1 Why Israel is winning yet losing (Munir Akram in
Dawn) This fourth Israeli incursion into Gaza in 10 years has once again
demonstrated Israel’s considerable military prowess. Hamas’ asymmetric
resistance is heroic but militarily puny. Yet, Israel’s military success is
unlikely to yield sustainable security. There are four broad trends which
portend more difficult times for the Jewish state.
First, Israeli extremism. Over the past decade,
Jewish religious parties and the 250,000 Israeli settlers on the West Bank have
emerged ascendant in Israeli politics. They believe the occupied territories
are part of historical Israel — Judea and Samaria — and cannot be returned to
the Palestinians. No Israeli leader is bold enough to advocate the removal of
the West Bank settlements. As a consequence, there are diminishing prospects
for the two-state solution that all have agreed is the only basis for a
settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Second, demography. Israel will have to rule over a
Palestinian population which is growing rapidly; while Jewish immigration to
Israel has petered out after the post-Cold War inflow of Russian and East European
Jews. Controlling a growing, hostile and increasingly radicalised Palestinian
population will become, literally, a bloody business.
Third, Palestinian and Arab radicalisation. The
plight of the Palestinian people is often, and rightly, cited as the core cause
for the initial rise of religious radicalism in the Arab and Muslim world. Over
the past 70 years, Israel has faced ever more ideologically ‘difficult’
adversaries: initially its neighbouring Arab states; then the PLO and Fatah,
now Hamas. Today, ISIS is not only at the gates of Baghdad but also on Israel’s
border with Syria.
Fourth, eroding Western support. Israel has been
justifiably condemned for its disproportionate response to the largely
ineffective rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza. Israel’s leaders should look into
the future. Do they want to consign their people, the Palestinians and the
region to never-ending violence and war? There is a narrow window of opportunity
to reverse their disastrous course and agree to the concessions required to
achieve a two-state solution. Fatah will obviously accept such a solution.
2 $475m funding for Airbnb (Carolyn Said in San
Francisco Chronicle) “When I first heard about Airbnb, I thought it was the
stupidest idea I’d ever heard of,” Andreessen Horowitz partner Jeff Jordan said
in January. He soon changed his mind, leading his venture capital firm to
invest in the San Francisco hospitality marketplace and becoming a board
member.
On Friday, Airbnb publicly confirmed that Jordan, as
well as previous investor Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital, participated in its
latest megaround of funding, a cool $475 million raised in April, according to
an SEC filing. The funding reportedly values the 6-year-old San Francisco
hospitality marketplace at $10 billion, ranking it among the world’s most
valuable startups, worth more than many long-established hotel chains.
Airbnb’s business model of turning homes into hotels
is under attack in cities including San Francisco, New York and Barcelona. Its
wild popularity — and the antagonism it sometimes faces — has spurred its
hometown, where short-term residential rentals are currently illegal, to tackle
how to legalize and regulate people offering rooms and homes to travelers. The
practice is controversial, with housing activists saying it diverts much-needed
supply, and landlords saying it threatens security and violates leases.
3 Tackling the violent male (Jonathan Jansen in
Johannesburg Times) I told a group of young women academics the other day that
the greatest danger to their scholarly careers would be the man they marry, for
those who make that choice. Why? Because a man's understanding of what it means
to be a man depends on how he saw his father behave towards his mother. A
typical South African man expects to come home to warmed-up slippers, an ironed
newspaper, a fresh-looking spouse, dinner ready, and the children washed and
prepared for bed.
The fact that the wife also works does not bother
this man-man in the least; that is the order of things. Dad did it, and so this
is normative behaviour. Most of the women I have supervised to obtain advanced
degrees, especially doctorates, have divorced. Their men simply could not
handle the fact that the woman had a much higher status than they did. Not only
did the wife start earning more money than he - a trigger for violence - she
gained a voice. Her confidence meant she had learnt to reason through complex
problems rather than simply accept the 19th-century notion of "Hubby knows
best".
Of course, not all men are like this and those who
were fortunate to have had fathers who were kind and gentle and gracious under
pressure would have learnt a different model of being a man - a man who
respects his partner and responds to a crisis with calm and reason. But that
kind of man is in a minority in a culture in which men take on multiple wives,
not to honour culture, but to demonstrate power and show off privilege.
Fathers, teach your boys how to cry. Show them how
to love; be especially aware of how you respond in a crisis for they are
watching you. Teach them that hands are for hugging not hurting. Condemn bad
male behaviour loudly and cut out those sexist jokes with your male friends at
the braai. And if a taxi swerves in front of you on the main road where you
live, climb out and politely ask the driver whether his brakes failed.
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