Did the British Election Contain a Silver Lining for Israel?

While last Thursday’s vote in the UK was a nominal victory for the Conservatives, the relative success of the Labor party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn—a hater of Israel and lover of terrorists of all stripes who has allowed his party’s anti-Semitism problem to fester—does not, on its face, appear to be good news for Israel, its supporters, or Jews in general. But Walter Russell Mead sees some good news:

Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in various combinations have been a potent force in British politics among both Tories and Labor since World War II. The non-Thatcherite right and the Corbynite left don’t have much in common, but dislike for Israel and for America’s support for it are strong at both ends of the British political spectrum.

One of the few reservoirs of strong pro-Israel feeling in the UK lies in Northern Ireland. . . . Travelers in Northern Ireland will sometimes see Palestinian flags in Catholic neighborhoods and the Star of David banner in Protestant ones.

Last [week’s] election turned those Ulster Protestants into kingmakers; the ten seats of [their] Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) hold the balance in the British parliament, and [Prime Minister] Theresa May had no choice but to look to DUP as her best coalition partner and strongest ally. It’s unlikely that a British government that depends on Northern Ireland unionists will be eager to break new ground in the world of anti-Israel boycotts. Expect gnashing of teeth at the (mostly) anti-Zionist Foreign and Commonwealth Office. . . .

As post-Brexit Britain looks for partners, it could do worse than link up with a technologically advanced country that has made significant trade and diplomatic inroads in Africa and Asia—and that favors an open global trading economy.

Read more at American Interest

More about: Ireland, Israel & Zionism, Theresa May, United Kingdom

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF