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border invasion Israel 

Border on incitement: media sanitise mass violent invasion threat

Melanie, , ,

British and other western media, led by the BBC, continue to sanitise what they so shamefully call “peaceful demonstrations” by the Arabs of Gaza at the border with Israel. In fact, these are attempted mass invasions of Israel using violent means including bombs, grenades and (grotesquely) flaming kites to set fire to Israeli farmland. If these mobs were to break through en masse as intended, no-one can be in the slightest doubt about the slaughter of Jews that would then follow. The scale of what Hamas has been planning for…

Iran Global conflict 

The elephant in the room is regime change

Melanie, , ,

Amid the brouhaha over President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the appalling Iran nuclear deal, the elephant in the room is standing quietly all but unobserved. Trump’s initiative is being either praised to the skies or deplored with dismay. The question being discussed is whether it will force the Iranian regime to abandon its nuclear program in a new deal or precipitate a terrible war. Following Trump’s announcement, an Iranian missile attack on Israeli military bases on the Golan Heights led to heavy Israeli air strikes…

Europeans lose minds and moral compass Global conflict 

Have Britain and Europe lost their minds as well as their moral compass?

Melanie

The Europeans’ determination to keep the appalling Iran nuclear deal going, following President Trump’s decision to pull the US out of it, makes very little sense on its own declared terms. Leave aside the shocking determination of Britain, France and Germany to continue to milk one of the deal’s most disturbing features: that it enabled the Iranian regime to pocket more than $1.7 billion which it used to fund Hezbollah and Hamas, build its missile infrastructure to destroy Israel and attack the west, and deploy proxy armies to bring conflict…

conversation Britain 

Times column and exploding brains

Melanie

While my Times column this morning has attracted much support (for which, many thanks to all) other brains appears to have been exploding over my argument that there is no moral equivalence between antisemitism and Islamophobia. The New Statesman has devoted an entire article, no less, to what it calls my “terrible column on the ‘fiction’ of Islamophobia, annotated”. Writer Nicky Woolf laboriously holds up paragraph after paragraph for scrutiny. Presumably she intends to demonstrate that not one of my arguments can withstand the force of such forensic analysis. Alas,…

Britain Israel USA 

Three islands of exceptionalism in west’s darkest hour

Melanie, , ,

On a plane to New York this week, I watched the movie Darkest Hour for the second time. If it packed a punch the first time, on second showing it seemed even more apposite to our current nail-biting era. The movie is about the traumatic period in May 1940 when, as the Nazis swept across Europe, Britain was staring at the prospect of defeat and invasion. Darkest Hour points out the catastrophic error of trying to negotiate with a regime whose agenda brooks no compromise. Britain didn’t acknowledge this until…

Israel 

An open letter to the Muslim world

Melanie

Dear Muslim world, The State of Israel is 70 years old today and I am writing from its capital city, Jerusalem. I realize that for most of you, the words I have just written will cause your gorge to rise. In Israel, they are a source of jubilation. Israel’s rebirth as the Jewish national homeland out of the ashes of the Holocaust was in itself an astonishing achievement, unique in the annals of the world. For it to have survived the unparalleled attempts to destroy it ever since is regarded…

Global conflict 

The weekend bombing of the Syrian chemical facilities

Melanie

So what did the weekend bombing of three chemical weapons facilities inside Syria achieve? Well, if what we are being told is true, it knocked out three Syrian chemical weapons facilities. That’s good. This may have set back, maybe seriously, Syria’s capacity to use chemical weapons.That’s good, maybe very good. So is that good enough? No way. Let’s ask a different question. What was the strategic aim of the weekend’s bombing raid? According to our three motivated musketeers, Trump, Macron and May, it was to deliver the message that the…

USA 

Bolton gets the job – as I requested!*

Melanie

Last August, I wrote this: There’s an obvious and outstanding candidate for the role of National Security Adviser, and that’s John Bolton. Bolton, formerly US ambassador to the UN, is unrivalled in his hard-headed ability to analyse the threats to America and in the clear-sighted and courageous conclusions that he draws. Why in heaven’s name doesn’t President Trump bring Bolton into his administration? Yesterday, he did just that – and appointed Bolton National Security Adviser. This is great news. As Senator Lindsay Graham remarked: “Selecting John Bolton as national security…

Global conflict 

West pays the price for its decades of folly

Melanie

What’s that deafening noise of squawking and screeching and flapping that we can now hear all around us? Why, it’s the West’s chickens finally coming home to roost. In Britain, a retired Russian spy and his daughter, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, remain critically ill in hospital after being poisoned earlier this month in the quiet cathedral city of Salisbury by a rare, military- grade and deadly nerve agent. Skripal was a double agent who had worked for British intelligence. The poison used against him reportedly could only have been produced…

peace in our time Global conflict 

War, North Korea and the art of the deal

Melanie, , , , ,

One of the many wonders of progressive folk is their, ah, flexibility. It’s an article of faith for the modern progressive that war must be avoided at all costs. War is uncivilised, barbaric, a throwback to a brutal past and never solves anything (yes yes, I know, presumably Nazi Germany wasn’t solved either…). Instead of war we must substitute conflict resolution, negotiation, soft power. That’s why the supremely civilised EU and the even more supremely civilised UK have downgraded their military capacity. So should an enemy (let’s pick as an…