This feels like a good moment to remember that Ireland got rich not by producing much or innovating anything, but mostly by becoming one of the world's biggest tax havens -- by enabling large companies from other nations to hide their tax revenues from their home nations.
Apple, Microsoft and Google have routed many hundreds of billions of dollars through Ireland to shelter their profits.
Israel, in contrast, got rich by innovating at a colossal scale. It spends 6% of its GDP on R&D, the highest of any nation on Earth. 10% of its workforce works in tech.
That's why those same Apple, Microsoft and Google all built massive R&D centers in Israel, alongside 500 other multinationals. The defense tech is famous, but Israel is also a global powerhouse in water and agriculture. And it draws 10% of global deep-tech investment in medical devices and food R&D.
So a tax-cheat nation that got rich by impoverishing others now refuses a safety system meant to land planes safely in the fog from a nation that actually produces new and useful things for the world.
It's one thing not to buy arms, or to exact political costs for a war you hate. This isn't that. This is just sanctimonious narcissism.
Take the fog safety system, you preening tax-cheats. We promise to look the other way.
At first glance, the agreement with Lebanon is excellent. It addresses the key elements that have been missing from every previous ceasefire agreement:
1) It has been conducted, and will continue to be conducted, directly, thereby breaking the pattern whereby Lebanon refuses to engage in direct negotiations with Israel.
2) It speaks clearly about the goal of achieving peace.
3) It places Lebanon and Israel on the same side, as two countries that both seek a sovereign, functioning Lebanese state that exercises control over all of its territory and is able to prevent attacks on Israel from its soil.
4) In doing so, it identifies Hezbollah and Iran as enemies of Lebanese sovereignty, which is exactly what they are.
5) It makes clear that the effort against Hezbollah and other actors will not be only military, but will also include economic and other means.
6) It speaks about the need to address the underlying structural problems (UNRWA? the issue of the โrefugeesโ?).
Of course, we have all learned, through years of pain and disappointment, to be cautious about Lebanon: a country held together by bandages, which has bled us for decades, while groups such as Fatah and Hezbollah have operated from its south, exploiting its weakness to attack Israel.
Clearly, everything depends on implementation. We all have a huge and entirely justified question mark over whether there are enough people in Lebanon with the will, determination, and capacity to seize this moment.
Thanks in large part to Israelโs actions, those who have systematically undermined Lebanonโs sovereignty, from the Palestinians to Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah, have been significantly weakened. The question is whether Lebanonโ people can finally take their country back.
One final point: I very much hope that Israelโs official representatives will actively promote this agreement at every opportunity and work to firmly establish Israel as the principal actor with a clear interest in a sovereign, functioning Lebanese state that can prevent attacks from its territory by forces that seek to undermine its sovereignty. It is a simple, positive message that frames Israelโs actions as being directed toward that goal.
Decolonization, he says. As Muslims have colonized a quarter of the planet.
How the biggest colonizers in the world have managed to convince western people theyโre against colonization is genuinely just embarrassing.
Itโs the only goal for Islamists-a global caliphate-colonization of the whole planet.
Some marxists will look you dead in the eye and be like โthe fact some people like blue and others like green reflects a real contradiction in the economic baseโ
We are Hebrews, Ivrim, in name "the people of passage". Our geography and foundational stories - Abraham and Exodus- are about passage: physical from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Israel, and spiritual from paganism to monotheism and from slavery to freedom.
Happy Pass-Over Hebrews!