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The Greater Israel Delusion May Undo Israel Israel’s accelerating drive toward a biblical “Greater Israel” is not a deviation but the culmination of decades of creeping annexation and global indulgence. If unchecked, it will entrench permanent occupation,... Continue reading

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The Limit Of Coercion: Israel’s Strategic Delusion

Comparative conflict analysis reveals clear conditions under which weaker actors concede. The Palestinian case meets none of them, underscoring Israel’s strategic futility in expecting capitulation in the absence of a political settlement. The asymmetry of power between states and non-state actors—or between dominant governments and weaker national movements—has defined many of the world’s most enduring…

The Palestinian Imperative: Statehood Demands Strategy, Not Slogans

A two-state solution remains the only viable path to peace, yet it will not emerge from Israeli policy shifts alone. Palestinians must undertake a profound strategic transformation—rooted in unity, institutional reform, and nonviolence—to make statehood both credible and attainable For decades, I have written extensively about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, consistently advancing one central premise: neither…

A Prisoner, A Peacemaker, and Israel’s Defining Choice

What if the man Israel has imprisoned for murder is also the only Palestinian capable of delivering peace? Marwan Barghouti embodies a paradox at the heart of the conflict: legitimacy born of resistance, yet committed to coexistence. Although his release under the current Israelis’ national mindset is unlikely, people and leaders inside and outside Israel…

Wars, Inequality, And Poverty No Longer Confined To Faraway Places

Fragmented power, deepening inequality, climate stress, dying democracies, and weaponized information have fused into one global crisis; we can break the cycle if we only summon the will We are living through a moment in time of cascading disorder. Wars, inequality, and poverty are no longer confined to “faraway” places; they are entwined into a…

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RTVI – Trump’s Statement on Iran

RTVI – Trump’s First 100 Days

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On the Issues Episode 167: Alex de Waal

Alon Ben-Meir · On the Issues Episode 167: Alex de Waal

On the Issues Episode 166: Aaron David Miller

Alon Ben-Meir · On the Issues Episode 166: Aaron David Miller

On the Issues Episode 165: Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

Alon Ben-Meir · On the Issues Episode 165: Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

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Will Saudi Arabia Become a Peace-Maker? – LA Jews for Peace

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Alon Ben-Meir

alonbenmeir

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Retired Professor at @nyucga, Senior Fellow at World Policy Institute.

The next live episode of my podcast is this upcoming Tuesday, September 29, at 10:00am EDT with Tony Klug, senior advisor on the Middle East to the Oxford Research Group and a consultant to the Palestine Strategy Group and the Israeli Strategic Forum. He has written extensively about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the early 1970s and was one of the first advocates of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel in the wake of the 1967 war. For many years he worked at Amnesty International where he headed the international development program.⁠
⁠
Listeners can register for the live podcast recording on Zoom at the link in my bio⁠
⁠
Archived episodes will be released the following day, on Wednesdays at noon. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app, including Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify, to be sure to always get the latest episodes.

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The next live episode of my podcast is this upcoming Tuesday, September 29, at 10:00am EDT with Tony Klug, senior advisor on the Middle East to the Oxford Research Group and a consultant to the Palestine Strategy Group and the Israeli Strategic Forum. He has written extensively about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the early 1970s and was one of the first advocates of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel in the wake of the 1967 war. For many years he worked at Amnesty International where he headed the international development program.⁠
⁠
Listeners can register for the live podcast recording on Zoom at the link in my bio⁠
⁠
Archived episodes will be released the following day, on Wednesdays at noon. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app, including Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify, to be sure to always get the latest episodes.

Today’s podcast guest is Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peace-building.⁠
⁠
In this episode, we discuss the background of the current war in Sudan, both the immediate spark and the underlying history, the role of external forces in the conflict, the prospects for a resolution to this conflict, and the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe that has been fueled by this war.⁠
⁠
Listen now; link in bio.⁠
⁠
Full bio⁠
⁠
Alex de Waal is the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peace-building. His latest book is Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (Polity Press 2017). He is also he author of The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa (Polity Press, 2015), a full list of his publications is available below. Following a fellowship with the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard (2004-06), he worked with the Social Science Research Council as Director of the program on HIV/AIDS and Social Transformation, and led projects on conflict and humanitarian crises in Africa (2006-09). During 2005-06, de Waal was seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur and from 2009-11 served as senior adviser to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan, where he took on a number of roles in the negotiations leading to the independence of South Sudan. He was on the list of Foreign Policy’s 100 most influential public intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic Monthly’s 27 “brave thinkers” in 2009.

