Israel’s journey from David Ben-Gurion’s founding vision of being a “light to the nations” to Itamar Ben-Gvir’s controversial death penalty bill targeting Palestinians has sparked unprecedented opposition from Jewish diaspora communities who fear the country’s democratic foundations are being eroded by extremist politics, writes Tony Leon. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of the State of [...]
South Africa’s foreign ministry has squandered the diplomatic capital built during the Mandela era, replacing strategic thinking with impulsive gestures and transforming the country from a respected global mediator into an increasingly isolated fringe player, writes Tony Leon. It’s a stretch to use words and phrases such as “thoughtful” or “long-term strategy” or even “principled consistency” [...]
Following Sunday’s deadly attack on Jewish celebrants at Bondi Beach during Chanukkah, Tony Leon examines how inflammatory rhetoric and binary slogans around Israel and Jewish identity are fuelling real-world violence, calling for more nuanced discourse before words turn deadly. “Antisemitism is a light sleeper”, a friend of mine in Sydney, Australia, wrote after Sunday’s horrifying and murderous [...]
South Africa’s moral blindness, or one-eyed approach to a the 7 October attack, might be one reason for the country’s exclusion from a seat at Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday, writes Tony Leon. Why, you might reasonably ask, was the world’s “moral superpower” not present at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt on Monday? Just to recap: In January [...]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqRvKQGP9Xs
"Trump derangement syndrome" is a political condition whose etymology is traced to the late conservative commentator and psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer. He defined it, first in respect of another Republican president, George W. Bush, as "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency - nay – the very [...]
"Retrospective clairvoyance" was the arch phrase of Clive James for the miraculous ability of pundits (me included) to deduce this week an event that was "inevitable" last week, though it was not actually seen as likely at the time. Thus, the sweeping win of Donald Trump last Tuesday has birthed endless analyses of why it [...]
On Tuesday, Adriaan Basson, editor in chief of News 24, expressed "renewed gratitude that in South Africa the ‘rights of journalists, authors and artists to write, say and sing what they like’ is an established right in 'our maturing democracy'." Basson is correct, too, that we should "never ever take our open democratic spaces and [...]
Last week in London, I had the opportunity to view the extraordinary Vincent van Gogh exhibition "Poets and Lovers" at the National Gallery. The Dutch master's magnificence, from showstoppers such as "Starry Night over the Rhône" and "Sunflowers", were on dazzling display alongside less familiar works - all testament to his creative and troubled genius. [...]
A search of South African government websites for an expression of sympathy on the weekend assassination of six civilian hostages, who were killed by Hamas under the tunnels of Rafah in Gaza, yields a nil return. Cogent explanations for the dearth of empathy - or its partial application - must go beyond the normal claims of [...]
