Israel has offered to mediate the conflict raging in Sudan. This piece at Mondoweiss explains its interest, why Sudan finally and fully joining the Abraham Accords is so important to Israel, and how this whole episode is about sidelining the will of the Sudanese people, both in their fight for democracy and their solidarity with the Palestinians.
My first Substack piece for this year revisits a theme I’ve written about before, which is the lack of serious debate about the war in Ukraine. This time, I take on the unfair and false characterization of those of us who question the Biden administration’s and NATO’s refusal to consider diplomacy rather than a victory at arms. Please subscribe to the newsletter, which you can do straight from the article…
Writing in the journal Foreign Affairs, four noted, quite mainstream scholars of U.S. policy in the Middle East–Michael Barnett, Nathan Brown, Marc Lynch, and Shibley Telhami–describe “The One-State Reality” that exists in Palestine and Israel today. The piece is meant to promote their book, The One-State Reality: What Is Israel-Palestine? I should note, the book features a collection of essays from many prominent thinkers and is worth reading. In my latest piece…
It was easy to miss, but Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid was in the U.S. last week, visiting with American Jewish leaders and a couple of members of Congress. Lapid is himself not in a great political position right now as the notable plummet Benjamin Netanyahu has taken in the Israeli polls has benefited Benny Gantz, not, as one might expect, Opposition Leader Lapid. Still, he tried to reassure pro-Israel…
The folks over at Responsible Statecraft published an interesting piece last week from a former U.S. analyst and adviser, George Beebe. He made a persuasive case for why it is becoming more and more of a priority for Joe Biden to change his course of eschewing diplomacy and favoring instead a quixotic military victory. Beebe points to three main factors to explain why it is more important than ever that…