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\n The Ukrainian president\u2019s stock has risen considerably in America in recent months, while Trump has been openly disparaging about Netanyahu lately. As we\u2019ve observed before<\/a>, the US president and Israeli prime minister have sharply divergent war aims. <\/p>\n Trump is looking for an off-ramp that will enable him to end the conflict, which is deeply unpopular in the US. Netanyahu, meanwhile, sees the war with Iran as unfinished business. <\/p>\n There was no post-meeting press conference, but Netanyahu emerged with the message: \u201cThis was one of the best conversations I have had with our friend, US President Donald Trump.\u201d He would say that, though wouldn\u2019t he, notes Christian Emery<\/a>, an expert in international affairs at UCL. If Netanyahu is increasingly unpopular in the US, Trump is still very much in favour in Israel. <\/p>\n Emery believes Netanyahu would have needed to be particularly persuasive to get Trump to see his point of view over the Iran conflict. But it may be that Iran\u2019s increasingly assertive conduct of the war, most recently hitting a US-owned tanker in Egypt as well as attacking a US base in Jordan, look as if they might be doing that job for him. <\/p>\n \n Israel\u2019s conduct in Palestinian territories might be earning Netanyahu widespread opprobrium globally, but it reportedly plays well with an increasingly right-leaning Israeli electorate. And, with elections looming in October and the prime minister trailing in the polls, his government is escalating the expansion of settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank while taking control of an ever larger portion of the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n Irit Katz of the University of Cambridge, who has spent years studying conflict and displacement in Palestine, sees two motives behind this escalation<\/a>. One is the aforementioned appeal to right-wing Zionist voters. The other, particularly for the more extreme elements in Netanyahu\u2019s government, is to establish the facts on the ground before October\u2019s election. <\/p>\n With international momentum growing for the designation of Israel\u2019s conduct in Palestinian territories as genocide, Katz believes this land grab is yet another reason to support this argument. The 1948 UN convention, she argues, \u201cdefines genocide not only as killing members of a protected group but also as deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the group\u2019s physical destruction, in whole or in part, when accompanied by the requisite intent\u201d.<\/p>\n \n Nicaragua\u2019s former revolutionary-turned-autocratic leader, Daniel Ortega, announced recently that he was planning to scrap elections. Ortega, who has spent 30 years in two stints in the presidential palace, said on July 21 there would be no more elections in Nicaragua to prevent the opposition from seizing power (the logic of which statement is hard to fault).<\/p>\n Ortega has since rowed back on this, saying on July 29 he wanted to extend terms limits to from six to seven years while barring members of the opposition seen by his government as \u201ctraitors\u201d or \u201ccoup plotters\u201d from running for office. <\/p>\n Felix Wiebrecht, an expert in authoritarian politics at the University of Liverpool notes, that while autocrats have a range of things they tend to do to ensure they stay in power<\/a> \u2013 many, such as Vladimir Putin in Russia \u2013 consider elections to be useful in establishing legitimacy. Even if they are as clearly rigged as Russia\u2019s last few have been.<\/p>\n \n Donald Trump, meanwhile, has hit the campaign trail ahead of the US elections with a new warning to voters that America is threatened by an \u201cenemy within\u201d: communists. As historian David Bryden from King\u2019s College London notes, it\u2019s an old favourite of the political right<\/a>.<\/p>\n Not just in the US, either. Bryden points to the rise of fascism in the early decades of the 20th century, which was largely fuelled by a widespread fear of communism. While clearly justified, as any historian of the Soviet Union will tell you, European fascist leaders used the tactic to target any section of society they hated or feared: in Germany\u2019s case, the Jewish people, for example. <\/p>\n Bryden believes the US president is using the tactic to target immigrants and warns that anti-communist rhetoric is \u201cpowerful, persuasive and dangerous, and we need to take it seriously\u201d.<\/p>\n \n If you want to know why Fifa boss Gianni Infantino\u2019s plan, revealed this week, to turn the World Cup into an investment vehicle is so unpopular, Josh Bland, who researches football culture at the University of Cambridge, is here to explain<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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\n Two meetings and a funeral: diplomacy on the sidelines of Lindsey Graham\u2019s memorial service<\/a>
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\n Is Netanyahu\u2019s star waning in Washington? His latest meeting with Trump suggests it may be<\/a>
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\nWest Bank and Gaza<\/h2>\n
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\n As Israel prepares for October election the government is accelerating its land grab in the West Bank and Gaza<\/a>
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\nAutocrats, elections and a new \u2018Red Scare\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua plans to scrap elections \u2013 what that says about today\u2019s autocrats<\/a>
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\n Donald Trump has launched another \u2018Red Scare\u2019 in the US \u2013 it\u2019s a favourite tactic of the right<\/a>
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\nSelling the World Cup<\/h2>\n
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