What could NZ do in response to Israel’s actions against Gaza?
If the NZ government wanted to do something about Israel’s actions what could we, a tin pot little country on the other side of the world, do? It’s hard to know what we could do, it’s easy to...
View Article“You don’t throw a cup at your brother!”
Last week I was standing in a cafe queue in front of some mums talking about their children, one said “I told him ‘I don’t care who started it, you don’t throw a cup at your brother!’” With that rather...
View ArticleCollective responsibility, terrorism and the conduct of war.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza has rekindled debate about the role of collective responsibility in the initiation and prosecution of war. Israel is specifically accused of collectively punishing all...
View ArticleIsrael is the North Korea of the Middle East–or why running an Israeli...
The facts are still not completely in and will undoubtedly be the focus of much dispute, but it appears that while it was in international waters Israeli forces stormed the “freedom flotilla” headed to...
View ArticleOn Israel-Palestine, Obama between a rock and a hard place.
One axiom of mediation is that the parties sincerely want to settle their dispute and realise that mutual concessions will have to be made in order to do so. Another is that the mediator has to be...
View ArticleReputation and precedent in the construction of the “spy” story.
This post started as a comment over at DPF’s place. Reputation and precedent are important referents in the international security business. Israel has a reputation for using sayanim (“helpers” who are...
View ArticleBibi does show and tell.
Benjamin Netenyahu gets up in front of the UN General Assembly with a poster board showing a caricature of a bomb (surprisingly similar to the Mohammed Turban bomb cartoon motif) that supposedly shows...
View ArticleCollective punishment can work both ways.
Using an “eye for a tooth” approach, the Israeli military has yet again adopted a strategy of collective punishment in its war against Hamas. The result, predictably, has been carnage and slaughter of...
View ArticleIs Israel Democratic?
An interesting thing happened after I wrote last week’s first blog post about Venezuela ( http://www.kiwipolitico.com/2019/02/on-the-venezuelan-mess/). A gentleman from the Israel Institute of New...
View ArticleProportionality and avoidance of collective punishment.
Not wanting to get into an endless debate here, but as a political person I cannot pass on making a small comment on the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I do not pretend to be a subject expert on...
View ArticleMedia Link: “A View from Afar” on Israel/Palestine and Samoa’s political...
In this week’s podcast Selwyn Manning and I work through some of the under-examined aspects of the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the stakes involved in Samoa’s disputed political...
View ArticleMedia Link: “AVFA” on electoral politics in Brazil, US and Israel.
This week Selwyn Manning and I do a post-mortem on Brazil’s election and a preview of the US midterms under the general banner of “it is about the movement, not the man,” then turn to the tactical and...
View ArticleMedia Link: “A View from Afar” returns to discuss Hamas/Israel.
After the hiatus that also forced me to suspend KP posts for a while, Selwyn Manning and I have resumed the “AVFA” podcast series. In the restart episode we dip our toes into turbulent waters by...
View ArticleFurther thoughts about a couple of things near and far.
My son is back home recovering well. There are some more serious sequels to come, but for the moment we will enjoy the end of year respite and welcome in what we hope is a better 2024 even with the …...
View ArticleNZ on Hamas and Zionist Settlers.
Here is one for the road before I shut down for a while due to the previously mentioned family medical issues. It is about NZ designating Hamas as a terrorist entity, adding its political wing to the...
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