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Today’s podcast guest is Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peace-building.⁠
⁠
In this episode, we discuss the background of the current war in Sudan, both the immediate spark and the underlying history, the role of external forces in the conflict, the prospects for a resolution to this conflict, and the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe that has been fueled by this war.⁠
⁠
Listen now; link in bio.⁠
⁠
Full bio⁠
⁠
Alex de Waal is the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peace-building. His latest book is Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (Polity Press 2017). He is also he author of The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa (Polity Press, 2015), a full list of his publications is available below. Following a fellowship with the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard (2004-06), he worked with the Social Science Research Council as Director of the program on HIV/AIDS and Social Transformation, and led projects on conflict and humanitarian crises in Africa (2006-09). During 2005-06, de Waal was seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur and from 2009-11 served as senior adviser to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan, where he took on a number of roles in the negotiations leading to the independence of South Sudan. He was on the list of Foreign Policy’s 100 most influential public intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic Monthly’s 27 “brave thinkers” in 2009.

The scale, frequency, and brazenness of human rights violations around the world have not diminished, but rather have grown profoundly, raising the question of whether the very notion of “civilization” is little more than a veneer. Scores of countries spanning the globe have committed large-scale, documented abuses against their own populations and/or native groups, and against civilians in neighboring countries, and are doing so with impunity.

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Open
The scale, frequency, and brazenness of human rights violations around the world have not diminished, but rather have grown profoundly, raising the question of whether the very notion of “civilization” is little more than a veneer. Scores of countries spanning the globe have committed large-scale, documented abuses against their own populations and/or native groups, and against civilians in neighboring countries, and are doing so with impunity.

Today’s podcast guest is Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Between 1978 and 2003, he served at the State Department as an historian, analyst, negotiator, and advisor to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process, most recently as the senior advisor for Arab-Israeli negotiations.⁠
⁠
In this episode, we discuss the current state of Israeli-Palestinian affairs and what the prospects are for peace, including regionally, what we may see from the upcoming elections in Israel, the current status of the Iran war and its implications for the region, the Gulf states’ concerns about their security in the war’s aftermath, Israel’s gains and losses from the war, and the state of US foreign policy under Trump toward the region.⁠
⁠
Listen now; link in bio.

1 1
Open
Today’s podcast guest is Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Between 1978 and 2003, he served at the State Department as an historian, analyst, negotiator, and advisor to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process, most recently as the senior advisor for Arab-Israeli negotiations.⁠
⁠
In this episode, we discuss the current state of Israeli-Palestinian affairs and what the prospects are for peace, including regionally, what we may see from the upcoming elections in Israel, the current status of the Iran war and its implications for the region, the Gulf states’ concerns about their security in the war’s aftermath, Israel’s gains and losses from the war, and the state of US foreign policy under Trump toward the region.⁠
⁠
Listen now; link in bio.
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Alon Ben-Meir
8 hours ago
Alon Ben-Meir

COMPARING NETANYAHU’S GOVERNMENT TO A BEAST INSULTS ALL BEASTS

The way Israel treated starving Palestinians children in Gaza is an atrocity beyond human comprehension. When food is thrown onto the ground, and ravenous children are forced to scramble for scraps, reducing the starving children to rats, their dignity is not merely debased—it is deliberately crushed. Children, weakened by starvation, are made to fight over food unfit for human consumption, only to be left with watery soup and empty hands. This was not humanitarian relief; it was calculated degradation. This Netanyahu government and the soldiers that carried out its war crimes have shattered Israel’s morals to a point of no return. Comparing its vicious onslaught on the Palestinians to that of a blood-craving beast is an insult to the beast.
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COMPARING NETANYAHU’S GOVERNMENT TO A BEAST INSULTS ALL BEASTS  The way Israel treated starving Palestinians children in Gaza is an atrocity beyond human comprehension. When food is thrown onto the ground, and ravenous children are forced to scramble for scraps, reducing the starving children to rats, their dignity is not merely debased—it is deliberately crushed. Children, weakened by starvation, are made to fight over food unfit for human consumption, only to be left with watery soup and empty hands. This was not humanitarian relief; it was calculated degradation. This Netanyahu government and the soldiers that carried out its war crimes have shattered Israel’s morals to a point of no return. Comparing its vicious onslaught on the Palestinians to that of a blood-craving beast is an insult to the beast.
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9 CommentsComment on Facebook

What nonsense if children have been starving in Gaza it's the fault of Hamas

There Is nothing more damaging for jews worldwide and Israel than jews Who live save in the west.

