Middle East Press On: Türkiye, Divorce, UK, Anti, Houthis, Dore, Gold: New Age Islam's Selection, 8 March 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
8 March 2025
Increasing Divorce Rates And Social Transformation Of Türkiye
Security-Seeking Europe Should Cooperate With Türkiye’s Geopolitical Axis
UK Anti-Muslim Violence: How Killing In Gaza Enables Attacks In Gloucester
The World Cannot Ignore Trump’s Death Threat To The People Of Gaza
Yemen’s Houthis Threaten Israel Over Gaza Aid Blockade
Remembering Dore Gold As The Diplomat Who Defended Israel's Borders And History
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Increasing Divorce Rates And Social Transformation Of Türkiye
By Bünyamin Esen
Mar 08, 2025
Türkiye has been drawing attention with its rapidly changing social structure and demographic transformations in the last decades. One of the most obvious indicators of these transformations is the change in family structures and the increase in divorce rates. According to recently published 2024 data announced by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), the divorce rate has reached the highest level in the history of the republic. This situation can be considered a reflection of the sociological and demographic changes that Turkish society has been undergoing.
Peak in divorce rates
According to the recent TurkStat data, the number of divorced couples reached 187,343 by 2024. The crude divorce rate, which refers to the number of divorces per thousand population, was recorded as 2.19 per thousand last year. This rate was recorded as the highest divorce rate in the history of the Republic of Türkiye.
A steady increase in divorce rates has been observed, especially since the 2000s. The crude divorce rate, which was 0.5 per thousand in 2000, increased to 1.4 per thousand in 2004 and reached 2.19 per thousand in 2024.
While TurkStat compiled divorce data from its own surveys in the 1920-2002 period, divorce information has been obtained from the Address-Based Population Registration System (MERNIS) database since 2003. The data indicates a rapid increase in the crude divorce rate in Turkish society in the 2000s. The number of divorces per thousand people, which was 1.41 in 2001, has shown an increase to 2.19 as of 2024, which represents a record in the history of the republic.
Marriage goals declining
Data shows that while divorce rates are increasing, marriage rates are decreasing. While the number of married couples was 567,011 in 2023, it stagnated at 568,395 in 2024. The crude marriage rate, which expresses the number of marriages per thousand people, was recorded as 6.65 per thousand in 2024.
The number of marriages, which was 8.35 per thousand in 2001, has decreased to 6.65 per thousand by 2024. Turkish people are getting married less and at later ages.
This increase in divorce rates and stagnation in marriage rates are not just numerical data but indicators of the deep sociological and cultural transformations that Turkish society is undergoing. The transition from traditional to modern family structure, women's greater participation in business life, increasing levels of education, rapid urbanization in the last four decades and individualization trends are among the main reasons for the increase in divorce rates.
The province with the highest crude divorce rate in 2024 was Antalya, with 3.29 per thousand. It was followed by Izmir with 3.09 per thousand. The province with the lowest crude divorce rate was Hakkari, with 0.45 per thousand, which was followed by Şırnak with 0.55 per thousand, and Siirt and Muş, with 0.60 per thousand. The data indicates a relatively higher divorce trend in regions with higher socio-economic development, exceeding six times the Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia regions.
Increase in marriage age
In order to understand the increase in divorce rates in Türkiye, it is first necessary to look at the demographic transformations that society has undergone. In recent years, the average age of first marriage has increased for both men and women. According to 2024 data, the average age of first marriage was 28.3 for men and 25.8 for women. Accordingly, the average age of marriage for both genders increased by an average of 2.5 years in the 2000s.
This situation can be explained by the fact that the young population postpones the decision to marry until later ages. The increase in the age of marriage allows individuals to live their individual lives for a longer period before marriage. This situation causes the institution of marriage to be approached from a more individual and liberal perspective.
