Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Alastair Sloan
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Israel is a troubling guardian of the holy land
HEBRON: Saif still remembers seeing the gunman moving along the narrows steps towards one of the most magnificent houses of prayer in the world, known as the Ibrahimi Mosque by Muslims, and the Cave of the Patriarchs by Jews. He has worked here, in Hebron, as a gate guard for…
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The Yeah-but-Iran brigade have ruined America
He might have been more famous for Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, Hook, or Mrs Doubtfire but for me, the best film Robin Williams ever made was Man of the Year. Like all the best films, it received overwhelmingly negative reviews and made almost no money. It tells the…
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Israel doesn’t cause antisemitism, but double standards do
Is calling for the destruction of a state an expression of xenophobia, racism or bigotry? It might be radical, but it’s not anything more than that. Take anarchists, for example; they call for the destruction of states all the time. So too do those in Brussels who want a European…
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Vindictive business partners or employers can get you sent to prison in the UAE
Last week, Human Rights Watch issued a press release with a comment from Joe Stork, the organisation’s esteemed Deputy Middle East Director. “If UAE businessmen can have their partners locked up when they don’t like the tone of their tweets,” he wrote, “one has to question whether the UAE is…
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War with Turkey would not be in Russia’s interests, but it would suit Putin
Autocratic and erratic President Vladimir Putin is stronger than ever, more popular than ever and more dangerous than ever. For years, Western newspapers have run pieces questioning the validity of the polls which show how popular the former KGB officer and mayor of St Petersburg really is. How could a…
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Media coverage of FIFA needs a shift in priorities
A man who may have ordered footballers in his own country to be tortured runs for the presidency of the most important footballing organisation in the world, and the Western media barely bats an eyelid. FIFA executives swap some cash in brown envelopes under a table, though, and the world…
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Cameron should think again about doing favours for a friend like Israel
If you’re doing a favour for a friend, make sure that the friend in question is indeed a friend. That’s the lesson David Cameron should be pondering today, as his government announces plans to criminalise any public bodies which participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.…
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Corbyn needs a compelling vision for the radical debate to go mainstream
That Jeremy Corbyn is still leader of Britain’s Labour Party shouldn’t be a surprise. He’s won eight general elections as an MP, rebelled more than any other Labour member in the House of Commons and never faced deselection. In all that time he never made any secret of his views…
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The Israeli ambassador affair should concern us all, not just Tel Aviv
Daniel Taub, the former Israeli ambassador in London, has been named as the subject of an investigation into possible sexual abuse of minors and homosexual affairs that threatened Israel’s national security. The news was broken by the tenacious blogger Richard Silverstein – after Israeli newspapers only reported that a “European…
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Revealed: The Gulf business tycoons backing the Conservative Middle East Council
British and Arab businessmen with strong commercial interests in Saudi Arabia are key funders of the Conservative Middle East Council, a Westminster body which has become increasingly vocal in its calls for Britain to stand by the House of Saud, despite the latter’s human rights abuses and possible war crimes…
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Cuts to anti-organised crime budgets are helping Daesh
Imagine Daesh as a solar system; then imagine a white-hot sun in the middle. That is the die-hards, the ideologues, the unpersuadable few whose minds cannot be changed. Their hands are the most bloodied and there is no excuse for their actions; no political grievance can be worth the violence…
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Why is hanging out with dictators wrong?
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is back in Abu Dhabi. Those of you kind enough to read this column regularly might remember that in December 2014, Wales accepted a $500,000 grant from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government to set up a new human rights organisation. In a heated email exchange,…
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The House of Saud is stronger than ever
Last night, the BBC’s Newsnight broadcast a skit about the impending collapse of the Saudi economy. The flagship show’s diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, provided grim narration to each new set of figures. The mood music suggested it was not unreasonable to expect four chaps on horses riding over the hill,…
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Will David Cameron hug a jihadi?
Like it or not, jihad is back. And by back, I mean back like it was in the eighties; back in vogue, back in the mainstream, back in terms of general foreign policy usefulness. Back then, jihadists were used to get rid of communists. Now we’re using jihadists to get…
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Stop the War criticism has gone way too far
Stop the War have a lot of faults. It can be frustrating to feel “represented” by them, particularly if like me, your general politics doesn’t follow their leftist world view – but you are opposed to military interventions in the Middle East. There is perhaps a failure of the many…
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The Saudis want a reputation fix, but buying journalists won’t do the trick
There are signs that the reign of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman may see a shift in public relations strategy from his Riyadh government, in particular by making it easier for foreign journalists to visit the kingdom and by engaging Western journalists willing to work with its embassies. An international research…
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If multiculturalism has failed, the blame lies with neo-cons as much as Daesh
Daesh doesn’t want Muslims and Christians to live together freely; it wants to eliminate what it calls the “grey zone”. The group’s own publication, Dabiq, makes this clear. This is the lesson from Paris of which we should be most wary. Future attacks will share this objective. Looking at the…
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We need a new deal for Europe’s Muslims
France’s own war on terror, which has generally taken a different tack to that of the rest of the West, leaves much to be desired. The argument that its foreign policies are to blame for the Paris attacks are, however, conspicuously weak. France did not take part in the 2003…
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If you wouldn’t say it about a Jew, please don’t say it about a Muslim
“Jews are transforming Europe, says celebrity, in warning over dangers of mass immigration. One major entertainment figure has bravely voiced an alternative view, highlight[ing] how an influx of Jews could change the nature of the UK for ever.” Does that headline and opening sentence make you feel uncomfortable? No? Perhaps…
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Sisi can’t keep tourists or Egyptians safe, so why back him?
Naturally not one for our Muslim readers, but as an occasional sunburned Brit abroad, I hear that the Savoy Hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh do a great “Bloody Mary”. That intoxicating mix of chilled vodka, tomato juice, celery and the essential tabasco sauce doesn’t offer real blood, of course, but that’s…
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What are we to make of Sisi’s popularity?
Number 10 will this week host its own Pyramid-shaped elephant in the room as Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi sits down for an expensive meal with Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron. There will be protesters hooting in the background, but the said elephant will repeat only one mantra: “Sisi is…
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Cameron’s blind spot in Libya
It is easy to assume that in the British context, the mistake of invading Libya was down to decisions made by David Cameron himself. He was the Prime Minister at the time, and a key player in NATO talks. In reality, Cameron is a flabby weakling on foreign policy, even…
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Israel is making an unprecedented push into the youth wing of Britain’s Conservative Party
The Israeli government, not Britain’s pro-Israel lobby, is engaged in an unprecedented push to capture the hearts and minds of the Conservative Party’s younger members. The evidence I present below is not a “Jewish conspiracy theory”, which David Cameron has in recent speeches rightly denigrated as dangerous and factually incorrect…
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The EU needs to provide a radical alternative to Western foreign policy-making
The European Union is supposed to have a foreign policy. It doesn’t call it a foreign policy; the EU calls it a “Neighbourhood Policy” for fear of giving the game away that many serious players in Brussels would prefer Europe to be a single European state. The Southern Neighbourhood Policy…