Arieh Kovler

Baudrillard argued that, in some sense, "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place". The world, instead, experienced a hyperreal simulation of war mediated via cable news.

For Mosaic Magazine's symposium on the Israel-Hamas conflict, I examine the role of social media in mediating the presentation of war.

The Social-Media War » Mosaic For most onlookers, Hamas’s atrocities and Israel’s responses exist primarily as they appear online. What effect will that have on each side—and on the platforms themselves?

I spoke to TalkTV this morning about the situation in Israel.

TalkTV on X "What happened on Saturday has got to be one of the worst terror attacks in the history of the world. Not just in terms of numbers but in sheer brutality." Israeli writer Arieh Kovler says Israelis are "terrified" about going back to normal. |

"Israel has always felt protected by its strong, sophisticated military. That sense of security was stripped away."

My thoughts on Israel's darkest day in fifty years in The Spectator

Israel has faced its darkest day for 50 years While preparing to head out to synagogue to join the dancing and celebration for the Simchat Torah festival, the rocket sirens started sounding. As we grabbed the kids and ran to our safe room (all new Israeli houses are built with one), I assumed there must have been some incident overnight, some I...

I should be joining the BBC News Channel at 9:30pm UK time to talk Musk and Netanyahu.

Sometimes you open Facebook and stumble across a Russian disinformation campaign. Here's Haaretz on what I found this morning.

Who faked an Israeli magazine to trash 'Ukrainian N***s'? ***

As Israel sees a general strike and mass protests against the government's attempts to neuter the judiciary, what stands behind the crisis? Today's Hat Tip is out.

Israel's Judicial Reform: Misunderstanding Democracy Thoughts on the Israeli government's plans to neuter the Supreme Court

After an extended hiatus, the Hat Tip is back! In this issue, I look at the UK polls and wonder: What if they don't narrow, and the Tory Party is all but wiped out at the next election?

What if the Tories are wiped out? Everyone knows that polls narrow, right?

I'll be on BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme at around 7:10am UK time to talk about the terrorist attacks in Israel.

My Israeli election preview for Dainik Bhaskar's newspapers.

Happy to write my first article for Dainik Bhaskar Group's 64 different newspaper editions in India.

My summary of the political situation in Israel

Israeli elections: Could Netanyahu return? With the Israeli Knesset set to be dissolved after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett decided his coalition could no longer govern, might Bibi plot his return?

An attacker somehow disabled the two-factor authentication for my Twitter account, logged in, and seems to have changed the email address and phone number associated with the account. This happened about 11 hours ago during Shabbat when I don't use electronic devices. I received the 2FA notice but no other email alerts (eg no "New login to Twitter from..." email). Twitter then locked down the account.

I am now locked out of Twitter after Twitter detected the suspicious behaviour, but I no way of getting back in because the attackers changed the contact details I need to do a password reset.

Anyone have any suggestions? Can anyone ask to encourage them to take a look?

How much responsibility do social media users have to avoid the dreaded 'pile on' when criticising other people or their ideas?

This is the first in an occasional series that hopes to work towards a voluntary Twitter Code of Conduct.

Pile-ons, Responsibility and the Sin of S***m A few months ago, Helen Lewis wrote on Twitter: "Above a certain follower count, your twitter feed is basically a newspaper, and I wish there was a voluntary code of conduct to reflect that. No amplifying stuff you haven't personally checked is true; and no hostile quote-tweeting random people with....

Elon Musk claims he wants to bring absolute free speech to Twitter. That plan faces some major challenges. My thoughts in the Hat Tip

Twitter's Free Speech Musquarade Elon Musk claims he wants absolute free speech on Twitter. That'd be a nightmare, but I'm not buying it

At 10:30am EST (15:30 UK, 17:30 Israel) I'll be joining a Twitter space to talk about fact checking, together with:

Bill McCarthy from Politifact
Dan Evon from Snopes
Rachel Muller-Heyndyk from Logically.AI
Shayan Sardarizadeh from the BBC
Alex Kaplan from MMfA
Maarten Schenk from Lead Stories
Daniel Funke from USA today

Come listen.

https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1zqJVBRVnndJB

Scheduled: Misinfo Meetup #8 - On Fact-Checking Prism Metanews’s space · Where live audio conversations happen

Putin's next move after the battle for Ukraine: ending the sanctions by any means necessary. We should already be preparing for what that means.

Putin's next move: ending the sanctions by any means necessary After the battle for Ukraine, Russia's foreign, intelligence and security policy will be devoted to smashing the coalition that imposed crippling sanctions

With what's happening in Ukraine I feel a bit silly sharing this, but today's Hat Tip is a bit of a birdseye view of the "truck convoy" phenomenon in the United States.

Convoys a-coming Some thoughts about the plans for Canada-style convoys to converge on Washington DC

I spoke to the Express about TRUTH Social, Trump's social media platform. I said a lot of things but my bottom line is that its first big test will be how it responds when the N***s show up.

Other points I made in a long chat with the reporter:

* TRUTH will basically be Trump's personal platform for putting out tweets. People on Twitter will end up seeing Trump "truths" [sic] screenshotted and posted here, much more than we currently see those weird statements he puts out.

* Trump is the favorite to be the GOP nominee in 2024. What does it mean for one party's presidential candidate to own a social media platform during the primary (if there is one)? The general election?