However, it can also cause the institution of marriage to become more fragile. The high divorce rates, especially in the early years of marriage, can be considered an indicator of this situation. In 2024, 33.7% of divorces occurred within the first five years of marriage, which points to the vulnerability of new families. When divorces were examined according to the duration of marriage, 33.7% of the divorces in 2024 occurred in the first five years of marriage, and 21.3% occurred within six to 10 years of marriage.
Women's economic independence
Another important reason for the increase in divorce rates is the increased participation of women in business life and their gaining economic independence. In the past, women were generally limited to domestic roles and were made economically dependent on their husbands. However, in recent years, the increase in women's education levels and greater participation in business life have changed this situation. Despite that, it is still significantly lower than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) peers, women’s labor force participation has increased to 34% in Türkiye, showing an almost 10-point increase in two decades.
While women becoming economically independent ensures a more egalitarian relationship within marriage, it also makes it easier to make the decision to divorce. Women, especially those who have problems such as violence, cheating or lack of communication, can now make the decision to divorce more efficiently, thanks to their economic independence. This situation is seen as an essential reason for the increase in divorce rates.
How divorce affects children
The increase in divorce rates deeply affects not only couples but also children. In 2024, 187,343 couples who divorced had 186,536 children. As a result of divorce cases, custody of children was mostly given to the mother. In 2024, 74.4% of the children were given to the mother compared to 25.6% to the father.
The effects of divorce on children can be quite profound, both psychologically and socially. The divorce process can create traumatic effects on the emotional world of children, while it can also negatively affect their future relationships. For this reason, it is of great importance for children to receive psychological support during the divorce process and for parents to act by taking the needs of their children into consideration.
Individualization
One of the most important transformations that Turkish society has undergone is the increase in individualization trends. In the traditional social structure, the expectations of the family and society largely shaped the decisions of individuals. However, in modern society, individuals tend to live their own lives more freely. This situation is also reflected in the institution of marriage. Individuals can more easily decide to divorce when they are not happy in marriage. Couples see marriage as an uninterrupted process of happiness rather than seeing it as a long marathon through which they will be overcoming troubles and unhappiness with each other’s support.
Individualization trends are especially pronounced among the younger generations. Generation Z shows a great tendency to divert from the traditional family values of Turkish society. While young people prefer to wait longer before marriage, they also adopt a more liberal relationship model within marriage. This situation causes the institution of marriage to become more fragile and also triggers an increase in divorce rates.
What can be done?
Various policy recommendations should be developed on the issue of increasing divorce rates.
Providing couples with premarital education programs on issues such as communication, conflict resolution and financial management before marriage can help start marriages on a healthier basis. Such programs can help couples be more prepared for the problems they may encounter in marriage. The Ministry of Family and Social Services is required to be proactive in this area.
Expanding family counseling services for couples experiencing problems within their marriage can increase the couples' chances of resolving their issues before deciding to divorce. These services can be particularly beneficial for couples experiencing communication problems.
Türkiye has been successfully implementing the Family Physician system for the last 10 years. Every individual and every household has an automatically assigned family physician who observes their well-being. Transitioning to a publicly funded family psychology system is essential for both social and mental health and the prevention of social crises. The Social Security Institution requires the expansion of physiological health care services covered by general health care insurance.
Supporting women's participation in business life can increase their economic independence and establish a more egalitarian relationship within marriage. Expanding day care services and enabling work-life balance for mothers is critical in this aspect.
Providing children with psychological support during the divorce process can reduce the negative effects of this process on children. Psychological support programs for children can be created in schools and family counseling centers.
Social awareness campaigns can be organized to raise awareness about the social effects of divorce and aim to strengthen families. These campaigns can especially enable the younger generations to make more conscious decisions about marriage.
