'Time may be a game-changing factor in the Israel-Hamas war'

The war in Gaza is at a tipping point

Sean Rayment in The Spectator 

A "defining moment" may be coming in the war in Gaza, says Sean Rayment in The Spectator, with Israeli forces trapping Hamas in "ever-shrinking pockets of land". Time will be a "potentially game changing factor". While Israel attempts to ignore the "growing clamour" for the conflict to stop, Hamas knows the "longer it can hold out, the greater the chance of Israel agreeing to another ceasefire".

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Why all this Trump hysteria?

Martin Gurri on UnHerd 

"What's an authoritarian anyway?" asks former CIA analyst Martin Gurri on UnHerd. Calling Trump this "won't even reach his sensory apparatus", but it could impact the "tens of millions of Americans" who voted for him, portraying them as "goose-stepping bigots – and you know full well that they're not". Instead, people should "relax". After all, Trump is "too old, too isolated, and too ADD to have a shot at dictatorship". 

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Britain's obesity problem is always someone else's fault

Madeline Grant in The Telegraph

The debate around Britain's obesity problem is "dogged by fatalism", writes Madeline Grant in The Telegraph. The word "fat" is "couched in euphemism", while obesity is "never treated as anyone's fault, but as a mystifying affliction". To tackle the problem "more positive interventions" such as promoting a healthy lifestyle are needed. Only "culture, willpower, and conscious choice" will tackle this crisis once and for all.

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Centrists are out of favour. But as the Netherlands is learning, the alternative is far worse

Arnon Grunberg in The Guardian 

The Dutch election victory of far-right populist Geert Wilders proves centrism is "drying up", says Arnon Grunberg in The Guardian. "But to dismiss the entire centre is an antidemocratic reflex that can only cause harm." It may be that "most electoral arsonists never intended to start a wildfire", but the progressive left in the Netherlands "provided antidemocratic and far-right forces with new ammunition and new impulses".

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