Bernard Haykel There are two immediate reasons why these attacks took place. First, Hamas has been vying with the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the leadership of the Palestinian cause and the success of these attacks is one way to achieve this. The PA is the official government of the Palestinians that signed the Oslo Peace… Read More Why Hamas attacked now – and how it weakens both Israel and hopes for peace
Extreme positions are not replaced by moderate ones but rather by extreme ones, though of the opposite kind: Nietzsche The Will to Power In the past 24 hours, two reports out of Israel have pointed to a striking conclusion: that the failure to prevent Hamas’s murderous assault on southern Israel rests in significant part with the government… Read More Netanyahu’s deliberate extremism has failed
A prime minister indicted in three corruption cases cannot look after state affairs, as national interests will necessarily be subordinate to extricating him from a possible conviction and jail time. This was the reason for establishing this horrific coalition and the judicial coup advanced by Netanyahu, and for the enfeeblement of top army and intelligence… Read More Haaretz Editorial: Netanyahu Bears Responsibility for This Israel-Gaza War
The exact reasons for the attack are not clear, but there has been growing violence for months between Israeli soldiers and settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank. Armed settlers have attacked Palestinian villages; militants in the West Bank have attacked soldiers and settlers, and there have been repeated IDF raids on Palestinian cities. More… Read More Israel-Hamas war: what has happened and what has caused the conflict?
( IMEMC ) – An 18-year-old Palestinian man and a 13-year-old child were the latest in a long list of civilians killed on Saturday, October 7th. Following the massive attacks in Gaza, in which over 200 Palestinians were killed on Saturday, marches and protests broke out across the West Bank, calling for justice, freedom, and self-determination for… Read More Israeli Troops Kill 6 Palestinian Protesters, including a Minor, as Demonstrations against Israeli Killings of Civilians Break Out
One of Iran’s foremost public intellectuals and critics of the Iranian regime was taken to prison in handcuffs on Saturday to start serving a five-year sentence. Majid Tavakoli, who has a three-year-old child, was found guilty of spreading propaganda against the state. His dispatch to jail had been deferred for three weeks, but security officials… Read More Iranian intellectual calls on opposition to unite as he is again sent to prison
At the time I was reimagining this scene, I spent much of my day on Twitter. It was early 2021, and everyone there was chronically angry. People communicated by jeering, trading insults, hectoring, flinging accusations… It was like being in an abusive relationship with everyone in the world. Sandra Newman A few years ago, I… Read More Orwellian nightmares: What I learned about today’s rage culture from rewriting 1984
Peter Beaumont Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, will be remembered as an intelligence failure for the ages. In the space of several hours, dozens of Gaza militants broke through the border fence into southern Israel, surprising local military positions. Gunmen kidnapped and murdered Israelis in the southern border… Read More Hamas’s attack will be remembered as Israeli intelligence failure for the ages
First posted July 11, 2015 “I have never in my life ‘loved’ any people or collective – neither the German people, nor the French, nor the American, nor the working class or anything of that sort. I indeed love ‘only’ my friends and the only kind of love I know of and believe in is… Read More Hannah Arendt: pariah and 21st-century cosmopolitan
Her brave struggle has come with tremendous personal costs. Altogether, the regime has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison, and 154 lashes The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for “her fight against the oppression of women… Read More Nobel Peace Prize won by Narges Mohammadi for fight against the oppression of women in Iran
After the truth-shower 