Proactive approach required
In sum, recent official statistics show a very significant increase in divorce rates, which has serious implications for Turkish society. Traditional modes of conflict resolution within families are not sufficient, as urbanization, social transformation and expectations of Generation Z are affecting society and causing fast individualism. Public policies aiming to protect family structures and mitigate the effects of increasing divorces are required. Not via a paternalist state attitude, which aims to shape the society, but via a service state attitude, trying to respond with applicable solutions to the diverse effects of emerging social trends is required.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/increasing-divorce-rates-and-social-transformation-of-turkiye
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Security-Seeking Europe Should Cooperate With Türkiye’s Geopolitical Axis
By Mehmet Çağatay Güler
Mar 07, 2025
Following the disputed meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, the debate over European security architecture peaked. The first signs of this issue were observed at the Munich Security Conference. U.S. Vice President JD Vance emphasized that the real threat to Europe was not from Russia but from Europe and that Europe should provide its own security. Moreover, the Ukraine war and its perpetrator were not perceived as a national security threat by the U.S. The dialogue worked to fuel the concerns revolving around European security. The structure of European security and how it would be formed have been discussed for a decade, exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, within the framework of strategic autonomy.
Strategic autonomy has been particularly discussed in the European Union for years as the bloc aims to pursue policies without relying on a third party. Currently, dependence on the U.S. and NATO in security-related policies persists.
Despite the technological capabilities, European capitals lack the experience, manpower, professionalism and adequate defense industry production to counterbalance an opponent. As the war in Ukraine demonstrated, manpower is crucial, logistics are inevitable, and arms production is indispensable. The figure of the Ukrainian war shows that North Korea by itself can outnumber the whole of Europe in terms of artillery production. European capitals outsourced many strategic issues to the U.S. or NATO, even missile defense. Being under the NATO umbrella for so long overrode concepts like self-sustainability. Despite the fact that they received several punches in the meantime, they were still not enough to trigger action. Instead, they have been successfully creating concepts like strategic sovereignty, capacity to act and resilience.
Crisis of Ukraine or Europe
Today, Europe risks facing the Russian threat alone. It sees Ukraine’s fate as tied to its destiny, yet it is not sure to what extent it can ensure Kyiv’s or its own security without the U.S. For European security, Russia has to be contained and forced to give concessions, while Ukraine should maintain its existence as a buffer zone against the Russian threat. Acknowledged to be an unstoppable, dangerous and revisionist actor aspiring to expand further into Europe, the possibility of Russia rising victorious and achieving most of its strategic goals is very high. For the last three years, aware of the approaching fireball, the EU has almost doubled its defense spending, which has surpassed $320 billion, and it is expected to reach around $430 billion in two years.
Notwithstanding the increasing military spending, none of the European countries feel competent enough to push back against Russia. There is no unity and strong leadership within the EU to rally the continent. Without strong leadership and consensus, it is struggling to increase its self-sufficiency and reinforce its strategic autonomy. Domestic instabilities in Germany and France, the locomotives of the EU, overshadow the meager efforts. Likewise, the attitudes of Slovakia and Hungary that differ from the EU in general are of importance while contemplating the security architecture.
Realizing the emergency as well as the lack of initiative and leadership in the EU, the U.K. established a coalition of the willing on March 2, just after the sensational Trump-Zelenskyy dispute. Yet Greece, Hungary and Croatia were not invited to the meeting. The exclusion of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia also caused tension in the Baltics. They all contribute to the debate on inclusiveness and fragmentation. European resilience or its capacity to act are eroding, including the U.K. Even Trump himself made fun of the U.K. by asking British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, “Could you take on Russia by yourselves?” knowing that they cannot.
Essential actor for peace
In this context, Türkiye is invited to the meeting, unlike some EU members. Thus, it is acknowledged that without Türkiye’s involvement, neither a peace deal in the Ukraine-Russia war nor European security can be achieved. What Türkiye can offer to Europe is multifold. Under the framework of European security, first and foremost, Türkiye has the second-largest army in NATO. It has proven its capacity in Syria, Libya and Karabakh as a proactive game-changer. Moreover, Türkiye has significant field and mediation experience. Second, it has a sphere of influence in the Middle East, Central Asia, Caucasus and most of the larger African continent. The sincere approach adopted by Türkiye, without a hidden agenda seeking cost-maximizing, has brought a significant advantage. As a result, Türkiye’s geopolitical axis is being established, starting in its neighborhood and extending to the African continent and the Turkic world.
