Since early 2024, Israel has repeated incessantly the assertion that its military operations in Gaza seek only to crush Hamas for the latter’s cross-border terrorist atrocity of October 7, 2023, and thereby prevent any repetition, and that its military conduct is strictly lawful and mindful of keeping civilian casualties to a minimum. The plight of Israeli hostages taken into Gaza was, and remains, high in the Israeli public’s mind. For the first few months after October 7th, in sympathy, the world’s nations granted Israel great latitude in its Gaza conduct, presumably on the assumption that Israel was relatively reliable, decent and trustworthy and, in many cases, even an ally and friend.

However, the Gazan civilian deaths and injuries at the hands of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) were growing by the thousands month after month, as was the obliteration of vast residential and commercial areas and all means of survival under the IDF’s “devastated terrain warfare” strategy. Voluminous news footage, video footage and personal testimonies of civilian casualties, medical staff, international aid agencies and UN authorities emerged day after day that all flatly contradicted the Israeli government’s self-certification that it and its IDF are a paragon of virtue, rectitude and humanity. 

By late 2024, certified civilian deaths in Gaza were well over 40,000, plus over 90,000 wounded, the vast majority being women and children. Targeting of hospitals and clinics by IDF aerial and ground forces, as widely reported, added to the physical danger, terror and despair of the civilian population. By August 13, 2025, verified civilian deaths in Gaza from IDF action had risen to over 61,000, plus at least 12,000 missing presumed dead under rubble, and over 154,000 wounded.

While a large number of Israeli hostages held by Hamas were released in 2024, almost exclusively by negotiation, a significant number have remained captive. For the last year, Israeli Prime Minister (PM) Netanyahu has relegated their importance from high to lower priority, only warranting lip service. 

Relatives feel the hostages have been abandoned in favor of Netanyahu’s determination to negotiate a ceasefire and peace only on his terms, if at all, and which have been framed to ensure rejection by Hamas and therefore justify his continued military onslaught. A consensus argues that Netanyahu is cynically determined to prolong the war, not out of military or national security necessity but simply to keep him in power.

In addition to the ever-present threat of death and destruction from IDF attacks, the hapless 2.2 million civilian population has also been subject to stop-and-go interference with supplies of essential food, water, medicines and other provisions (largely from international aid agencies) into Gaza. From March 2, 2025, all such international aid has been blocked by the IDF save for a small token provision by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US-Israel creation controlled by Israel and much mired in controversy, including complicity in multiple deliberate shootings of starving Palestinians desperately seeking food. 

From mid-July 2025, reported deaths from starvation in Gaza began to rise exponentially, embarrassing Israel into reluctantly agreeing in August to air drops by a coalition of other countries (Jordan, the United Arab Emirates [UAE], Spain, France, Germany, Egypt, Belgium, Netherlands) but these supplies are only a small portion of the 600-1,000 trucks per day required now to stop mass famine and death by starvation. Thus far, after nearly 6 months, Israel is still refusing to allow such daily overland supplies at anything more than a trickle.

Gaza is a territory that is totally fenced off and surrounded by massive IDF forces. Its Palestinian population has no automatic entry or exit right at its external borders. To all intents and purposes, they have been trapped in a giant internment camp for decades. Even its coast is totally controlled and patrolled by the IDF. There have been several reports of local fishermen (2017, 2018, 2024) and children on the beach being shot at by the IDF. 

For the IDF, Gaza has become a place in which to inflict as much terror, torment and misery as possible on the Palestinian population, to collectively punish them for the Hamas atrocity of October 7, 2023, to exterminate as many of them as possible under the cloak of “war directives” and military necessity, to corral the surviving population into a so-called “humanitarian zone” or ghetto of less than 20% of the Gaza land mass and to terrorize, starve and coerce those still alive into fleeing Gaza “voluntarily” or face the prospect of permanent repression and few human rights courtesy of whatever regime Israel imposes on them next. This assessment is not idle speculation but is confirmed many times over in public statements by several of Netanyahu’s Cabinet Ministers e.g. Itamar Ben-Gvir (Jan 1, 2024; May 6, 2025; Aug 2, 2025), Bezalel Smotrich (Mar 19, 2023; May 6, 2025; Aug 8, 2025), Amihai Eliyahu (Nov 5, 2023; Jan 6, 2024; May 6, 2025), Israel Katz (Apr 17, 2025; Jul 7, 2025), May Golan (Feb 21, 2024; Oct 21, 2024).

