Day: May 19, 2025

Lay of the Land Weekly Newsletter- 19 May 2025

Unveiling the contours and contrasts of an ever-changing Middle East landscape Reliable reportage and insightful commentary on the Middle East by seasoned journalists from the region and beyond.

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What’s happening in Israel today? See from every Monday – Thursday LOTL’s The Israel Brief broadcasts and on our Facebook page and YouTube by seasoned TV & radio broadcaster, Rolene Marks familiar to Chai FM listeners in South Africa and millions of American listeners to the News/Talk/Sports radio station WINA, broadcasting out of Virginia, USA.

THE ISRAEL BRIEF- 12-15 May 2025
(Click on the blue title)



Lay of the Land’s photo ‘Pick of the Week’

Message from Basel to the world

Click on the photo below to hear

Yuval Raphael at the 2025 Eurovision perform – “New Day Will Rise”

128 years after Herzl stood on a hotel balcony in Basel and dreamt of a future Jewish state, the manifestation of that dream appeared in the form of Yuval Raphael – standing aloft in the same city at the 2025 Eurovision and sang her country into second place, with a powerful rendition of a ‘New Day Will Rise’. 19 months earlier, Yuval was playing dead in a shelter at the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023; hiding under a pile of bodies in a roadside bomb shelter for hours, with shrapnel embedded in her leg, until she was ultimately rescued. How fitting she concluded her performance in Basel, staring ahead but facing the world and said: “Am Yisrael Chai” (“The People of Israel Live”)
https://youtu.be/R1J7nJXLKAg




Articles

Please note there is a facility to comment beneath each article should you wish to express an opinion on the subject addressed.

(1)

NOT NORMAL BUT THE NORM

Where are your kids and grandkids when the siren sounds?
By Jonathan Feldstein

Dropping with Dread. Israeli children waiting for their school bus, drop to the ground and hold their hands to their heads as sirens sound the warning of an incoming ballistic missile from the Houthis in Yemen. 
Is this ‘normal’?

NOT NORMAL BUT THE NORM
(Click on the blue title)



(2)

IRAN, IRAQ AND OPEC

How successive American Presidents – Democratic and Republican – have misread the Middle East.
By Neville Berman

Has World over a Barrel. “There are 6 words that Iran has used for decades,” asserts the writer – not in Farci but in English – that for some reason, no American President seems able to understand – “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. Very few believed Hitler when he declared that he wanted a Jew-free Europe!

IRAN, IRAQ AND OPEC
(Click on the blue title)



(3)

BRIDGE THE GULF

The Persian Gulf – Past, Present and Future
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh

A Gulf Apart. While the writer – a survivor of death row in Tehran’s notorious prison – applauds any effort to undermine the Islamic regime which “should be a US priority,” Trump’s idea of renaming the Persian Gulf and negotiating with the ayatollahs she argues, “are contradictory, and in the end strengthens the regime.”

BRIDGE THE GULF
(Click on the blue title)



(4)

THE ARAB VOICE  MAY 2025

Perspectives and insights from writers in the Arab media

Middle East Arab writers address:
(1) The challenges within the PA that require more than choosing a successor to Abbas.
(2) The demand of Hezbollah relinquishing its arms which it views as “sacrosanct”.
                          (3) Comparing protests in Gaza against Hamas and protests in Tel Aviv against Natanyahu government.

THE ARAB VOICE  MAY 2025
(Click on the blue title)



LOTL Cofounders David E. Kaplan (Editor), Rolene Marks and Yair Chelouche

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While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).