Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has disclosed he is considering the possibility of cancelling a lucrative contract to sell more than 900 light armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia, which has a horrendous human rights record. This was not an entirely surprising development. Two months ago, Canada announced it had suspended the approval of new arms […]
Emulating the pragmatic example set by Russia last year, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison made the right decision by announcing that Australia would move its embassy in Tel Aviv to West Jerusalem one day. “Australia now recognizes West Jerusalem, being the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of government, is the capital of Israel,” […]
If you take Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his word, Israel and Saudi Arabia could be on the cusp of establishing diplomatic relations and becoming good neighbors and even allies. This may happen one day, but at the moment, there are no solid indicators that this scenario will pan out. If anything, the Saudis still […]
As Nikki Haley, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said, December 6 could have been “a historic day” at the UN. Haley had hoped that a non-binding American resolution condemning Hamas, the first of its kind to be considered by the General Assembly, would pass. “For the sake of peace, and for the […]
Tensions are flaring again between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel’s most formidable adversary and one of Iran’s chief allies in the Middle East. On December 3, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Belgium to conduct talks with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Iran’s plans to strengthen Hezbollah — which fought a month-long war with Israel in […]
George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, was at the centre of the political and military turbulence that lashed and shaped the Middle East a generation ago. Bush, who died on December 1 at the age of 94, served from 1989 to 1993, during which the U.S. liberated Kuwait in the […]
By Iranian standards, Hassan Rouhani, the president of Iran, is something of a moderate. But when it comes to Israel, Rouhani is ideologically on the same page as Iran’s hard-line spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who never tires of threatening the Jewish state with destruction. Addressing the annual Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran on November […]
With a metaphorical wave of the hand, U.S. President Donald Trump has absolved Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman of complicity in the brutal murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2. By shielding the crown prince from accountability and treating him so […]
The Fourth Committee of the United Nations, otherwise known as the Special Political and Decolonization Committee, adopted nine resolutions earlier this month condemning Israel for its refusal to cede territory captured during the 1967 Six Day War. Eight resolutions dealt with the Palestinian problem, Israel’s five-decade old occupation of the West Bank and its construction […]
One more truce has ended yet another round of hostilities in and around the Gaza Strip. But as we all know, none of the previous ceasefires have lasted long and have always given way to more bloodshed. The latest flareup, the most serious since the 2014 war, erupted on November 12 and petered out a […]