Douglas Gerrard is a writer based in London. His work has appeared in Tribune and Current Affairs, among others.
A recent military escalation in West Papua is the latest episode in a long history of repression and dispossession since the island came under Indonesian control. But the authorities in Jakarta still haven’t been able to stabilize their rule over West Papua.
As the people of West Papua fight for independence, the Indonesian government is hastening the exploitation of the country’s immense natural resources.
Over the years, the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim and his fellow “New Historians” have punctured a long series of Zionist myths about the country’s past and present. Now, Shlaim — once a supporter of the Oslo “peace process” — is adding the two-state solution itself to that list of dispelled myths.
For more than a year, Benny Gantz bestrode the stage of Israeli politics as the standard-bearer of that country’s version of Anyone-But-Trumpism — a hollow politics of “restoring dignity” in the face of Benyamin Netanyahu’s outrages. Now that project has collapsed, leaving Israel’s sclerotic and prostrate left more adrift than ever.
It’s a telling paradox: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted for corruption — even as Israel pursues a systematically criminal occupation and Zionism’s authoritarian tendencies continue to grow.
While Israel’s Palestinian parties are energized and growing, the constraints of the country’s Zionist institutions have kept them marginalized. But Jewish center-left parties could change that — if only they were willing to put aside Zionist shibboleths and forge an alliance based on common interests.
Over the past decade, Benjamin Netanyahu has remade Israeli politics in his own image. Though his career now hangs by a thread, his legacy of far-right pandering and cold-blooded “management” of Palestinian oppression will live on.
Benjamin Netanyahu won reelection by outflanking Israel’s far right. If you listen closely, you can hear the rumble of fascism approaching.