Indeed, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is viscerally opposed to Netanyahu’s Gaza War policy and conduct to the extent that he has openly described IDF conduct in Gaza as “war crimes” (Haaretz and CNN), has referred to the proposed “humanitarian zone” as little more than a giant “concentration camp”. 

Israeli human rights organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights Israel and B’Tselem have also now openly condemned the Israeli government for committing “genocide” against the Palestinians in Gaza. The International Association of Genocide Scholars has similarly concluded that Israel is committing such genocide.

The stated Israeli Gaza strategy post-October 7, 2023, has remained vague, ambiguous and fluid. After a very long period, apart from its vengeance mission against Hamas, any coherent military and political objectives remained elusive, and the “what comes after?” question about Israel’s intention for Gaza’s long-term post-war future was anyone’s guess. Maybe this uncertainty was deliberately feigned to mask the true Israeli intentions and plan for Gaza. 

Statements from Netanyahu and individual cabinet members have swayed back and forth, variously suggesting no intention to govern Gaza. First, it was a temporary partial occupation, then “safe zones” that proved to be unsafe, then corralling all Palestinians in a “humanitarian zone” in southern Gaza near the Rafah Crossing to Egypt, and so on. 

One “big fanfare” announcement by Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump was for the majority of Gaza, when finally cleansed of Palestinians, to be taken over by joint US-Israeli real estate businesses that would convert the entire territory into up-market holiday and gaming resorts with residential opportunities for Israelis and international buyers (but not for Palestinians). 

Netanyahu has now changed tack again by recently announcing new IDF military orders for the total reoccupation of Gaza on an indefinite basis. He asserts that his reoccupation plan is not to govern Gaza permanently but to banish Hamas and restore civilized order, reconstruction and rehabilitation under a multi-national Arab force. 

However, he has not named the Arab countries or indicated whether they had been asked, much less agreed, to participate. Few Arab leaders would dare run the risk of insurrection by their own often volatile populations (e.g., anti-Israeli unrest in Bahrain in early September 2025), accusing them of unforgivable treachery by participating, thus rendering the plan unworkable. Israel’s own IDF and intelligence chiefs have also openly told Netanyahu that his military reoccupation plan will likely be a catastrophic failure on many counts, including the high probability that remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza will die. 

Despite Netanyahu’s denials, the most likely intention is to permanently annex Gaza into Israel, carry through a “clearance” mission against the Palestinian population and repopulate Gaza with Israeli settlers — all as expressed unequivocally by his Cabinet ministers Ben-Gvir, Eliyahu, Smotrich, Katz and Golan, and Netanyahu’s own proposed commercial real-estate deal with President Trump.

Netanyahu’s zero-sum strategy is based on the ultra-Zionist assertion (restated by Bezalel Smotrich on August 8, 2025, and again on August 14, 2025 regarding expanded illegal colonies in the Occupied West Bank) that the Jewish nation state (enshrined in the Jewish Nation State Law of 2018) can only be protected by the forced removal and/or extinction of all Palestinians from Eretz Yisrael and the denial and prevention of Palestinian sovereignty. While a sizeable minority of Israelis have long rejected the Gaza War and this zero-sum approach, polls suggest that the majority who were once persuaded to back the Gaza War are now rejecting the latest Gaza reoccupation plan and demanding an end to the war.

Israel’s real objectives for its Gaza War

After more than 23 months of his Gaza War, it is now evident that the common trajectory of Netanyahu’s political and military decisions and their execution has been towards a single short-term objective. This objective is the total removal of Palestinians from Gaza by whatever means (intimidation, settler violence, military attack, ethnic cleansing, forced relocation, starvation, denial of medical care, homicide, land theft) and the total absorption of Gaza into Eretz Yisrael, followed quickly by a similar fate for the Occupied West Bank. All of this is just the prelude to the much larger regional territorial expansion objective for Greater Israel relentlessly promoted by ultra-Zionists, inside and outside the Israeli Cabinet, as discussed on Fair Observer in December 2024 and July 2025. 