In terms of the Ukraine war, Türkiye still maintains diplomatic ties as well as its strategic engagements with the warring parties. It is seen as an actor whose presence in the region is desired. In a nutshell, Türkiye is a pivotal actor that can strengthen European security and may ensure a lasting peace in Ukraine. Hence, Türkiye offers a way out for the scrabbling European countries still seeking how to shape and reinforce European security.
However, first, there needs to be an engagement that goes beyond the EU alliance, which is currently dealing with multiple crises and has been stalling Türkiye for years. It would be better if a new structure could be established where Türkiye and its allies would obtain concrete political and economic privileges rather than promises. In return, Europe may become a part of the expanding Türkiye’s geopolitical interests, which offer significant capabilities and opportunities. Connecting to Türkiye’s geopolitical demands can both increase the security of the relevant European states and revive its political and economic spheres of influence that have been declining recently.
In other words, instead of starting geopolitical security in Europe, why not start it from Türkiye and its geopolitical axis? Hence, Ankara could contribute to strategic autonomy and therefore the security of both Türkiye and the willing European countries.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/security-seeking-europe-should-cooperate-with-turkiyes-geopolitical-axis
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UK Anti-Muslim Violence: How Killing In Gaza Enables Attacks In Gloucester
7 March 2025
According to a UK-based watchdog that monitors Islamophobia, there was a 73 percent rise in Islamophobic assaults last year.
The watchdog, Tell Mama, attributed the rise to the normalisation of Islamophobic rhetoric in political discourse, along with the spread of far-right conspiracies like the “Great Replacement” theory.
In common parlance, Tell Mama suggests that because British politicians and the far right are saying Islamophobic stuff, British Muslim people are being attacked on the streets.
While there is nothing untrue about this assertion, it is entirely inadequate as an explanation for one key reason: it contains the discussion of this issue to UK politics, rather than highlighting the connections between Islamophobic street violence in Britain and other attacks on Muslim life around the globe.
Taking a view of Islamophobia as a transnational project, I believe the rise in UK incidents last year can be explained by locating it within a global racial architecture, which gives permission for Muslim people to be injured or killed.
Another term for Islamophobia is anti-Muslim racism. This signals an understanding of Islamophobia as a form of racism, as opposed to personal prejudice and bias against those who inhabit the social margins.
The term also recognises that the way in which Islam and Muslims are stigmatised as the “Other” implies something inherent and essential about Muslim populations, in the same way that eye colour, nose shape, IQ and hair texture are taken to imply racial differences.
A global system of death
We see this in narratives of honour killing, female genital mutilation, and polygamous/child/terrorist/forced/cousin marriages. Muslims are turned into a racial category and assigned inferiority.
They are racialised as premodern, anti-feminist and anti-civilisational. More importantly, they are identified as an ideological and ontological threat to whiteness that must be managed or eliminated.
It is worth noting that anti-Muslim racism is much more than the racialisation of Muslim people. It is a social system in which Muslim people’s life chances are reduced through exclusions in education, employment, housing and healthcare.
It is a system in which Muslim people face life-threatening violence: lynchings, assaults on the streets, torture, denationalisation, targeted drone killings, and political abandonment, as in the case of asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean in unseaworthy vessels.
It would thus be appropriate to understand anti-Muslim racism as a system that exposes Muslim populations to both slow and imminent death.
But while it might be tempting to see this type of anti-Muslim death-dealing as specific to local or national politics, such a view is blinkered. As the racialisation of Muslim people as threats to be eliminated circulates globally via the “war on terror”, we are reminded that anti-Muslim racism has worldwide dimensions.
