Global conflict Archives | Page 9 of 10

Honour among thieves?

July 5, 2017 Melanie

An extraordinary clash recently occurred at the UN between representatives of Saudi Arabia and Iran. The two states that between them are responsible for the fanatical Islamic thinking and jihadi violence that currently menaces the world faced off across a table and each denounced the other as terrorists. You can watch this astonishing spectacle here. Of course, both protagonists are correct about each other. The Iranian was right to link Saudi Arabia to al Qaeda and Isis. The fact that Saudi Arabia is now a bitter enemy of al Qaeda…

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The radical difference between antisemitism and Islamophobia

July 5, 2017July 5, 2017 Melanie

Watch me here explaining to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network what I think is the crucial distinction between antisemitism and Islamophobia. The clip is taken from a longer discussion which you can watch here.

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Trouble in purgatory

July 4, 2017July 4, 2017 Melanie

Watch me here discussing with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network antisemitism in the British Labour party – and also the extraordinary spectacle at the UN of Iran and Saudi Arabia accusing each other of terrorism.

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The red-black-green-Islamic axis

June 7, 2017June 26, 2017 Melanie

Throughout the west, many are bewildered by the way in which so-called progressives support people and causes which are inimical to their own supposed ideals and beliefs. People observe with as much bafflement as revulsion the violence on campus directed at people with conservative or pro-Israel views in order to deprive them on freedom of speech; the refusal of feminists to condemn the oppression of women in the developing world; the further silence of those committed to gay rights or resistance to tyranny over the persecution of gay people or…

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It’s not just Jeremy Corbyn who’s got this so very wrong

May 26, 2017June 27, 2017 Melanie

There is understandable anger and revulsion at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s speech today drawing a link between the Manchester bombing atrocity and British foreign policy. It is, of course, a frequent claim by Muslim terrorists that they are only killing western civilians because the west has killed civilians in the Islamic world. Indeed, they often specifically target for attack children and young people – as they did in Manchester and as they have often done in Israel – in revenge for what they claim to be the killing of their…

Global conflict Israel USA

Trump joins up the dots

May 22, 2017May 23, 2017 Melanie

Now it becomes clear why President Trump selected as the destinations of his current tour Riyadh, Jerusalem and Rome. He is re-setting the foreign policy debate around the factor which is both fundamental and at the same time systematically ignored. He is reframing it as a conflict over religion. Not that he is describing it in Samuel Huntington’s terms as a war between civilisations. He reportedly told his son-in-law and key strategist Jared Kushner to construct a tour around the theme of reconciliation and world peace. Nevertheless, he’s doing something…

Global conflict Israel USA

A parable for our times

March 13, 2017March 13, 2017 Melanie

Today and yesterday (depending on where you are in the world) observant Jews have been celebrating the festival of Purim by reading the megillah of Esther. This is the story of the Persian king Ahasuerus, commonly identified as Xerxes I, who went along with the plan hatched by his vizier Haman to exterminate the Jews. Ahasuerus was then persuaded out of this by his Jewish queen Esther, who was urged on by her brother Mordecai, and hanged Haman instead. Witty folk have been comparing Ahasuerus to Donald Trump. This is…

Britain Global conflict

Our arms sales help keep Iran’s plots in check

February 7, 2017February 7, 2017 Melanie

The war in Yemen, however, poses yet more complex questions. Holding our noses to ally with unpleasant and illiberal regimes against Islamist terror might well be in Britain’s national interest. But Saudi Arabia is the originator of the Wahhabi extremist ideology which gave rise to the Sunni Islamist onslaught against the free world in the first place. So how can the West regard it as its ally against Islamist extremism? The answer should be a dual response: ban all Saudi-funded activity in Britain, but ally with the desert kingdom against…

Global conflict Israel

Australia lines up against the axis of infamy

January 2, 2017January 3, 2017 Melanie

Plaudits to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his Foreign Minister Julie Bishop for condemning the UN Security Council’s vicious anti-Israel resolution 2334 which, in falsely delegitimising Israel’s settlements, struck at the very heart of Judaism and Jewish history. On New Year’s Eve Turnbull called the resolution “one-sided” and “deeply unsettling”, while Bishop said it was “unlikely” that Australia would have voted for it had it still been on the Security Council. This lines up Australia with the incoming US Trump administration against the axis of infamy consisting of Obama,…

Britain Global conflict

Liberals are unmoved by slaughter of Christians

December 20, 2016 Melanie

Across the developing world Christians are being attacked and murdered, driven from their homes, converted at knifepoint, kidnapped, raped, tortured, beheaded, sold into slavery and burned alive in their churches. These Christians are truly persecuted. They press no violent cause. They threaten or oppress no one. They are attacked for no reason other than their religion. Yet in the West, this targeted religious persecution is all but invisible. The media rarely mention it. No liberal hearts bleed in public over it. “Syria stains us all”, intones the virtue-signalling West. Well,…