The New Republic

On the morning of Thursday, August 16, 2012, as thousands of striking South African miners marched in circles atop a pile of red rocks, the police lined up their tanks in front of it. Roughly 30 feet high and 50 feet across, the rock pile was the closest thing to a mountain for miles, jutting out of the flat expanse of the mining area called Marikana, 60 miles northwest of Johannesburg. READ MORE >>

The ban on "homosexual propaganda among minors" has yet to become law in Russia—only its first draft has passed the lower chamber of the Russian parliament—but it has already become the most discussed subject in the Russian press and has claimed its first victims. READ MORE >>

Here we go again. A recently minted American secretary of state eager to burnish his foreign policy credentials barely a day after his confirmation has already called both the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian president to discuss the importance of trying to resume the peace process and to express America’s commitment to Arab-Israeli peace.  READ MORE >>

Late last year, during a particularly bad day of fighting between the Free Syrian Army and the Assad regime, a band of rebels took refuge in the basement of an abandoned factory building in Aleppo. They had just lost two men and were in desperate need of more supplies and more fighters. As we all waited for the shelling to stop, I discovered a small hole in one of the factory walls. READ MORE >>

Long after the moving images of Egypt’s Facebook-addicted, pro-democratic revolutionaries faded from Tahrir Square, they have remained firmly implanted in the minds of American observers 6,000 miles away. For much of the two years since Egypt’s uprising, many observers in Washington seemingly believed that anything in Cairo that wasn’t Mubarak was a step in a democratic direction. READ MORE >>

ISTANBUL—Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, will undoubtedly be remembered for many things. In the ten years since his Justice and Development Party (AKP) first assumed control of the Turkish parliament, he has substantially improved the Turkish economy and established Turkey as a diplomatic leader in the Middle East; he has ushered Islam back into Turkish public life, downgraded the influence of the Turkish military, and imposed severe crackdowns on Turkish journalists. READ MORE >>

The surprising results from Israel's elections capped one of the more eventful campaign seasons in the country's history—a three-month period that featured a mini-war with Gaza, the surprise alliance between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, Lieberman’s indictment and departure from the foreign ministry, the return to politics of former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, the retirement of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the flirtation (and ultimate non-return) of former prime minister Ehud Olm READ MORE >>

Anyone waiting to know the agenda of Israel’s new government on the morning of January 23 is likely to be sorely disappointed, and not only because it will likely take weeks before we know the coalition's composition. Few overarching debates on policy have materialized during this election campaign. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not seem to be seeking any new mandate for action, despite being widely expected to win in most surveys with his right-of-center bloc retaining 65 of 120 seats, a slight drop from previous polls. It is curious that an incumbent, who understands the rough and tumble of policy fights, is not seeking a public mandate for specific policies. In the past decade Israel has had several consequential elections. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin called for a reallocating funds away from constructing West Bank settlements for the purpose of peace with the Palestinians. In 1999, his protégé Ehud Barak campaigned on the platform of a final status agreement with the Palestinians. In 2001, after the outbreak of the second intifada, Ariel Sharon made clear that he would end the terror and violence. In 2006, Ehud Olmert explicitly campaigned on the idea of an Israeli pullback in the West Bank.By contrast, this election has seen no great debate. In part this is because between the five larger parties, only one – Likud Beitenu – is likely to get more than a quarter of the votes and even the Likud will not get much more than that. This is certainly not the stuff of great mandates. Even more critical perhaps is the lack of a common agenda between the parties: one seems to play soccer while another plays football, even as a third plays basketball. Labor, for instance, has focused on income inequality. Yair Lapid’s “There Is a Future” party has advocated for greater educational opportunities among the middle class and rejects exemption of the ultra-orthodox from military service. Meanwhile, Tzipi Livni’s party has sought to revive the peace process with the Palestinians.Unlike the other parties, Netanyahu has avoided largely specifics. It is striking how few critical issues he has raised in the course of the campaign. This is the first election in Israel since the Arab upheaval began, but he has mentioned neither the shifting regional landscape nor future relations with Egypt in the post-Mubarak era. He has not raised Israel becoming a de facto bilateral state in absence of peace talks with the Palestinians, even when Israeli President Shimon Peres makes statements that the absence of negotiations will lead to a return to Palestinian terror. Surprisingly, he has not even mentioned the Iranian nuclear threat—his signature issue during his current tenure as prime minister. READ MORE >>

It remains to be seen whether France's military intervention in Mali will be considered a military success, but it already seems possible to count it a political one. The war has earned support from across the French political spectrum, President François Hollande has garnered acclaim for his leadership, and the French public broadly supports the country's stated humanitarian mission. The intervention recalls the days when “la grande nation” laid claim to an ambitious international role, particularly within its former colonial empire.But in today's France, this portrait of unity and resolve is actually something of an aberration. Far from expressing a confident sense of mission, the French public has recently been more inclined to a sense of decline, malaise, paralysis and crisis. And it is at least partially justified.  READ MORE >>

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