US
Our Israel Factor panelist Eitan Gilboa believes that only the US can mediate between Israel and the Palestinians to stop the current tensions:
Countries and nations tend to reach peace agreements after conflicts in which they pay higher prices than the prices of the agreements. That's what happened to Israel and Egypt after the Yom Kippur War. I doubt this is the way Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas see things, and without such an acknowledgement I doubt they will be able to do more than locally and temporarily put out the fire.
Adam Entous examines the mutual distrust between Israel and the US on Iran:
Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, said the U.S. and Israel could nonetheless end up at odds.
“If we become aware of any Israeli efforts, do we have a duty to warn Iran?” Mr. Hayden said. “Given the intimacy of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, it’s going to be more complicated than ever.”
Israel
Dexter Filkins critically examines Dan Ephron’s hypothesis about what would have happened had Rabin not been assassinated:
Ephron is probably right about Rabin making a deal, but he may be overstating the rest. For one thing, allowing for the creation of a Palestinian state, even in the late nineteen-nineties, would have been a politically explosive undertaking. There were some hundred and thirty thousand settlers in the West Bank then, and, even with the broad support of the Israeli public, the government would have had a very difficult time uprooting more than a handful of them. In 1994, after the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, Rabin could not bring himself to order the removal of a single unauthorized enclave. In 2005, when the Israeli government, led by Ariel Sharon, the hard-bitten former general, ordered the evacuation of about eight thousand settlers from Gaza, their departure was accompanied by entrenched resistance and mass protests. With a broader peace deal, Rabin would have been in for quite a fight.
Mazal Mualem thinks that Netanyahu won’t be hurt by his recent Hitler gaffe:
Netanyahu got what he wanted: a link between the Palestinian motivation to eliminate the Zionist entity, regardless of the settlement enterprise, and the Nazis and Hitler. In terms of the right-wing rhetoric and his electorate, this is a real gift.
True, the prime minister took quite a beating over the tremendous damage he wrought by making cynical use of the Holocaust and rewriting history, but this incident has no bearing on the way Israelis see him. These perceptions were formed a long time ago, and there’s very little that hasn’t been said and written about him — both by his supporters and opponents. In addition, after so many years, Netanyahu is also the sum total of all his lies and little fabrications.
The Middle East
Michael Weiss writes about the recent advances made by the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army:
Pro-Assad forces in the battle for Hama include the Syrian Arab Army, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Iran-built National Defense Force militia, and advisors from both the Russian military and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. Yet against that multinational array, the FSA has managed to hold its ground because its campaign is clearly being coordinated and encouraged by Western and regional intelligence services, which have displayed a newfound willingness to allow more defensive weaponry to their proxies.
J. Matthew Mcinnis recounts how Iran just raised the stakes in Syria:
Iran reportedly has sent as many as 2,000 Iranian and Iranian-backed militia fighters to the front lines in recent weeks. Officially Tehran continues to say its forces in the country are only advisors and not ground troops in a traditional sense. That has been true for Iran’s involvement in the civil war since it began in 2011. Experienced commanders and specialized personnel from the IRGC’s Quds Force, Ground Forces and Basij branches—experts in proxy warfare, counter-insurgency, and paramilitary operations respectively—have rebuilt the Syrian security forces into a hybrid conventional-militia army augmented by Lebanese Hezbollah and other Shia militias from Afghanistan and Iraq. The Iranians, though, are rarely the trigger-pullers maneuvering on the battlefield. Best to let others do the fighting, and the dying.
The Jewish World
David Brog explains how the Macabee task force will lead the fight against BDS:
All involved in the Maccabee Task Force agree that our effort will be strictly non-partisan. We will work with liberals and conservatives, Jews and Gentiles, and people of all races and ethnicities who share a love for justice. The only way to beat BDS is for we who support Israel to come together and leave our differences for another day.
Elissa Strauss presents a case in favour of keeping Jewish prayers boring:
Jewish liturgy has a fair amount of routine and repetition. (Surely many of you have noticed how often we mention that one, and only one, God of ours.) Yes, this repetition can be boring. But sit with it long enough and, as any devotee of minimalism can tell you, the mind begins to attune itself to the small differences in the language, the nuances of our reactions to the words, sounds and movements and, eventually, existence itself. The boredom pushes us to reach in new directions and, eventually, this most passive of states will reveal itself to be one of the most active ones.
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