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Britain Instant Articles 

Mrs May’s human shield

Melanie

What an almighty mess. Theresa May is clinging to office and is trying to stitch together a deal with the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party to give her an overall and workable majority. I wrote here that she should go. Few think she’ll still be Prime Minister by the end of the year and she may be forced out well before that. Power and authority have drained away from her. What’s of overwhelming importance, however, is the national interest. There are two points to make on that. The first is…

Global conflict Instant Articles 

The red-black-green-Islamic axis

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…

Instant Articles Israel 

Trump reframes the Middle East war zone

Melanie

President Donald Trump’s Middle East trip was quite an achievement. He has surely alarmed America’s foes. In societies highly sensitive to signals and symbolism, the trip has left them in no doubt that the sordid chapter of America cozying up to its enemies while dumping on its allies is now over. Trump has reframed the Middle East war zone. The enemy to be defeated is Iran, the captured hostage is Saudi Arabia, and the goal is to make the world safe from both Sunni and Shia Islamic terrorism. Palestinians, he…

Global conflict Israel USA 

Trump joins up the dots

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…

Melanie at Berkeley

Melanie

This week I spoke on the Berkeley campus. A transcript of my remarks follows below the video. I’m on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, where conservative speakers are being systematically censored by violent protests designed to prevent them from speaking. I am on Sproul plaza in the centre of the campus, where free speech was supposedly enshrined back in the sixties but where it is now appallingly being suppressed. This is the campus where conservative views are called fascism and shouted down. As you can see…

USA 

Trump was never an isolationist but a patriot

Melanie

Two swallows don’t make a summer, and two military attacks in the space of a few days don’t mean a flip-flop in strategy. After his missile attack on a Syrian air base, President Trump ordered an attack on an Isis recruitment complex in Afghanistan using the Massive Ordnance Air Blast – known colloquially (and inevitably) as the Mother of All Bombs – to obliterate an estimated 36 jihadis and destroy their underground base. As I wrote in my Jerusalem Post column today, both the President’s enemies and his supporters greeted…

USA 

The west’s ideological quagmire

Melanie

The US Tomahawk missile attack on a Syrian airfield and the reaction it provoked took the fledgling Trump presidency into new territory. The raid provoked general amazement, since in 2013 and 2014 Donald Trump repeatedly tweeted that the US should not bomb Syria. The US president, however, not infrequently reverses himself. What was different this time was the reaction. For once, the division over the Syria missile attack did not lie between pro- and anti-Trumpers. Those delighted by it were ideological interventionists on both Left and Right, as well as…

Instant Articles USA 

How the monstering of Donald Trump has confused the Jews

Melanie

President Donald Trump continues to be the focus of confusion and division, not least within the Jewish world. At first he was hailed as massively pro-Israel. He said he was opposed to the Iran deal and Israel’s treatment by the UN, promised to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem and appointed as US ambassador a bullish supporter of the settlers. Jews on the Right were thrilled, Jews on the Left were dismayed. But then he invited Mahmoud Abbas to the White House and sent his envoy Jason Greenblatt to make…

Videos 

Persian carpeted

Melanie

Join me as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the remark by Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu about the meaning of the Jewish festival of Purim, the jaw-dropping response by the Iranian regime, the complexities of nationalism within the United Kingdom and more.

Global conflict Israel USA 

A parable for our times

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…