Israel’s Ambassador to Britain Talks about Judaism, Israeli Society, and Diplomacy

Aug. 30 2021

After the U.S., the Jewish state’s closest collaborator in matters of security and intelligence-sharing is the United Kingdom—which is also its third-largest trading partner. Thus the position of ambassador to the court of Saint James is an important one. It has since August of last year been held by Tzipi Hotovely, the child of immigrants from Soviet Georgia and a devout Jew, who previously served for eleven years as a Knesset member for the Likud party. In a wide-ranging conversation with Eli Spitzer, Hotovely discusses Anglo-Jewish relations, the future of the ḥaredi community in Israel, the British media, a virtual audience with Queen Elizabeth, and the ways Israeli politics really do end at the water’s edge. (Audio, 45 minutes.)

Read more at Eli Spitzer Podcast

More about: British Jewry, Haredim, Israel diplomacy, United Kingdom

Donald Trump’s Plan for Gaza Is No Worse Than Anyone Else’s—and Could Be Better

Reacting to the White House’s proposal for Gaza, John Podhoretz asks the question on everyone’s mind:

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

A Palestinian state in the wake of October 7—and in the wake of the scenes of Gazans mobbing the Jewish hostages with bloodlust in their eyes as they were being led to the vehicles to take them back into the bosom of their people? Biden foreign-policy domos Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken were still talking about this in the wake of their defeat in ludicrous lunchtime discussions with the Financial Times, thus reminding the world of what it means when fundamentally silly, unserious, and embarrassingly incompetent people are given the levers of power for a while. For they should know what I know and what I suspect you know too: there will be no Palestinian state if these residents of Gaza are the people who will form the political nucleus of such a state.

Some form of UN management/leadership in the wake of the hostilities? Well, that might sound good to people who have been paying no attention to the fact that United Nations officials have been, at the very best, complicit in hostage-taking and torture in facilities run by UNRWA, the agency responsible for administering Gaza.

And blubber not to me about the displacement of Gazans from their home. We’ve been told not that Gaza is their home but that it is a prison. Trump is offering Gazans a way out of prison; do they really want to stay in prison? Or does this mean it never really was a prison in the first place?

Read more at Commentary

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict