Showing 1 - 10 of 16
Somaliland: Mixed motivations
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/01/2026
» Last week Israel was the first country in the world to establish diplomatic relations with Somaliland. Not Somalia, a wreck of a country on the East African coast that has been mired in civil war for the past thirty-five years, but Somaliland, a different country just north of there that has been peaceful, relatively prosperous and even democratic for all those years.
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.
Vintage tonnage keeps Russian oil flowing
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/01/2025
» The name is brilliant: "vintage tonnage". It evokes 17th-century pirate vessels flying the skull-and-crossbones, 18th-century ships-of-the-line bristling with cannons, or even 19th-century clipper ships in full sail bringing tea to England and America. The images are always romantic and often beautiful.
'Bibi' and the International Criminal Court
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/11/2024
» The indictment of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, and former defence minister Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza has triggered a great deal of public moralising, both pro and con. Almost all of it is missing the point.
Heat waves and tipping points as world warms
Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/07/2023
» 'What we're seeing is climate impacts that scientists thought would accompany certain temperatures happening far more rapidly, with far more devastating effects than had been forecast," said Dr Simon Nicholson of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment at American University.
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?
Belarus becomes a small storm in a sea of anxiety
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/11/2021
» It's not a tempest in a teapot; it's smaller than that. A few thousand Arabs and Kurds, mostly young men but including women and children, are trapped between Poland, which will not let them in, and Belarusian border guards and militia who will not let them back into Belarus. But the language is getting menacing.
Winter is on the way in Afghanistan
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/11/2021
» The first snow of the winter will reach Kabul any day now, and the death rate will start to climb: mostly children, at first, but it will not really be the cold that kills them. The cold will only finish the work that malnutrition began months or years ago -- but the other cause of their deaths will be a different kind of freeze.