Analysts continue to puzzle over Israel’s use of social media to describe the current violence in the Gaza Strip. There are no clear answers to the question and, most likely, we’ll never know the truthful answer. But the Israeli Defense Force has a Facebook account on the Gaza operation, labelled “Pillar of Defense” as well as a Twitter account. The is also a Twitter account for those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, https://twitter.com/search?q=%23gazaunderattack. Additionally, the hacker group, Anonymous, has joined the battle on the Palestinian side. I will concede that I doubt that Clausewitz ever conceived of such activities as part of war, but it convincingly proves that there cannot be a separation between domestic and foreign policy.
Stephen Walt, a noted critic of Israeli policy, proposes a very interesting thought experiment to help think about the current violence in the Gaza. Thought experiments (or counterfactuals as they are called in the social sciences) are intriguing ways to think about problems that seem to be intractable.
Israel also faces a new crisis to its east–the very serious public protests against King Abdullah in Jordan. If the Muslim Brotherhood were to come to power in Jordan, Israel would have lost three close allies in the space of three years: Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan. If Syria were to come under control of the Brotherhood, its encirclement would be complete. One can be certain that the Israelis are desperately worried about this contingency.
The looming, but longer-term, crisis of climate change continues to get little media attention, but our lack of interest will not delay the crisis. Jeremy Grantham, a noted financial whiz, puts the question of resource consumption and climate change into the context of world politics. The long term trends are quite dispiriting.
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