Showing 1 - 9 of 9
Bibi's strategy to keep justice at arm's length
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/12/2025
» Israel's prime minister, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, has just asked the country's president, Isaac Herzog, to "fully pardon" him of all three charges -- bribery, fraud and breach of trust -- that he has been on trial for since 2020. And the question is: Why did he only ask for it now?
Israel's Gaza plan not quite the final solution
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/08/2025
» 'Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas [from Qatar]," Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu told the parliamentary members of his Likud Party in 2019. They were questioning his policy of backing Hamas, and he was explaining why.
New Caledonia pragmatism pips nationalism
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/09/2024
» With the sole exception of the fifty people on Pitcairn Island, the United Kingdom (once known as the British Empire) liquidated its holdings in the Pacific Ocean long ago. France, by contrast, has a half million citizens in the Pacific (and another two million living in other bits of its former empire on islands in all the world's major oceans).
Second chance beckons for South Africa?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/06/2024
» Cyril Ramaphosa is the president of South Africa again, but everything else is different. He got his job back in a vote late on Friday, but only because at the last moment he managed to cobble together a coalition that has a majority in parliament. It's so new that the coalition partners still haven't agreed on who does what in the new government.
Israel pogroms reflect nation's shift to right
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/03/2023
» The dictionary definition of "pogrom" is "an organised massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries." So, there is something deeply strange about hearing pogrom used in Hebrew to describe what some Jewish people are doing to Arabs in 21st-century Israel.
Israel heads to yet another poll in just 3.5 years
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 31/10/2022
» Israeli voters are indefatigable. The election on Nov 1 will be the fifth in just three-and-a-half years, and yet the turnout is still likely to be around 70%. That's especially remarkable because all five elections have really been about the same question: should Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu go to jail, or should he be prime minister?
Bibi, Benny and Ruvi: Israel's future
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/03/2020
» Benjamin Netanyahu, or "Bibi" as everyone calls him, is the longest-serving prime minister in Israel's history, and still in office although he has failed to win three elections in a row. Last June, last September, and again early this month, Israeli voters split their votes in ways that made it almost impossible to put together a new government.
Netanyahu has nearly finished his grim mission
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/09/2019
» Benjamin Netanyahu's work is almost done. If he wins tomorrow's election and forms yet another government (he is now the longest-serving Israeli prime minister), he will put a stake through the heart of the "two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was born in the 1993 Oslo peace accords. Hamas should send him a gold watch for long service.
'Croc' makes Zimbabwe broke again
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/10/2018
» "Zimbabwe is open for business" was the slogan of President Emmerson Mnangagwa aka "The Crocodile" in the July election that was supposed to show a long and destructive reign of dictator Robert Mugabe, overthrown late last year, is now a thing of the past. The country has been getting steadily poorer for decades now, but this election would be the turning point.