Indeed, anti-Muslim racism was foundational to the very making of the current global order, which scripted Muslim people, along with Black and Indigenous people, outside the universal category of humanity, in order to define itself through the terms of equality, democracy and sovereignty.
Returning to this foundation allows us to locate anti-Muslim racism in a long history of western death-dealing involving the transatlantic slave trade, settler-colonialism, racial violence and elimination.
Authorising death
To fully understand the 73 percent rise in anti-Muslim racial violence on UK streets last year, this phenomenon must therefore be reinterpreted through a transnational perspective of anti-Muslim death-dealing.
Such violence is driven by the racist alarmism that British Muslim people are waging a “demographic jihad” against Britain through increased birthrates and acts of terrorism. In other words, central to anti-Muslim violence on UK streets is the view that Muslim people are a threat to be contained.
This view is shared by the polite classes of British society and enshrined in Prevent, the UK counter-extremism policy that has been in place for two decades. Importantly, this view is also installed in dozens of countries around the globe through policies and legal instruments ostensibly aimed at combatting extremism and terrorism.
Even more critically, it is a view that authorises the erasure of Muslim life around the world, such as in Palestine, China and Myanmar.
We can thus draw a line that begins at the stabbings, vicious beatings and crowd-ploughing vehicles on UK streets, and crosses national boundaries to connect with the lynchings, paramilitary raids, vigilante violence, CIA black sites, immigration detention centres, refugee camps and plastic bags containing the remains of Muslim bodies around the world.
In short, UK anti-Muslim street violence is part of a transnational constellation of death-dealing forged through a shared racial vision of Muslim people as a threat to be eliminated.
Only when we recognise this transnational dimension can we begin to explain the rise of anti-Muslim UK street violence. Death in one context authorises death in another. Death in Gaza gives permission to kill and injure in Gloucester.
We saw this most vividly last summer, after the horrific stabbing of children in Southport by a non-Muslim person. The subsequent violence and destruction directed at British Muslim property and life was consistent with the savage obliteration of Muslim life and life-sustaining infrastructure in Palestine.
Unless and until we take a transnational perspective of anti-Muslim death-dealing, our explanations for the rise in anti-Muslim racial violence on the streets, across national contexts, will appear oblivious to the global architecture of Muslim death that sustains and reinforces this very violence.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/uk-islamophobia-killing-gaza-gives-permission-attacks-gloucester
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The World Cannot Ignore Trump’s Death Threat To The People Of Gaza
Ahmed Najar
7 Mar 2025
“To the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!”
These were not the words of some far-right provocateur lurking in a dark corner of the internet. They were not shouted by an unhinged warlord seeking vengeance. No, these were the words of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world. A man who with a signature, a speech or a single phrase can shape the fate of entire nations. And yet, with all this power, all this influence, his words to the people of Gaza were not of peace, not of diplomacy, not of relief – but of death.
I read them and I feel sick.
Because I know exactly who he is speaking to. He is speaking to my family. To my parents, who lost relatives and their home. To my siblings, who no longer have a place to return to. To the starving children in Gaza, who have done nothing but be born to a people the world has deemed unworthy of existence. To the grieving mothers who have buried their children. To the fathers who can do nothing but watch their babies die in their arms. To the people who have lost everything and yet are still expected to endure more.
Trump speaks of a “beautiful future” for the people of Gaza. But there is no future left where homes are gone, where whole families have been erased, where children have been massacred.
I read these words and I ask: What kind of a world do we live in?
A world where the leader of the so-called “free world” can issue a blanket death sentence to an entire population – two million people, most of whom are displaced, starving and barely clinging to life. A world where a man who commands the most powerful military can sit in his office, insulated from the screams, the blood, the unbearable stench of death, and declare that if the people of Gaza do not comply with his demand – if they do not somehow magically find and free hostages they have no control over – then they are simply “dead”. A world where genocide survivors are given an ultimatum of mass death by a man who claims to stand for peace.