Defeating Hamas following its October 7, 2023, terrorist attack became a convenient pretext, if not a golden opportunity, that provided Netanyahu with a plausible justification for the Gaza War. However, his government’s “devastated terrain” total annihilation execution and the manifest use of mass starvation as a weapon of war (which Netanyahu denies but which several of his Cabinet Ministers openly and frequently brag about), meet all the criteria for recognizing the “proverbial duck”. Or, res ipsa loquitur — the thing speaks for itself.

Netanyahu’s zero-sum strategy of total erasure of Palestinians from Gaza (and closely followed by those in the Occupied West Bank) is as bold and breath-taking as it is megalomaniacal. However, it is also short on factual, theoretical and empirical underpinning from history, anthropology and psychology. While such a strategy may bring short-term wins, its long-term success is decidedly shaky.

Fatal flaws in supremacist assumptions and wishes

Totalitarian regimes, dictatorships, authoritarian states and the ideological extremists who steer and support them are nearly always led by compulsive high-risk gamblers who really do believe that they can always beat the odds and impose their wishes, however egregious and grotesque, on luckless victims and the world. While often differing greatly in ideology, they share a common essence of a world-view in which both the formal and informal structures and processes of governance, social order, the right to life and human rights overall are all subordinated to the “law of the jungle” in which only the most ruthless are fit enough and therefore entitled to survive. They and their cronies see themselves and their constituents as being supremely exceptional, invincible, entitled and justified by self-certified greatness or even by God in everything they believe and do, however appalling and depraved, in their relentless pursuit of domination of “lesser” beings.

The world has seen many harsh authoritarian regimes in modern times. The following table provides some prominent examples.

Since 2009, Netanyahu has gradually introduced more and more Zionist ideology and objectives into national policy and law, for example, the Jewish Nation State Law in 2018, which conferred full citizen and legal rights only on Jews and specifically (Article 7) warranted settler occupation of Palestinian land. However, only in 2022 did he provide an unequivocal opportunity for such far-right ultra-Zionist parties as Otzma Yehudit and others to gain national power by granting them coalition seats in his Cabinet.

As the table shows, in modern times, harsh regimes do not tend to enjoy longevity, certainly nothing like such past colonial empires as Roman, British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Venetian, Ottoman and Persian, which lasted for centuries, as did many dynasties in China. Even the notorious Nazi regime in Germany, which rampaged across Europe and was proclaimed by Hitler as the Thousand-Year Reich of the Aryan “master race”, only lasted a paltry 12 years. Are Netanyahu and his ultra-Zionist colleagues similarly aiming for a Thousand Year Eretz Yisrael based on ethno-religious supremacy and, if so, what are their chances of success?

Arguably, the US could also warrant inclusion in the table of authoritarian regimes, in respect of Trump’s current Make America Great Again (MAGA) second presidency and his flagrant abuses of the constitution and the law, including the Project 2025-based rapid deconstruction of US democratic institutions, civil rights and civil protections. Many believe that the Trump administration is already an elected dictatorship, turning the US into a pseudo-democracy and sliding inexorably towards a totalitarian dystopia.

The empirical evidence from history suggests that the chances of long-term success for regimes based on beliefs about the exceptional superiority of their populations, or their racial or religious supremacy, or their divine agency and right, are very low indeed. Darwinian theories of “survival of the fittest” that may fit well with biological and genetic characteristics are far less predictive when it comes to the longevity of nations.

The claims and assertions of their superiority and entitlement advanced by supremacists of all kinds are typically expressions of fantasies and delusions. They are not based on testable evidence but often on absurd beliefs and ideological certitudes, whether relating to religion, race, nationality or politics. No matter how elaborate their arguments or intricate their sophistry, or how loudly and aggressively they project them, supremacists cannot escape the laws of history or what is essentially a population ecology model of nation-states and interest groups, as proposed in 2015 by David Lowery and Virginia Gray. In this model, analogous to biological functionalism, all nations and groups grow, mature and eventually decline, albeit at differing rates. Just as no biological entity can live forever, so too must every nation anticipate that eventually it will decline, if not cease to exist. 

