Palestinians,”’ said President Donald Trump as he unveiled his long-awaited Middle East plan, the so-called Deal of the Century, during a White House ceremony on Tuesday. The comment, ad-libbed, not only demonstrated that the former real-estate tycoon does have a sense of humour. It suggested that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, President Trump is ready to do business when it comes to peace in the Holy Land. ‘Actually, there’s nothing tougher than this one but we have to get it done,’ he added. ‘We have an obligation to humanity to get

Islam’s reformation: an Arab-Israeli alliance is taking shape in the Middle East

When Benjamin Netanyahu visited Oman in 2018 in a gesture of goodwill to Israel’s neighbours, the welcome was not universal. For an Israeli Prime Minister to be warmly greeted in a proud Arab state was, for some, far too much. The Omani foreign minister, Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, was asked on Al Jazeera why the visit had been allowed. The reply went viral: ‘Why not? Is it forbidden to us? Israel is a nation among the nations of the Middle East. We should embark on a new journey for the future.’ A new narrative is emerging in the Middle East. New maps of the Muslim mind are being drawn

The rise – and disastrous fall – of the kibbutz

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are part of a breed of socialists who argue that this time will be different. Socialism never failed, they insist: only the walls, barbed wire and jackboots did. So what they plan for Britain, while radical, is bound to work! True, it’s more radical than anything done in any European country today. Comparisons with Venezuela or Cuba or Soviet Russia are unfair, they say. But there is one model that today’s socialists talk fondly about: the Israeli kibbutz. Early versions of these communes were created by Zionist pioneers in the early 20th century, and they became popular after the foundation of the state of Israel.

Trump is right about West Bank settlements – but it won’t help Israel

In the dying days of Bush’s America, when the culture war was a light skirmish over gays getting hitched in Massachusetts, ABC aired a primetime drama called Brothers and Sisters. Sally Field was the liberal matriarch of a glossy family divided by politics but united by the struggles of being rich, white and trapped in a soapy remake of the West Wing. It was simpering. It was derivative. It was camp-as-all-get-out. I never missed a single episode. In one episode, Calista Flockhart, who played an Ann Coulterish talking-head, returns home from flaming a Democrat on TV and is greeted by her lefty Uncle Saul: ‘Great show last night. As usual,

Is time finally up for Benjamin Netanyahu?

‘King Bibi’ they chanted at Likud’s victory party last night but Benjamin Netanyahu has not clinched victory and the crown could yet be snatched from his head. Israel’s second election of 2019 — a poll in April ended similarly in deadlock — is poised to end the reign of the country’s longest-serving prime minister. Votes are still being counted but centrist opposition Kachol Lavan is narrowly leading Likud. And when religious and other right-wing parties are counted, Netanyahu appears unable to reach the magic 61 seats required for a majority in the Knesset.  In ordinary times (if such times exist in Israeli politics) Bibi would be over the line with

Why is no one boycotting India?

Try as I might, I just can’t seem to get anyone interested in discriminating against Indians. No one is tearing open packets of imported turmeric and cardamom and dumping their contents on supermarket floors. British academics aren’t severing ties with professors from Delhi University. If pension funds are divesting from Tata Motors and ICICI Bank, the FT is still to pick up on it.  This is strange because on Monday Narendra Modi’s right-wing government revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, site of a long-running territorial dispute between India and Pakistan. Both sides claim the entirety of the state, which has been under Indian administration since Partition, and which

Letter From Lebanon

Look down from the mountains outside Beirut and, on most days, you’ll see a grey blanket of smog choking the city. The smog comes from diesel generators: almost every building in Lebanon is hooked up to one because of rolling power cuts. This isn’t because Israel bombed one of the country’s few power stations in 2006, though it did. Instead, the power cuts are a constant reminder to the Lebanese of their politicians’ greed, venality and incompetence. Successive governments have failed to build new power stations. Some are supposed to be finished next year, finally, but everyone knows they won’t be enough. The Lebanese will tell you that the ‘generator

Diplomacy by deference

Iran’s seizure of a British-owned oil tanker transiting the Persian Gulf has let loose a fresh round of media war chatter. Yet should another Persian Gulf War actually occur, who would benefit? Not America, that’s for sure. The central theme of present-day US policy regarding Iran is deference. Nominally, US policy is made in Washington. Substantively, it is framed in Riyadh and Jerusalem, with the interests of the United States figuring only minimally in determining the result. I am not suggesting that President Donald Trump supinely complies with secret marching orders from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, MBS and Netanyahu are both

What has Benjamin Netanyahu achieved?

There are little in the way of festivities but today is nonetheless a landmark in Israeli history: Benjamin Netanyahu becomes the country’s longest-serving prime minister, displacing beloved founding leader David Ben-Gurion. Netanyahu has been in charge for 4,876 days, governing for a three-year term in the late 1990s then continuously since 2009. His Israel would be unrecognisable to Ben-Gurion. Where the Old Man presided over an agrarian society surrounded by almighty Arab armies sworn to its destruction, the land of Bibi is the ‘Start-Up Nation’, an economy powered by technology and pharmaceuticals and undergoing a diplomatic spring with the Arab world. Israelis are happy, healthy and prosperous, and deadly terror attacks are at their lowest since 2013. But