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Alon Ben-Meir
18 hours ago
Alon Ben-Meir

The next live episode of my podcast is this upcoming Tuesday, September 29, at 10:00am EDT with Tony Klug, senior advisor on the Middle East to the Oxford Research Group and a consultant to the Palestine Strategy Group and the Israeli Strategic Forum. He has written extensively about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the early 1970s and was one of the first advocates of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel in the wake of the 1967 war. For many years he worked at Amnesty International where he headed the international development program.

Listeners can register for the live podcast recording on Zoom at the following link: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1817901959957/WN_c93-78MoS6SmsI_AEocz6w

Archived episodes will be released the following day, on Wednesdays at noon. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app, including Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify, to be sure to always get the latest episodes.
... See MoreSee Less

The next live episode of my podcast is this upcoming Tuesday, September 29, at 10:00am EDT with Tony Klug, senior advisor on the Middle East to the Oxford Research Group and a consultant to the Palestine Strategy Group and the Israeli Strategic Forum. He has written extensively about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the early 1970s and was one of the first advocates of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel in the wake of the 1967 war. For many years he worked at Amnesty International where he headed the international development program.  Listeners can register for the live podcast recording on Zoom at the following link: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1817901959957/WN_c93-78MoS6SmsI_AEocz6w  Archived episodes will be released the following day, on Wednesdays at noon. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app, including Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify, to be sure to always get the latest episodes.
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Alon Ben-Meir
1 day ago
Alon Ben-Meir

Netanyahu’s government claims to speak for Jews everywhere while committing crimes against humanity in the West Bank and Gaza. Its policies of dispossession, widespread destruction, displacement, killings, and terror against Palestinian civilians betray the moral inheritance of Judaism. They endanger Jews worldwide by creating the poisonous impression that all Jews are complicit in Israel’s atrocities and giving unprecedented rise to antisemitism. Netanyahu and his fascist government's crimes are not as colossal as what the Nazis committed against the Jews, but still, the mindset, inhumanity, and cruelty are equal to the Nazis' spirit, intention, and determination. ... See MoreSee Less

Netanyahu’s government claims to speak for Jews everywhere while committing crimes against humanity in the West Bank and Gaza. Its policies of dispossession, widespread destruction, displacement, killings, and terror against Palestinian civilians betray the moral inheritance of Judaism. They endanger Jews worldwide by creating the poisonous impression that all Jews are complicit in Israel’s atrocities and giving unprecedented rise to antisemitism. Netanyahu and his fascist governments crimes are not as colossal as what the Nazis committed against the Jews, but still, the mindset, inhumanity, and cruelty are equal to the Nazis spirit, intention, and determination.
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  • Comments: 344

344 CommentsComment on Facebook

I agree, and I don't even support the Palestinians... But I do support common decency...

100% correct, and differentiated, nuanced!

...egy masik verengzö gyilkos csak nez a pofajara.......

Yes Sir

Time to make your vote count!!

Well said

Das ist SOTONE TEUFEL IZRAELS

You should love your family,, earth is one,, not 234,think it,,

Olyanok akik ezt a szemetet követik, olyanok, mint akik Hitlert követték! :(

👌👌👌👌👌

Another parasitized wood cricket Jew.

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Alon Ben-Meir
2 days ago
Alon Ben-Meir

Today’s podcast guest is Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peace-building.

In this episode, we discuss the background of the current war in Sudan, both the immediate spark and the underlying history, the role of external forces in the conflict, the prospects for a resolution to this conflict, and the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe that has been fueled by this war.

Listen now: soundcloud.com/alon-ben-meir/on-the-issues-episode-167-alex-de-waal

Full bio

Alex de Waal is the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peace-building. His latest book is Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (Polity Press 2017). He is also he author of The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa (Polity Press, 2015), a full list of his publications is available below. Following a fellowship with the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard (2004-06), he worked with the Social Science Research Council as Director of the program on HIV/AIDS and Social Transformation, and led projects on conflict and humanitarian crises in Africa (2006-09). During 2005-06, de Waal was seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur and from 2009-11 served as senior adviser to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan, where he took on a number of roles in the negotiations leading to the independence of South Sudan. He was on the list of Foreign Policy’s 100 most influential public intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic Monthly’s 27 “brave thinkers” in 2009.
... See MoreSee Less