This life-cycle model is similar to the four “turnings” of growth, maturation, decay and destruction posited by William Strauss and Neil Howe (1997) in their exploration of America’s history and its likely future into the 21st century. I discuss all this at length in chapter 6 on The Alt-Right and US Foreign Policy during Trump’s first presidency, pages 169-205, in The New Authoritarianism Vol 1 (2018). 

The current ebullience of Trump’s White House administration and the MAGA movement in his second presidency is based specifically on a total denial that the laws of history or an eventual decline of US supremacy or its superpower dominance could possibly apply to the United States. They argue that the US will continue, uniquely, forever, to be the exception, as discussed at length by Professor Hilda Restad. While many other powers that have declined in modern times have maintained sovereign integrity, longevity and respectability via acceptance, adaptation and redevelopment, MAGA delusions and population brainwashing are likely to delay the inevitable transition in the US as the only viable alternative to catastrophe, possibly into the late 21st or early 22nd century — a sobering thought. 

What about Eretz Yisrael? There are no signs that the Netanyahu regime would ever contemplate failure of their exceptionalist beliefs, or of asserted divine authority, or of ultra-Zionism, or of a Greater Israel expansion mission, or contemplate acceptance of a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine peace. The very idea that Israel could ever be subject to the laws of history or a life-cycle, or out of self-interest, should curtail its neo-imperialistic stance towards neighbors, is just not in the ultra-Zionist playbook. They expect other nations to capitulate, to adapt to Israel, its military might and its demands — or else. No likelihood of its zero-sum policy towards the Palestinians being ditched unless and until the Netanyahu regime falls and a more liberal governance emerges — another sobering thought.

The anti-Semite conundrum facing ultra-Zionists

One of the most well-recognized defense mechanisms of ultra-Zionists is to slap anyone who dares to criticize Israel or Zionist excesses, even mildly or constructively, with the slur of anti-Semitism. It is unclear whether they truly believe that there is only a completely “black” or “white” option of either 100% pro-Israel or 100% anti-Semitic, or whether it is simply a convenient and effective reflex to accuse any critic of the damning anti-Semitism slur that is difficult to disprove, however ludicrous it might be in particular cases. Professor Omer Bartov, the acclaimed Israeli analyst and author on the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict, provides penetrating commentary on this issue.

Perhaps even more absurd is their tendency to accuse of anti-Semitism all Palestinians and all Arabs, especially those who dare comment or complain about Israeli conduct. It is absurd owing to the little-known fact that Jews and Arabs (but especially Palestinians) share almost identical Semitic DNA, as revealed separately in 2000 by Professor Michael Hammer and colleagues, and Professor Almut Nebel and colleagues, based on extensive clinical testing programs. When ultra-Zionists scream racial abuse at Palestinians and Arabs in general (and vice-versa), they are screaming at their genetic kith-and-kin.

Intuitively, one might anticipate the Hammer and Nebel findings of shared biological ancestry to be true, given the fact that Palestinians and Jews have lived in close proximity in the same land and interbred for several thousand years (despite their distinctive cultures and the preposterous revisionist claims of ultra-Zionists that the land has always been Eretz Yisrael owned and occupied exclusively by Jews, with Palestinians being merely recent squatters). The relative proportions of Jews and Canaanite Levantines (Palestinians) have ebbed and flowed over the millennia, as have their geographical concentrations across the same land.  

The Jewish tribal strongholds in the Roman province of Palaestina were in Judea and Samaria. Following the Arab invasion of the 7th century CE, the Jewish proportion of the population gradually declined, while the non-Jewish Levantine and Arab populations increased. This continued throughout the Ottoman period and, after the British Mandate, the 1922 census recorded the population to comprise 11% Jews and 78% Palestinian Muslims. The Jewish population began to increase again, but at the end of the British Mandate in 1948, census data still only showed 32% Jews as against 60% Palestinian Muslims.

With such historical data in mind, the ultra-Zionist insistence that the whole of Eretz Yisrael is, and must be, exclusively Jewish sounds very much like a “cuckoo in the nest” protesting that the other nestlings, its close genetic cousins, just have to accept that they will be ousted to guarantee the survival of the “cuckoo”. The seminal work by Rabbi Ya’akov Shapiro of the International Council of Middle East Studies exposes the degenerative journey of Zionism from Jewish identity crisis to Israeli identity theft and its mission to erase Palestinian identity.

