Año 2017 (Continuación)

Ultra-Orthodox Jews burning leavened food before Passover near Tel Aviv. Oded Balilty/Associated Press

“We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect.” Thus President-elect Donald J. Trump tweeted just before Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last week. He added: “They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but …”

Mr. Trump was presuming to side with Israel in its regional fight, but … as Mr. Kerry implied, particularly when he spoke elegiacally of Shimon Peres, one cannot be a friend to Israel without actually being a friend to some Israelis over others, one conception of Israel, the region, and Jews, for that matter, over another.…  Seguir leyendo »

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders portrayed himself to Dutch voters as a champion of liberty after his conviction for hate speech Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP

Welcome to 2017. It will be just like 2016. Only more so. This will be the year in which Donald Trump formally enters the White House, and Theresa May (probably) begins Brexit negotiations. It will be the year in which elections in Germany, the Netherlands and France, and possibly Italy, are likely to see rightwing populists gain ground, even triumph.

In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’s anti-Muslim, anti-immigration Party for Freedom(PVV) leads the polls and may help form the government in March. In France, in May, Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National should reach at least the second-round run-off in the presidential election and may even win.…  Seguir leyendo »

Brasil, del silencio a la cólera

Este 2016 será recordado en Brasil como el año en que la primera mujer presidenta fue destituida, el diputado que impulsó su juicio político fue encarcelado (además de otros tantos políticos y empresarios de alto rango), y Raduan Nassar rompió su silencio de 17 años para hablar sobre un gobierno que calla cuando es imperativo dialogar.

El escritor de 80 años es una suerte de Juan Rulfo brasileño. Publicó dos libros, dos de las más finas y festejadas obras de la literatura nacional y, como Rulfo, se silenció.Su último cuento fue publicado en 1994 y su último artículo de opinión en 1999.…  Seguir leyendo »

As 2017 dawns, the ghost of Lord Balfour still haunts us. Just as the British foreign secretary’s 1917 declaration considered only how the Zionist movement could serve the interests of the greatest power of its day, so has the recent speech of the US secretary of state, John Kerry, advocating a two-state solution addressed mainly the interests of today’s superpower and its protégé, Israel. There has been some progress since 1917: there is no mention whatsoever of Palestinians or Arabs in the Balfour Declaration, whereas Kerry paid ample lip service to the Palestinians, albeit always in relation to Israel’s concerns and desires.…  Seguir leyendo »

Israel, and by extension the United States, are poised at the entrance to a dangerous path. The model democracy of the Middle East risks transforming into a global pariah on the scale of South Africa when it was in the depths of its apartheid nightmare.

After decades of Arab-Israeli diplomacy, the idea of a one-state solution looms anew, as conservative elements in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition see the arrival of Donald Trump and his new ambassador to Israel as an opportunity to push their agenda.

If it is realized, it would reduce Israel's Palestinian population to a permanent underclass and mean, in the not-too-distant future, that a Jewish minority would be ruling a Muslim majority, with the world on the side of the oppressed majority.…  Seguir leyendo »