“A wise enemy is better than a foolish friend,” says the old adage. It is one that Israel should heed. In its historic conflict with the Arabs, Israel got used to easy victories and was always tempted for more. It won wars on several fronts in 1947-48, 1967 and in 1973. In 1956, Israel spearheaded the tripartite Anglo-French-Israeli aggression on Egypt and in record speed defeated the Egyptian army, occupied the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai up to the shores of the Suez Canal. A major part of Israel’s political planning was to build right from the beginning a military force strong enough to ensure superiority in all its confrontations with its neighbours. Read more about Israel should seek wise enemies 

The Israeli Defense Forces have named their relentless military operation in Gaza “Summer Rain,” which is cruel and sarcastic given the political, historical, and environmental context of the Eastern Mediterranean. From early May to mid-September, one can expect clear skies and no precipitation. What is raining, though, is fire and metal, along with leaflets bearing chillingly familiar threats. The Middle East is in dire need of the refreshing rains of law, justice, sanity, and wisdom. The clouds on the horizon, though, are full of fire and death, not life-giving water. Read more about A hard rain's gonna fall 

The same malign intent by Israel towards the Palestinians is stamped through its history like the lettering in a children’s stick of seaside rock. But despite the consistent aim of Israeli policy, generation after generation of Western politicians, diplomats and journalists has shown a repeated inability to grasp what is happening before its very eyes. The Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi once noted that the first goal of Israel’s founders as they prepared to establish their Jewish state on a large swath of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 was to empty Palestine’s urban heartlands of their educated elites. Read more about Israel's latest bureaucratic obscenity