The underpinning psychopathology

Those who profess and exhibit evil ideologies and perpetrate monstrous acts of inhumanity are responsible for their own conduct. Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist organization that has dedicated itself to the destruction of Israel and Jews, is wholly responsible and accountable for its attack on October 7, 2023, the killing of 1,139, the wounding of some 3,400, and the taking of 251 hostages into Gaza.

Over the subsequent 23 months, as summarized above, Israel has conducted a relentless counteroffensive ostensibly against Hamas but in reality amounting to a mass collective punishment of the entire Palestinian Gaza civilian population of some 2.2 million by slaughter, wounding, mass starvation, forced evacuation, destruction of housing and medical facilities, and denial of means of life maintenance. Even at its height of power, Hamas’s armed militant numbers never exceeded 30,000 or roughly 1.2% of the total Gaza population. Estimates put the current Hamas numbers at 12,000 with only small arms weaponry, set against the IDF armed personnel in excess of 600,000 plus jet fighters, helicopter gunships, sophisticated missiles, tanks, artillery and armored vehicles.  

There is no moral equivalence between the Hamas crimes against Israel on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent crimes against Gaza. The leaders of Hamas and Israel are both evidently guilty of terrorism and war crimes against each other’s civilian populations. Neither side can reasonably claim to be 100% paragons of virtue, rectitude and right — far from it. They differ greatly in ideology but not in the principles and methodology of terror or their ruthlessness. 

The biggest difference lies in the gargantuan disparity in available resources to prosecute the Gaza War, as evidenced by the scale of the Israeli onslaught against Gaza and its civilian population. Here, Israel is only able to exercise such overkill because of ongoing financial, military and diplomatic support from its greatest ally, the US. 

President Trump could, in an instant, if he so wishes, end Israel’s Gaza War by threatening Netanyahu with withdrawal of support — rather like Don Corleone in The Godfather, making him “an offer he couldn’t refuse.” However, this is wishful thinking, since Trump and his White House team are in total lockstep with Netanyahu and the ultra-Zionist agenda. Trump and Netanyahu also share a common view and business interest in all that multi-billion-dollar real estate ready for exploitation once the Palestinian population is “cleansed” from Gaza, not to mention exploiting Gaza’s littoral and offshore gas deposits with little or no benefit for Palestinians.

All authoritarian regimes are likely to exhibit harshness, even brutality, and a range of other unpleasant or obnoxious characteristics. The regimes of Hamas, Netanyahu and Trump are all examples in their own ways. Their weaknesses emanate from manifest character defects and apparent personality disorders of some of the key protagonists.

It is self-evident that any group or organization that would plan the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel (as Hamas did) was then, and remains, run by individuals who, to varying degrees, could be fairly described in common parlance as psychopaths. They continue to declare their implacable intent to erase Israel and its Jewish population from the map (despite their never being likely to possess the necessary resources). 

The characteristics of psychopathy cover a range of traits that are likely to threaten harm to other people, but only a minority of clinically diagnosable psychopaths ever engage in or orchestrate physical violence. Instead, they are much more likely to cause harm by manipulation, coercion, mental cruelty, lying, confidence trickery, callousness, power abuses, spitefulness and so on. Psychopathic leaders typically do not personally engage in violence but do so vicariously via command, direction, incitement and manipulation of others. 

Typically, clinically raised levels of psychopathy (including the closely related sociopathy) are detectable in society at around 3% of the population. However, as large-scale field studies by Katerina Fritzon et al (2016) and Nathan Brooks et al (2019) have shown, the prevalence of such disorders rises to 20% among CEOs and top teams. The power attractiveness of boardroom or ministerial jobs may explain why toxic personalities appear to have a disproportionate presence among corporate and political leaders.

Characteristically, those having psychopathic and sociopathic personalities are unable to feel empathy or, indeed, recognize or accept that their decisions or conduct cause harm to victims. They have no conscience, regrets, remorse or feelings of guilt but may nonetheless exude charm and feign concern. Typically, such personalities also exhibit one or more of the following negative traits: paranoid delusions, excessive narcissism, delusions of grandeur, megalomania and power abuse, persistent pathological lying, committing major fraud, fixated hatreds, barely suppressed persistent anger and explosive outbursts, excessively vengeful reactions and an end-justifies-the-means callousness. 