This is not just absurd. It is evil.
Trump’s words are criminal. They are a direct endorsement of genocide. The people of Gaza are not responsible for what is happening. They are not holding hostages. They are the hostages – trapped by an Israeli war machine that has stolen everything from them. Hostages to a brutal siege that has starved them, bombed them, displaced them, left them with nowhere to go.
And now, they have become hostages to the most powerful man on Earth, who threatens them with more suffering, more death, unless they meet a demand they are incapable of fulfilling.
Most cynically, Trump knows his words will not be met with any meaningful pushback. Who in the American political establishment will hold him accountable for threatening genocide? The Democratic Party, which enabled Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza? Congress, which overwhelmingly supports sending US military aid to Israel with no conditions? The mainstream media, which have systematically erased Palestinian suffering? There is no political cost for Trump to make such statements. If anything, they bolster his position.
This is the world we live in. A world where Palestinian lives are so disposable that the president of the United States can threaten mass death without fear of any consequences.
I write this because I refuse to let this be just another outrageous Trump statement that people laugh off, that the media turns into a spectacle, that the world forgets. I write this because Gaza is not a talking point. It is not a headline. It is my home. My family. My history. My heart. My everything.
And I refuse to accept that the president of the United States can issue death threats to my people with impunity.
The people of Gaza do not control their own fate. They have never had that luxury. Their fate has always been dictated by the bombs that fall on them, by the siege that starves them, by the governments that abandon them. And now, their fate is being dictated by a man in Washington, DC, who sees no issue with threatening the annihilation of an entire population.
So I ask again: What kind of world do we live in?
And how long will we allow it to remain this way?
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/3/7/the-world-cannot-ignore-trumps-death-threat-to-the-people-of-gaza
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Yemen’s Houthis Threaten Israel Over Gaza Aid Blockade
8 Mar 2025
Yemen’s Houthi fighters have given Israel a four-day deadline to lift its blockade on food, medicine and aid into Gaza, threatening to resume “naval operations” against the country otherwise.
The ultimatum, issued late on Friday, signals a possible escalation from the rebel group after their assaults tailed off in January following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
“We give the entire world notice: We are granting a four-day deadline,” the group’s leader, Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, said in a video statement.
“This deadline is to allow for mediators to continue their efforts. If, after these four days, the Israeli enemy persists in preventing the entry of aid into Gaza, maintains the complete closure of crossings, and continues to block the entry of food and medicine into Gaza, we will resume our naval operations against the Israeli enemy,” he said.
The Houthis, who are backed by Iran, launched more than 100 attacks targeting ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden following Israel’s war on Gaza, saying the raids were in solidarity with Palestinians in the enclave.
During that period, the fighters sank two vessels, seized another and killed at least four seafarers in an offensive that disrupted global shipping, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around Southern Africa.
The Houthis also launched dozens of missile and drone attacks on Israel, killing at least one person and causing damage to buildings, including a school in Tel Aviv.
The United States, under President Donald Trump, re-designated the Houthis as a “terrorist” organisation earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the Houthi threat.
Hamas meanwhile welcomed the announcement.
“The brave decision … is an extension of the positions of support and assistance that they [the Houthis] provided over the course of 15 months of war … in Gaza,” the Palestinian group said.
The Houthis, who control most of Yemen, also said in February that they will take military action if the US and Israel try to displace Palestinians from Gaza forcibly.
Their ultimatum comes as Israel’s blockade on all aid into Gaza entered a seventh day.
The siege began on March 2 after Israel reneged on the ceasefire deal and sought to extend the first stage of the three-phased agreement that expired last week, without committing to ending the war on Gaza.
The United Nations, rights groups and countries around the world say the Israeli blockade could constitute a war crime.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in a statement on Friday, said the Israeli action has caused prices to soar in Gaza and resulted in anxiety over a return to bombardment and starvation.