* I mentioned open N***s, but Truth will have to decide what it does about the Trump-supporting White Nationalist groypers. Gettr, run by Trump staffer Jason Miller, banned them. Gab loves them.

* If you go to MAGA or QAnon forums, it's like 70% Covid conspiracy stuff, 20% "rigged election", 5% "The Bidens are all child molesters" and 5% racism. Is that enough to sustain a successful social media platform? I doubt it.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1561364/Donald-Trump-news-US-riots-pro-Trump-protests-criminal-charges

I wrote a bit about Boris Johnson's woes.

Is Boris Johnson's Party Almost Over? The Downing Street parties have removed Boris Johnson's teflon coating. What will stick now?

I missed posting this at the time, but my final article in the January 6 series was a pessimistic take on the future of US democracy.

The Legacy of January 6 and the Ongoing Coup Has the United States had its last democratic election for President?

I was interviewed for this article in Montreal's La Presse. The interview was in English but the article's in French

Un an après l’assaut du 6-Janvier | Une démocratie au bord du gouffre La prochaine élection présidentielle américaine se conclura-t-elle… sur un coup d’État ? Pour certains, l’assaut du Capitole par les partisans de Donald Trump, il y aura un an le 6 janvier, annonce le scénario catastrophe. D’ici là, le sort de la démocratie américaine pourrait repose...

This week I wrote about how, despite it being a disaster, January 6 could have gone much worse.

It could have been so much worse: America got lucky on Jan 6 The January 6 Capitol riot was a disaster, but it was almost much worse. A look at some of worst-case scenarios that were narrowly avoided.

The Begin Center | מרכז מורשת מנחם בגין hosted me yesterday to answer questions about Israel's pandemic policies and what they tell us about the country's character.

Israel vs. COVID: A Deep Dive into Israel's Pandemic Policies Israel was among the first countries to close its borders when COVID-19 was first recognized as a potentially global threat back in March 2020. Since then, s...

I'll be on Anderson Cooper 360 (hosted by Jim Acosta) tonight, some time from 8-9pm EST, to talk about the Capitol attack a year on.

(well, unless I get bumped, I suppose)

I'm giving a (Zoom) talk at the Begin Centre this Wednesday at 20:30 Israel time on Israel's management of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sign up below.

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For the next few weeks I’ll be writing about the storming of the Capitol on January 6. The first piece covers the MAGA mindset in the months leading up to the attack.

From Election Day to Jan 6: Inside the MAGA Mind Exploring the mindset of Trump's most hardened supporters in the weeks before the January 6 attack

Is Omicron "mild"? We don't know yet, but you've probably seen it reported everywhere anyway. Today's Hat Tip looks at why.

https://arieh.substack.com/p/is-omicron-mild-we-dont-know-yet

Is Omicron 'mild'? We don't know yet Despite a widespread belief, we have no idea whether the Omicron variant induces milder disease than other variants. It's too early to say

Not all Covid conspiracy theorists are the same, and there are so many types. Here's a spotters' guide to help you tell Morgellons from the Great Reset.

https://arieh.substack.com/p/covid-conspiracy-theorists-a-spotters

Covid Conspiracy theorists: A spotters' guide Categorising Covid conspiracy theorists. You can do this at Thanksgiving, but don't tell your antivax relatives.

After 21 months, three governments, two elections, three lockdowns, and four waves of the virus, I tried to answer the question "What is Israel's doctrine when it comes to fighting COVID-19?" in the The Tel Aviv Review of Books

Fighting Covid: The Israeli Doctrine - Tel Aviv Review of Books A deep dive into how Israel has fought COVID-19, how it has fought it differently from other countries, and what the results of its struggle have been.

I'm quoted in the New Statesman's cover story this week about the Capitol riot and moves to overturn both the 2020 and 2024 election results.

How strongmen cling to power Authoritarian leaders around the world are strengthening their rule. Can anyone topple them?

The alt-Right wants to build its own Internet. A look at their attempts so far, with a focus on new player RightForge.

Trump Media and RightForge: The Alt Right is ‘building its own Internet’ Is the alt-Right's dream of a censorship-free Internet of their very own finally about to come true?

These are actual screenshot from the National Republican Congressional Committee's current fundraising drive. Supporters first got this SMS text:

"You failed the loyalty test. Trump's friends offered 9x match for 9 top Patriots & you wasted it. One last chance. Act now" with a link to this site.

After a bit of a break, the Hat Tip's back, and happily we get to talk about how Israel rode out the Delta wave.

Israel's Delta Wave: How a highly-vaxxed country rode out Delta Waning immunity, booster shots, and maybe a restored herd immunity: What happens when a highly-vaccinated country had a big Covid wave?

Masks work, and they work a bit better than we might have expected. But it seems that surgical masks are substantially better than cloth masks at preventing Covid, especially in the elderly. Interesting thread here: https://twitter.com/Jabaluck/status/1433036933400305673

Jason Abaluck on Twitter “The reduction was larger in villages where we (randomly) used surgical masks than those where we used cloth masks; in surgical mask villages, we saw a 12% reduction in COVID overall and a 35% reduction among those aged 60+.”

I wrote a bit about Israel's new Covid wave, looking at the data.

Inside Israel's Delta outbreak part I: the data Despite its vaccination success, Israel is seeing a new spike of the Delta coronavirus variant. Here's a look at the data. Warning: contains graphs