Lengthy study of psychopaths in organizations by psychologists Professors Robert Hare and Paul Babiak led them to coin the phrase “snakes-in-suits”. Hare also developed a 20-point list of indicators designed for use by psychiatrists and other clinical professionals, but often referred to by criminologists, sociologists, lawyers and other professions. An interesting exercise is to apply the Hare test to the expressed language and known policies and conduct of Hamas leaders, Netanyahu and his present Cabinet, and Trump and his second presidency MAGA Cabinet. Expect few surprises! 

Some relevant psychoanalytical studies of key protagonists have also been done. For example, the eminent psychiatrist and political psychologist Jerrold Post published a profile of Donald Trump in 2020 that was widely acclaimed. The forthcoming book by Itzhak Benyamini provides a psycho-political analysis of Netanyahu and Israeli society that may also prove revealing. 

The propaganda war and its global fallout

What emerges from the leadership of each of the main protagonists in the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Gaza War (Hamas on the one hand and Israel and the US on the other) is a toxic mix of endless perceptual defense, denial, lies and relentless attempted brainwashing of their populations and the wider world. Since 1948, the well-funded and resourced psychological warfare and propaganda output by Israel, aided by the US, has successfully limited in every respect the Palestinian cause of nationhood, land rights, justice and even basic humanity. The “might is right” principle and the old Goebbels propaganda heuristic, namely “Tell a lie once, and it remains a lie. Tell it a thousand times and it becomes the truth,” have served them well. 

However, as 2024 progressed, the inescapable images and mounting factual evidence of Israeli IDF carnage and atrocities against the mass civilian population of Gaza began swamping the TV screens, news media, social media and Internet. The world’s horrified citizens began lobbying and pressuring their own governments to do something, anything, to stop what soon earned the tag “Israeli genocide in Gaza”.

Israel may never shake off its “Gaza genocide” tag. It is also uncertain, but highly unlikely, that Netanyahu will readily change course and draw back from his latest reoccupation campaign, despite the world’s opprobrium, increasing sanctions and yet more nations formally recognizing Palestinian statehood. The US position is pivotal, but Trump prefers to let Netanyahu have a free hand. Amoral calculation and “what can we get away with?” remain their order of the day. Meanwhile, states nominally in the Western/US orbit but disenchanted by Trump’s disrespectful attitude and policies on Israel-Gaza, the Middle East and trade tariffs are pivoting towards China and Russia.

The flagrant Israeli bombing of the Hamas diplomatic mission for Gaza negotiations in Doha, Qatar, on September 9, 2025, has not only derailed the fragile negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire and peace but also likely trashed five years of peaceful “tolerated difference” rapprochement brought by the Abraham Accords between Israel and a number of West-supporting Arab states. On the volatile “Arab street”, Trump and the US administration are now seen as willing and obedient servants of their “master”, Israeli PM Netanyahu and his ultra-Zionist cabinet. Or, as the caption to a widely circulating photo of Netanyahu in front of Trump cabinet members cynically puts it: “The worst President the US has ever had.”

Perhaps only hubris and an unforeseen wild card event could radically thwart the Israel-US joint hegemony. However, former Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Matthew Parris argues for foreign governments to apply far tougher sanctions against Israel, its leaders and its economy and to urge its population to oust the Netanyahu regime. External pressure and pariah status — including total trade boycotts, visa/travel embargos, denial of banking facilities, stopping international money transfers, blocking capital and real estate investments, enhanced anti-money laundering scrutiny, scrutiny of individuals’ IDF military service, scrutiny of individuals’ support for ultra-Zionist extremism, referral of suspected war criminals and genocide perpetrators to international criminal courts — all may now become inevitable.

Ultimately, who controls the Near and Middle East is at stake. What leadership qualities do Israelis, Palestinians and Americans — and also the rest of the world — want or prefer to be in charge of their respective destinies? Will authoritarians and psychopaths continue to dominate them?

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.