It noted that the blockade also comes as health authorities reported that at least eight babies, whose families have been sheltering in flimsy makeshift tents, have died from the cold in the past two weeks.
“As the occupying power, Israel has a legal obligation to ensure the provision of the necessities of life for Palestinians living under its control,” the OHCHR said. “Any denial of the entry of the necessities of life for civilians may amount to collective punishment. The use of hunger and starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime.”
Palestinians say the blockade has also resulted in shortages of medical supplies and left hospitals struggling to care for those wounded in the war.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, said healthcare workers were trying to do everything possible in order to continue to provide essential medical services.
“We’re talking about more than 100,000 wounded people who have injuries from Israel’s military attacks on Gaza. And now, this ban has triggered huge concerns regarding two important issues: fuel and medical supplies,” he said.
“Hospitals and medical centres are in desperate need of fuel in order to help medical teams continue to provide services. The vast majority of hospitals rely on emergency generators and now, with the ban on fuel trucks entering, the situation is getting much worse,” he added.
“And it’s expected to get even worse within the coming days if there isn’t any serious intervention.”
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 48,440 Palestinians and wounded 111,845 others. Authorities in the enclave say the death toll is likely to be at least 61,709, as thousands of Palestinians missing under the rubble are presumed dead.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/8/yemens-houthis-threaten-israel-over-gaza-aid-blockade
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Remembering Dore Gold As The Diplomat Who Defended Israel's Borders And History
By David M. Weinberg
March 7, 2025
Not enough attention was given this week to the passing of Dr. Dore Gold, who served as a strategic adviser to Israeli prime ministers and as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. Dore’s contribution to Israel’s diplomacy was outsized and his oeuvre is instructive. He uniquely knew to zero in on the most important issues of the day.
Earlier in his career as an American academic, he focused on radical Islam and the terrorism it spawned, which was then flowing freely out of Saudi Arabia. His doctoral dissertation on this formed the basis for his 2003 book, Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism. (In more recent years, he acknowledged the deep and positive changes in Riyadh under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.)
In the 1980s at Tel Aviv University (which is when I met him and learned to rely on him as a wise observer of emerging trends), he focused on US defense policy relating to the Middle East. Gold developed the discourse that eventually was broadly adopted by Jerusalem and its advocates abroad regarding Israel’s strategic value to the United States and the importance of anchoring US-Israel relations in close security and intelligence coordination.
Twenty-five years ago, he became an early proponent of Israel’s formal designation as an American non-NATO ally, and of the association of Israel to CENTCOM, the US military’s Central Command structure covering the Middle East, something that finally happened in 2021.
After the Oslo Accords were signed, Gold was dragged unenthusiastically by Benjamin Netanyahu into talks with the Palestinians in the UK and Jordan (even before he became prime minister in 1996), meeting with Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, as well as Jordanian and American leaders.
Dr. Gold was always skeptical of Palestinian intentions and the Palestinian Authority’s capacity to pursue true peace. Thus, he sought to ensure that security parameters for Judea and Samaria (and the Golan Heights) were adhered to, as set out by prime minister Yitzchak Rabin before his assassination.
When Dore assumed the presidency of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in 2000, he parlayed this security focus into one of the most important and influential think tank ventures in Israel’s history: the Defensible Borders for Israel project.
Leading a broad range of military generals and defense experts, he sketched out the rationale for Israeli security control of West Bank mountain ridges and the Jordan Valley plus a broad east-west Jerusalem corridor – with detailed maps – and he outlined the key elements of the necessary “demilitarization” of the Palestinian government.
This was a revival of Gen. Yigal Alon’s defensible border paradigms from the 1970s (and which were the mainstay of Rabin’s security worldview, even as he signed the iffy Oslo Accords).
For over a decade, Gold presented the study at every think tank and parliament around the world, with the study and its video versions translated into half a dozen languages. To a certain extent, this document is still the basis for Israel’s security-based diplomacy, more salient than ever following the failure of the Oslo peace process and the annihilationist-toward-Israel turn of the Palestinian national movement.
