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Tag: Israel

HRH Israel 

EU second thoughts over hostility to Israel?

Melanie, , ,

Has the European Union reached a tipping point over Israel? Or to be more precise, is the Europeans’ bluff finally to be called over Israel’s proposal to extend its sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria? The E.U. has been mulling over punitive measures against Israel if it goes ahead with what its western critics call “annexation of the occupied territories of the West Bank.” A number of member states, headed by France along with Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Belgium and Luxembourg are calling for a…

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virus Israel 

Israel-bashers fail to see the Arab train leaving the station

Melanie, , ,

It’s a busy time for Israel-haters. So what’s new? Well, a lot. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the Democratic congresswoman who has a lengthening record of lies about Israel, last week tweeted the boiler-plate falsehood that Israel’s foundation in 1948 had entailed the “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinian Arabs who were “indigenous” to the land. The Jews, of course, are the only people for whom the land of Israel was ever their national home. And the Palestinian Arabs’ displacement took place in the war of extermination against the nascent State of…

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HRH Britain Israel USA 

A muffled consensus serves not Israel but her enemies

Melanie, , ,

Should Jewish communal organizations aim to achieve consensus above all or bear witness to the truth? Both in the diaspora and in Israel, Jews are divided over politics, religion and worldview. These arguments, moreover, generally carry an emotionally fraught sub-text; that the opposing side threatens to undermine Jewish security and the existence of the Jewish people. This makes it even more difficult for Jewish organizations whose aim is to protect and defend the Jewish people from ever saying anything about contentious issues of the day. In the United States, J…

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Boris Coronavirus 

The terrible cost of ignoring common sense

Melanie, , ,

Common sense is a much underrated value. It is sneered at by the intellectual priesthood, which venerates abstract theorising divorced from reality and how people actually behave. Responses to this pandemic have illuminated the destructive irrelevance of this snobbery. People are fighting over abstractions while victims of Covid-19 are dying around them. Those trying to prove that across the world economies have been wilfully trashed by power-mad politicians and that lockdowns have all been a terrible mistake are seizing as weapons statistical claims about the course of this disease. This…

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HRH Israel 

From San Remo to 72nd birthday, Israel displays rare and robust resilience

Melanie, , ,

One hundred years ago this Sunday, the four principal allied powers involved in World War I signed a resolution at San Remo. Next week, Israel celebrates Yom Ha’atzmaut, the 72nd anniversary of the state’s declaration of independence. Typically, the world thinks that the key step towards the establishment of the State of Israel was the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the statement in which the British government committed itself to work for the establishment of a Jewish home in what was then called Palestine. Relatively little attention has been paid to the…

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Israel 

For Israel, recognising another enemy is second nature

Melanie, , ,

Among the world’s populous democracies fighting the coronavirus, Israel has so far been by far the most successful. With a population of about 8.6 million, it had recorded at time of writing 33 deaths from COVID-19. The Deep Knowledge Group, a consortium of technology and analytics organizations, has ranked it in the fight against the virus as the safest country in the world. While Israel’s death toll is continuing to edge up, the country has contained the epidemic better than Britain, America or the stricken nations of Western Europe. Britain,…

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Coronavirus Britain Israel 

Israel’s lockdown can be a model for Britain

Melanie, ,

For the past 12 days I have been under effective house arrest in Jerusalem. That’s because, just over two weeks ago, Israel started requiring everyone arriving in the country, even if they were citizens, to self-isolate for 14 days. Now all foreign visitors with no place of permanent residence are banned. My husband joined me in isolation at our place here a week ago. When I emerge into the world again this week I will be allowed out only for a limited range of activities such as obtaining essential food…

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Coronavirus Britain Israel 

In the coronavirus debate, one striking omission

Melanie, , ,

In Britain, the government is being criticised over its strategy for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Its critics claim that it is not doing enough to produce “social distance” by restricting public contact. They point to other countries which have imposed much more draconian policies such as banning large public meetings or shutting schools. The former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who has said he finds the government’s approach “surprising and concerning’, expressed particular surprise  “that we’re still allowing external visits to care homes”. In response, the government’s scientific advisers say…

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Britain Israel USA 

The real centre ground: the only political show in town

Melanie, , ,

Democracy, the process through which the people get to choose who governs them, involves a choice of leaders telling competing stories about how the world should be organized. A healthy society, we have told ourselves, involves regularly changing those leaders and their stories to provide the checks and balances essential to avoid the dangers inherent in one-party rule. In Israel, the United States and Britain, that process has stalled. The reason is that, in all three countries as elsewhere in the west, the story offered by the progressive side of…

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Israel 

Arabs in uproar – over the prospect of living in Palestine

Melanie, ,

Leave aside, for the moment, the deepening rows about U.S. President Donald Trump’s “vision” for ending the Middle East conflict. Leave aside the question whether the plan’s lead author, Jared Kushner, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, backtracked on an “immediate” Israeli declaration of sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the “Triangle” of disputed territory (they didn’t; the need to first map out and agree on the details was stated from the start). Leave aside the uproar among Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, along with certain southern…

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