Category Archives: Situation Report

The Braais that Bind

A brief meditation on the meanings of South African cuisine for Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. Excerpt:  South Africa’s identity is complicated, contested and unresolved. While Archbishop Tutu’s “rainbow nation” remains a noble aspiration, the current forecast is increasingly stormy. So, … Continue reading

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Obama’s unfulfilled promise to the Palestinians

A post-election piece for Vox on how Obama could redeem his promise to the Palestinians. Needless to add, perhaps, he failed to do so. Excerpts:  All that survives of Oslo today are those elements that are useful to Israel: The … Continue reading

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What we don’t talk about when we don’t talk about US nukes

Wrote this one back in 2016 ahead of Obama’s Hiroshima visit, but could have written it any time before or since:  ‘I will never apologise for the United States – ever! I don’t care what the facts are.” Those words … Continue reading

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Liberal media’s Bernie problem isn’t new…

Found this, recently, from a piece I wrote in the National in 2016. Extract: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews didn’t even try to conceal his establishment leanings as he berated Mr Sanders in a recent interview, demanding that the socialist senator from … Continue reading

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“Goodnight, and Good Luck”

My February 2016 valedictory editorial note on the home page of Al Jazeera America the day we closed down. Still proud of the work we did, and the way we covered the American story The core principle driving the journalism that … Continue reading

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The Mayhem of GOP Class Politics in 2016

Majority Report Radio conversation with Michael Brooks on the piece I wrote for the National on the political insurgency in the Republican mainstream. In America, a new era of insurgency and turbulence has just begun When Timothy McVeigh detonated a … Continue reading

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As Egypt Goes…

You may have noticed that I don’t update this site much any more — that’s because I’m doing most of my writing on these matters on TIME.com and at the National, and doing my blogging on Facebook and Twitter (follow: @TonyKaron ) I’m not going to update this often, so follow me on those platforms. But for the record, a few of my recent Egypt pieces:

What the US Loses if Mubarak Goes

The revolt that appears to have fatally undermined President Hosni Mubarak’s prospects for remaining in power is a domestic affair — Egyptians have taken to the streets to demand change because of economic despair and political tyranny, not the regime’s close relationship with Israel and the U.S. But having tolerated and abetted Mubarak’s repressive rule for three decades precisely because of his utility to U.S. strategy on issues ranging from Israel to Iran, Washington could be deprived of a key Arab ally with his fall from power.

…the Egyptian rebellion may stand as the ultimate negation of the Bush Administration’s “moderates vs. radicals” approach to the region: Mubarak’s ouster might be a loss for the moderate camp, but it won’t necessarily translate into a gain for the radicals. Instead, it marks a new assertiveness by an Arab public looking to take charge of its own affairs, rather than have them determined by international power struggles. Even that, however, suggests turbulent times ahead for American Middle East policies that have little support on Egypt’s streets.
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Who Made Netanyahu the King of the Jews?

In the spirit of Monty Python & the Holy Grail, Bibi: “I’m am your king!” Me: “I didn’t vote for you!”

My latest in the National — extract:

(Israel’s) demand for recognition of “Jews as a people, indigenous to the region and endowed with the right to self-government” is problematic, not only for Palestinians, but also for many Jews. Israeli Jews may have constituted themselves as a nation with the right to security and self-determination, but the majority of the world’s Jews have not claimed a right to self-determination as Jews. On the contrary, we’re very happy that anti-Semitism in the West has been marginalised to the point that we can freely integrate ourselves into the democratic societies in which we’ve chosen to live.

Growing up as a Jewish anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, I was often told by white racists to “go back to Israel”. The idea that Jews don’t belong among non-Jews is the traditional language of anti-Semitism – and also of the modern ideology of Zionism that emerged in the late 19th century. Zionism’s founder, Theodore Herzl, believed that anti-Semitism of the sort I encountered was inevitable and even “natural” whenever Jews lived among gentiles. He effectively concurred with the anti-Semites’ remedy: that I should “go back to Israel”.
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Goldberg’s Bogus ‘Ticking Clock’ on Iran

America’s march to a disastrous war in Iraq began in the media, where an unprovoked U.S. invasion of an Arab country was introduced as a legitimate policy option, then debated as a prudent and necessary one. Now, a similarly flawed media conversation on Iran is gaining momentum… The pièce de résistance in the most recent drum roll of bomb-Iran alerts, however, came from Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic Monthly. A journalist influential in U.S. pro-Israeli circles, he also has access to Israel’s corridors of power. Because sanctions were unlikely to force Iran to back down on its uranium enrichment project, Goldberg invited readers to believe that there was a more than even chance Israel would launch a military strike on the country by next summer. Continue reading

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Why are the Israelis Telling Their ‘Secret’ Iran Attack Plans to Jeffrey Goldberg?


Goldberg, left, in conversation with Michael Oren, Bibi’s man in Washington

The first question to ask when considering how seriously to take Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest alarmist screed about Israel gearing up to attack Iran, is “Why do people talk to Jeffrey Goldberg?”

In the course of an Atlantic Monthly cover story that veers all over the place but whose intended message is that if President Obama won’t bomb Iran, then Israel will — and that everyone will be better off if the U.S. does the job because it can do it so much better — Goldberg describes conversations with 40 leading decision makers in Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And all of them pretty much tell him the same thing; that Israel will give the Obama Administration’s sanctions until the end of this year to demonstrate results in forcing Iran’s surrender on the nuclear question, after which the Israelis will take matters into their own hands, launching an air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities without getting Washington’s go-ahead — because most of Israel’s key decision makers doubt whether Obama is willing to launch another war in the Middle East.

Goldberg, an early enthusiast for invading Iraq, also describes a White House meeting at which Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel appears to have convened the likes of Dennis Ross, Dennis McDonough and pretty much all of the President’s top national security advisers, all for the purpose of persuading a columnist from the Atlantic Monthly that Obama is, in fact, acting tough on Iran.

And the answer in both cases, is that people use Jeffrey Goldberg to send messages.
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