In the late nineties (during Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister), Gold served for two years as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, and this exposed him to a different, troubling facet of the Arab-Israeli conflict: denialism of the Jewish People’s historic and fundamental rights in Jerusalem and Israel altogether.
Gold was shocked by Arab (and European) denial of Israel’s profound, centuries-old, national connections to the Land of Israel. He witnessed Palestinian rhetorical violence against Israeli/Jewish indigenousness in the Land of Israel, something meant to savage the core identity of Jews and Israelis.
He understood, long before the globally-woke assault on Israel post-October 7, that the Jewish state’s enemies sought to strip justice and authenticity from Israel’s very existence, and to upend Israel’s alliance with the human-rights-supporting, democratic world. He understood that “they want Jerusalem and want us out of Israel, period,” as he told colleagues back then.
Gold feared, alas correctly, that the denialism juggernaut could one day lead to violent antisemitic battering of Jews and Jewish institutions around the world – as we indeed have seen over the past 18 months.
Consequently, he became convinced that in addition to a security-based discourse, Israel must augment its diplomacy with a rights-based one. He decided that it was essential to reengage in the fight for Israel with historical truths and convictions rooted in faith, not only with security arguments.
'The fight for Jerusalem'
In 2007, he wrote a book called The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City, which took-up the fight against Arab denialism. He turned this into a series of graphic presentations about the Jewish people’s indigenous rights in Israel – videos and presentations that have been broadcast around the world.
Gold even hosted an event at the UN that showed Israel’s millennia of archaeological history with artifacts from the First and Second Temple periods, proving the Jewish people’s overwhelming connection to the Land of Israel since antiquity.
In his short stint as director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry (2015-2016), he sought to make pushback against Arab denialism a central focus of Israeli diplomacy. At the time, Mahmoud Abbas of the PA in particular had taken to denying the historical existence of the Temples in Jerusalem, driving a series of UN resolutions that declared Jerusalem an exclusively Muslim heritage city and criminalizing Israel’s custodianship of holy sites.
TWENTY YEARS ago, Gold also started an international effort to criminalize the genocidal-against-Israel threats of Iranian leaders, especially then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He authored a best-selling book in 2009 entitled The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West. Western leaders may again want to look this book up as Israel today readies to finally destroy Iran’s nuclear bomb and ballistic missile programs.
The Middle East strategist played a behind-the-scenes role in developing the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan in 2020: 'Peace to Prosperity,' dubbed by President Trump as the 'Deal of the Century'” Not surprisingly and very appropriately, this plan combined the security-based and rights-based principles that marked his career, thus ensuring Israeli military and civilian control of critical areas and its sovereign rights over unified Jerusalem.
All the while, Jews and friends of Israel around the world came to know and appreciate Ambassador Gold through his bold interviews on every global media platform no matter how unfriendly to Israel, as well as his fearless debates in public forums with Israel’s foes. I recall with appreciation his decisive takedown at Brandeis University of Richard Goldstone (of the infamous eponymously named 2009 UN report on Israeli human rights “crimes” in Gaza).
In many ways, the American-born and American-accented author and Israel advocate paved the way for other American olim (immigrants) in Israeli diplomacy, including my late father, Prof. Henry (Zvi) Weinberg – an MK for the Israel Ba’Aliyah Party in the late 90s – and ambassadors Michael Oren and Ron Dermer.
(I hold a wonderful photo of my father in discussion at Blair House in Washington in 1998 with Gold, Netanyahu, ambassador of Israel Eliyahu Ben-Elissar, former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief David Bar-Illan, who was then the prime minister’s Director of Communications and Policy Planning, and others.)
Securing Israel’s borders while battling delegitimisation of Israel: This is Dore Gold’s vital and admirable legacy. He deserves a collective memorial salute from Israel and the wider Jewish world.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-845027
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