Today’s podcast guest is Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peace-building.  In this episode, we discuss the background of the current war in Sudan, both the immediate spark and the underlying history, the role of external forces in the conflict, the prospects for a resolution to this conflict, and the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe that has been fueled by this war.  Listen now: https://soundcloud.com/alon-ben-meir/on-the-issues-episode-167-alex-de-waal  Full bio  Alex de Waal is the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peace-building. His latest book is Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (Polity Press 2017). He is also he author of The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa (Polity Press, 2015), a full list of his publications is available below. Following a fellowship with the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard (2004-06), he worked with the Social Science Research Council as Director of the program on HIV/AIDS and Social Transformation, and led projects on conflict and humanitarian crises in Africa (2006-09). During 2005-06, de Waal was seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur and from 2009-11 served as senior adviser to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan, where he took on a number of roles in the negotiations leading to the independence of South Sudan. He was on the list of Foreign Policy’s 100 most influential public intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic Monthly’s 27 “brave thinkers” in 2009.
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NAZA Is a Jump-the-Shark Moment for Israel’s Critics by Seth Mandel The title of the “documentary” NAZA, which received a mandatory Stalinesque record-breaking ovation at the Venice film festival, is an acronym for the Hebrew term for “collateral damage.” It concerns a system developed by the Israeli military to predict the collateral damage of any strike before it is approved. And that explains why the project, made by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, has landed with a thud rather than an explosion—at least outside any venue in which participants were required to clap. Why would Israel need a system to calculate the collateral damage of a near-term strike before it’s approved? There are three possibilities. The first: So the IDF can reduce civilian casualties. If one needs approval for a strike, and one is required to note for the record how many people would die in that strike, one is less likely to have that strike approved. The second: So the IDF can increase civilian casualties. The assumption here is that Israelis are psychopaths who gamify war and therefore they will only carry out a strike if the collateral damage is above a certain level. The third: For no reason at all. According to this theory, the IDF doesn’t care how many people die in a strike. It has gone through the effort and high cost to design a world-leading technology to predict collateral damage because… someone needed a cool party trick? I guess? This multiple-choice question is easy: The only possible answer is the first, that the purpose of NAZA is to reduce civilian casualties. Does that automatically let Israel off the hook for every single anonymously sourced claim in the anonymously sourced film? No, of course not. There is the possibility that the casualty limit was too high during the most recent war. Nobody has shown this to be the case, however, and that is unlikely to change. The film hasn’t been screened widely because the filmmakers didn’t want the IDF to have a chance to respond to the allegations before launch. That’s because the point of the film isn’t accuracy in reporting but to establish a baseline narrative in which Israel is guilty until proven innocent. But what has been available thus far does not bode well for the possibility that the full film establishes NAZA as a tool of civilian death. For example, the film’s biggest accusation seems to be that NAZA returned an estimate of 500 casualties for one strike. Since there is no record of such a strike—and the Gaza Healthy Ministry, as Hamas is often called in news reports, is famous only for inflating numbers like the floats in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade—the conclusion one is left with is the following: NAZA said 500 would die and the IDF commander in charge called off the strike. But again, the filmmakers have been hiding the film they are so proud of from the general public until their narrative can gain a firm footing. So it’s possible they have something damning. More likely, they simply don’t understand what they’re looking at. Who are the soldiers interviewed? Nobody knows. We have no evidence that the filmmakers spoke to anyone who knew anything about complex high-tech IDF systems and the officers who oversee their use. Should we have expected this? Yes. Last year, Abraham wrote a piece intended to have the same effect: establish a narrative, bury the counter-evidence. The claim was that the overwhelming majority of casualties in Gaza were civilians according to the IDF’s own calculations. To demonstrate this, Abraham referred to a database of known terror operatives from only two groups operating in Gaza and considered any death not on that list of operatives to be a civilian. In other words, it doesn’t account for unnamed deaths, for unknown operatives, for any militant or combatant who wasn’t on Israel’s list for just two terror groups, etc. The share of civilian casualties given by the article is, therefore, entirely debunked by the article itself. You just have to read far enough past the headline. The level of sloppiness in that story made it very clear that this was not a “documentarian” whose work could be trusted without extensive re-reporting. The larger point, to me, is that this is another example of a broader problem among Israel’s critics: They take something Israel has done as a means of protecting civilians and turn it around into a nefarious sci-fi plot. You can see this mode of argumentation in Israel’s determination to evacuate neighborhoods before dropping heavy bombs on them. The number of bombs dropped, together with the physical destruction of the bombed area and the low numbers of civilian casualties in those specific bombings combine to show that the IDF stalled its own offensive in order to move Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way. So the world decided that these evacuations were themselves the crime, some form of “ethnic cleansing” or other crime. In some cases, Israel’s humanitarian steps undermine its legitimate military aims. It delayed the progression of its Rafah mission during the war until it could evacuate the area, ultimately moving nearly a million Palestinians out of harm’s way. So, again, the world called the Rafah evacuation the crime. And so it is with Israel’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties by forcing commanders to record the number of expected deaths from a strike before approving it. NAZA’s impact has been limited by its implausibility, but no matter: Everyone knows you should never be the first one to stop clapping.

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