Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Muhammad Mahdi Karim.
When it comes to Israel and Gaza, I find it very hard to judge. Maybe this is because my judgment isn’t very good, or maybe it’s because judging well really is hard, and not enough people realize this.

Filed under: barackobama, hillaryclinton, jonathanbirch, middle east, middleeast, taliban, terrorism on January 26th, 2009 | No Comments »

Photograph courtesy of Nick Smith.
“For somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins” (WG Sebald, Austerlitz)
In celebration of the new-year my homepage (now Clare Politics of course – apple + d [...]

Filed under: environment, foreignpolicy, middle east, morganlewis on January 7th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

By refusing to renew its six month truce with Israel and launching hundreds of rockets across the border, Hamas has provoked Israel into a devastating and tragic reaction. Yet following the embarrassment of its incursion into Lebanon in 2006, the question remains as to why Israel has responded in the manner it has. Is the [...]

Filed under: arabisraeliconflict, iran, jameschettle, middle east, terrorism on December 31st, 2008 | 4 Comments »

Hamas militants fired 200 rockets at Israeli communities, Israel reacted in the usual way, and at least 56 civilians have been killed. The cliché is that the response is “disproportionate” (examples here, here, here and here). You can call Israel’s response ineffectual, heavy-handed, counterproductive, short-sighted, demagogic, brutal, tragic, heartbreaking — but disproportionate? This ubiquity of [...]

Filed under: 9/11, jonathanbirch, middle east, middleeast, terrorism on December 29th, 2008 | 3 Comments »