Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. May 26, 2024 | |
|
On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET:
What will come out of the devastating Israel–Hamas war? Possibly a better future, Fareed says.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected international recognition of a Palestinian state as a "reward for terror," but Fareed points out that Netanyahu has in the past endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state existing beside Israel. The Biden administration has worked to secure a deal in which Saudi Arabia would recognize Israel diplomatically in exchange for security guarantees and civilian-nuclear help from the US. Fareed says such a deal could unlock important elements to stabilizing Gaza, like Arab involvement in postwar security, Palestinian participation in Gaza's governance, and European support.
Fareed suggests that Biden should lay out his own vision for postwar Gaza—and remind Netanyahu of what he previously embraced.
After that: Is Israel committing humanitarian crimes in Gaza? The Israeli government has strenuously denied it, but the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt operations in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, and the International Criminal Court's top prosecutor requested warrants for Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with top Hamas officials. Fareed talks with Aryeh Neier, a former refugee from Nazi Germany and cofounder of Human Rights Watch who says the answer is yes.
Who deserves more criticism in American politics: the left or the right? Has Gen-Z lost the thread, when it comes to protesting injustice around the world? Fareed talks with Bill Maher, host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" and author of the new book "What This Comedian Said Will Shock You."
Finally: American political disruption, then and now. Fareed talks with Pulitzer-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose latest book is "An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s," about lessons in presidential leadership and protest politics, as campus demonstrations against the war in Gaza recall memories of Vietnam War protests decades ago.
|
|
|
Many analysts, including Fareed, have called for a "day after" plan in Gaza: a realistic vision of how the Strip can be rebuilt and governed once the fighting stops. In a Foreign Affairs essay, Dana Stroul argues that's incomplete. The absence of a day-after plan is troubling, Stroul writes, but "[i]n fact, observers are paying attention to the wrong day. What matters most is 'the day in between,' when the flow of civilian support and services beyond emergency humanitarian aid are needed, even as [Israel Defense Forces] military operations continue. … This is the period of weeks and months immediately after active military operations end but before long-term reconstruction begins. This short period is critical because it sets the postconflict recovery on either a positive or a negative trajectory." |
|
|
How has Italy changed under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni? In a New York Review of Books essay, Rachel Donadio seeks an answer. Meloni ascended to power over piercing alarms in the Western commentariat given her Brothers of Italy party's post-fascist roots. Meloni herself has proven to be culturally conservative as advertised—she has backed steeper penalties for surrogate childbirths, for instance—but friendly to the Western liberal-democratic order in other ways. She has supported NATO's assistance to Ukraine and has been welcomed by the transatlantic political mainstream.
Donadio situates Meloni's Italy within the country's broader trajectory from fascism onward. Italy under Meloni, Donadio writes, has been "a picture of the mainstreaming of a postfascist right seeking changes in Italian historical memory—what is emphasized, what is downplayed—and attempting, often ham-handedly and with a dearth of fresh ideas, to forge a modern right in a country that lacks a conservative tradition (comparable to, for example, the UK's Tories) apart from fascism." Taking the temperature of political culture more broadly, Donadio writes: "The Meloni-era vibe is anti–cancel culture, even though no one has been canceled in Italy, as far as I can tell. For the most part, Italy seems to have skipped the backlash and gone straight to the backlash to the backlash." |
|
|
Since the end of apartheid in 1994, South African politics have been dominated by the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela. With elections looming on May 29, analysts wonder if the ANC's time in power will end. "Now," writes Gerald Imray of the Associated Press, "the ANC is for many a byword for graft and failed government." Economic woes, government corruption, and infighting have sunk the party's standing, Imray writes.
In The New York Times Magazine, John Eligon writes: "Many of South Africa's current failures can be traced to its earliest days. Friction between new Black leaders and the existing, predominantly white civil service led to high turnover, often crippling the new government, says Khulu Mbatha, who spent 15 years with the A.N.C. in exile and then served in the first administration. Pallo Jordan, a former A.N.C. leader who was a minister in Mandela's cabinet, says the government also made mistakes in courting private investment. It anticipated, for example, that the private sector would invest in the country's nationalized power stations. That never happened, and the power grid has remained unstable. But perhaps the party's biggest failure, Jordan says, was not preparing members for the temptations they would face as stewards of the state." |
|
|
| You are receiving this newsletter because you signed up for Fareed's Global Briefing.
To stop receiving this newsletter, unsubscribe or sign up to manage your CNN account | |
® © 2024 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved.
1050 Techwood Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30318 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
