http://tonykaron.com Analysis and commentary by Tony Karon Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:48:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Those who live behind its walls are still ruled by the Israeli state From my latest in the National: The former US president Jimmy Carter set off a firestorm in 2006 when he said that Israel would have to choose between maintaining an apartheid occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and ... http://tonykaron.com/2010/02/06/israels-apartheid-without-consequences/ This from my latest in the National: There were no winners in the Gaza war that Israel launched a year ago today, but no shortage of losers. And failure to address its underlying causes – the economic siege through which Israel, Egypt and the US hope to force Hamas from power, ... http://tonykaron.com/2009/12/26/bracing-for-israels-next-gaza-attack/ Guest Column: Gavin Evans Back in the day, when Gavin and I were young activists trying to change the world, the doorbell rang at our Observatory student house. I opened it to see a tall and handsome man in the silky purple shirt and dog collar of an Anglican Bishop. ... http://tonykaron.com/2009/12/26/how-i-overcame-my-jewish-evangelical-upbringing-and-learned-to-love-christmas-anyway/ This from my latest on TIME.com. Having concluded that President Obama's outreach has failed to halt Iran's nuclear program, the final weeks of 2009 find his Administration focused on mustering support for new sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Iran's rejection of the terms offered thus far by the U.S. and its ... http://tonykaron.com/2009/12/22/why-obama-has-defaulted-to-bush-on-iran/ In a country occupied by a Western power, the locals are faced with a choice. Some have opted to reconcile their own traditions with those of their occupier, borrowing from Western ways that open the path to philosophy and science, and integrating themselves into a wider culture. Others fiercely ... http://tonykaron.com/2009/12/11/hannukah-and-the-jewish-taliban/ My latest in the National on Obama's planned Afghan surge begins thus: As he prepares his Tuesday speech to present Americans with his plan to increase troops in Afghanistan, the US president Barack Obama could be forgiven for feeling like the economist in the old joke that finds him marooned on ... http://tonykaron.com/2009/11/30/obama-peddles-false-hope-on-afghanistan/ An assortment of European leaders gathered last week at a tepid commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Twenty years ago the collapse of communism was hailed as the final triumph of western liberal democracy, which would sweep aside the vestiges of authoritarianism everywhere. So the downbeat tenor of ... http://tonykaron.com/2009/11/16/when-obama-meets-his-banker/ My latest from TIME.com: President Obama's plain-speaking Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, on Nov. 12 summed up the Administration's Afghan dilemma in a single question: "How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this is not open-ended?" The fact that there's ... http://tonykaron.com/2009/11/16/obama-faces-the-key-afghan-war-myth/ My latest at TIME.com It's hardly surprising that President Barack Obama chose to schedule a White House visit by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the dead of night on Monday, because right now Obama has little to show for his 10-month effort to revive a Middle East peace process. The ... http://tonykaron.com/2009/11/10/does-obama-have-a-mideast-plan-b/ My latest in the National ‘Who lost China?” was the battle cry of a witch-hunt conducted in the US State Department following the 1949 victory of Mao Zedong’s communists. The department’s “China hands”, critics charged, had been woefully ignorant of the dynamics at work on the ground in China after the ... http://tonykaron.com/2009/11/08/who-lost-fatah/