Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Alastair Sloan
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Why neoconservative support for Israel makes no sense
The most prominent neoconservative in Britain, Conservative MP Michael Gove, was once interviewed by the New Statesman. It contained one of the best analyses of his foreign policy views, formed not in the cauldron of distant battlefields or the misery of refugee camps, but at his untidy little desk...
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Peacemaker or warrior king, Putin has blood on his hands
Is Vladimir Putin a peacemaker or a warrior king? In Syria, the answer seems to be both. Shame on the Western powers that the man who has come closest to bringing Syria to peace so far is a dictator of such ill repute. Yet in the Kazakhstan capital, Astana,...
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The tide is turning against Saudi arms sales
For decades, there has been a high-level, two-party consensus that arming Saudi Arabia is right for Britain’s security. From the late nineties onwards, when the left-wing Labour Party was hijacked by centrist liberal Tony Blair, the future business associate of both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi contorted himself to accommodate...
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Al Jazeera revealed much more than one embassy employee’s misconduct
For many who follow the Palestinian cause closely, Al-Jazeera’s six-month investigation into the activities of the Israeli Embassy’s political wing feels like a watershed moment. The years of being called anti-Semitic for believing that the pro-Israel lobby has too much sway in Westminster have been vindicated by incontrovertible evidence...
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The Conservative Party must launch an inquiry and suspend Robert Halfon MP
I was rewarded quite by accident this weekend for a terrible mistake in my previous column for MEMO. Having written about how more British MPs travelled to Israel than any other country in 2016, and the media silence around this stunning fact, by useful coincidence Al Jazeera television has...
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Israel is the main destination for MPs’ junkets, so why isn't anyone talking about it?
Is there nothing special about the pro-Israel lobby in Westminster? Patently not. There is nothing special about large amounts of money — be they from left-wing trade unions; neoliberal City bosses; ideologues of all political persuasions; or Eurosceptics and Europhiles — being splashed about in attempts to influence government...
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Saudi is stalling on the reform of women’s rights
The recent conviction and harsh sentencing of a Saudi man who had called for an end to the country’s infamous “guardianship” system suggests that improvements in women’s rights in the kingdom are not the focus they once were. Contrary to the doom and gloom headlines that always permeate any...
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Why can we blame refugee policy for terrorism in Europe but not foreign policy?
When WikiLeaks published an article in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks suggesting that aggressive British, US and French foreign policy might be held partly responsible for the killings in Paris, Julian Assange bore the predictable brunt of an outraged phalanx of armchair warriors. The neoconservatives, muscular liberals...
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Is Israel's ambassador to the US a conspiracy theorist?
To call Frank Gaffney a wild man of the neoconservative movement is an understatement. Like many neoconservatives he began his career as an aide in the office of Democrat Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who posthumously inspired Britain’s amateurish anti-Muslim think tank, the Henry Jackson Society. While working under the fervent...
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Number 10’s cowardice won’t allow it to support Boris Johnson
Did you know that your brain is essentially a skull-encased lump of sand? Clever researchers told New Scientist magazine in 2009 that the brain operates “on the edge of chaos” and that, far from “ordered, logical operations, like a powerful computer,” is subject to bursts of creativity and clarity...
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It is time for Israel to accept that Hamas is invincible, so negotiate
Hamas will never be beaten, hard as that may be to stomach for those who have been its victims. ...
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The divisive Balfour Declaration is a hot potato in Westminster
The question of whether the centenary of the Balfour Declaration should be celebrated or politely ignored is a bit of a hot potato in Westminster these days. This may well be a sign that the government is finally understanding how sensitive the current crisis in Palestine really is. Palestine faces...
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J-TV is a Conservative Party project; what does that say about religious politics in Britain?
Media organisations acting more or less as organs of political parties are not rare in Britain. The Times currently plays a role as a departure lounge and decompression chamber for the centre-right of the Conservative Party; former news editor Michael Gove, although still an MP, is now back at...
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Britain should stop blocking democracy and human rights progress in Bahrain
What a summer it was for the Establishment in Bahrain and Britain. As the Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, clasped his ears, the King of Bahrain roared with laughter. It was a Sunday evening in May and the upper tier of British royals watched as Her...
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Netanyahu is a racist demagogue; who wants to be associated with him?
“It’s a gift, but it’s wrapped in barbed wire,” the acclaimed Flemish writer David Van Reybrouk told Politico this week. He was talking about populism. As his succinct analogy was published, the Collins Dictionary announced that “Brexit” was its word of the year. The debate about whether Brexit is...
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EXCLUSIVE: Notorious Bahraini judge appointed to investigate alleged war crimes in Yemen
The army officer assigned to investigate alleged Saudi war crimes in Yemen played a key role in the 2011 crackdown on Arab Spring protesters in Bahrain, MEMO can reveal. In the wake of the start of the ongoing 2011 uprising, Bahrain’s military lawyer Colonel Mansour Al-Mansour presided over the...
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The military battle for Mosul may have begun, but the real battle has yet to start
Nobody I’ve spoken to about the recently-launched battle for Mosul is in a particularly optimistic mood. The Iraqi soldiers are nervous because they know from bitter previous experience how dangerous Daesh can make a city with their adept use of booby traps. The UN is irritated because half of...
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The hypocrisy of Boris Johnson over the Stop the War Coalition is sickening
A new media war has started against the Stop the War Coalition, the leftist network of groups formed to oppose the Iraq invasion back in 2003. “The Stop the West Coalition is getting worse – and now it’s running the Labour Party” read the opening salvo by, tellingly, Mark...
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There's nothing secret about the pro-Israel lobby, so why do some journalists deny its existence?
Any visitor to the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) website will find open and informative accounts of much of the organisation’s activities. Information abounds about trips to Israel on which hundreds of activists, candidates, MPs and peers have been shown carefully around the West Bank and Israel proper. They...
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Why minority hatred isn't always down to religion
The photo opportunity and lavish praise for Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in New York this week, alongside leaders of the Coptic Church, highlight an awkward truth prevalent across the Middle East. Too many religious minority leaders in the region support dictators. In doing so, they betray their values...
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In Yemen, Britain plays the part of Putin while Riyadh pulls the strings
In Yemen, Britain is playing the part of Putin. The House of Saud are playing the part of Assad. The British establishment knows that what they are doing is ethically dubious, bordering on indefensible....
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If the Torah is relevant to the Israel-Palestine conflict, shouldn’t the Qur’an be accepted too?
What’s so special about Israel-Palestine? The answer, if you’re a pro-Likud fan of hard-nut security policies and a slow, painful dissolution of a future Palestinian state, is simultaneously nothing at all, and everything at once. It’s one of many baffling ambiguities in the stance of such people, so don’t...
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International scramble to list Aramco stocks
If the public listing of Saudi Aramco ever happens, it will be the largest stock market listing ever. That’s if you believe the Saudi energy ministry, who claimed the company should be valued at four times the size of Apple – at an almost incredible $2 trillion. Such a bullish...
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It’s a myth that Israel is singled out for criticism
Israel’s apologists also accuse the peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement of being anti-Semitic because it singles out their beloved state; why not look at Iran, North Korea or Russia, they ask?...
