Qasem Soleimani is no longer with us, and tens of thousands in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and even within Iran itself celebrated his death. Israel did not celebrate, expressing instead weak support for President Trump’s action, explicitly instructing Israeli ministers to…
Tag: Iran
Israel fights Jihad while Hamas keeps silent
An Arabic proverb goes: “My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger”. In accordance with our reality in Israel and Gaza, we can translate this as “Bibi and Gantz against Hamas, and Bibi and…
Fateful misconception: Israel’s Russia mistake
As anyone can see, Israel’s course of action in Syria is aimed at preventing Iranian entrenchment there. Its strategy is understandable but impractical. This does not appear to bother Israel, which prides itself on solving complex problems by one simple…
Israel’s undeclared war on Iran
Last November, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman visited Saudi Arabia, sat in a spacious armchair in the palace of Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, aka MBS, and went on to write a piece in The New York Times…
Netanyahu in Russia: The starling went to the raven
While Israeli headlines were captured by Poland’s new law (exonerating that country from involvement in Nazi crimes), by the prospect that Netanyahu may be questioned under caution in a bribery scandal (the submarine affair), and by plans to expel thousands…
The Iranian threat is in danger
Far from the capital of Tehran, and without warning, the first demonstration took place in the city of Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city and one of the Ayatollah’s strongholds. Could this portend the return of the Arab Spring? Mashhad, like Sidi…
Iran and America: The Will to Change
Two weeks have passed since the Iranian elections of June 12, 2009, and the storm aroused by the putative result refuses to die. What’s happening there is not a democratic disagreement, as the Emir of Qatar described it, but a…
Why Israel Can’t Attack Iran
Accompanying its verbal escalations over the Iranian nuclear project, Israel ventured on an extraordinary air force exercise in early June. According to the New York Times, this included more than 100 F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, which flew west 900 miles…
The War No One Wanted
Ben Efrat is the General Secretary of the Organization for Democratic Action. He delivered this lecture on July 26, 2006, fifteen days into the war, at Bamat Etgar in Tel Aviv. THIS WAR DOES not yet have a name. I…
Bush’s Lost War
EARLY IN JUNE 2006, militias belonging to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) took over Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. The city’s fall was a blow to Washington. The Bush Administration had thrown its support behind a group of warlords,…