This week’s cover story introduces an event that, in all likelihood, will never happen: The trial of Benjamin Netanyahu.
James Ball writes that almost two years after October 7, it has “become impossible to describe Netanyahu’s actions as anything other than a series of war crimes.” But the Israeli prime minister’s greatest fear is facing justice.
This is why, according to former friends and staff, political rivals and journalists, Netanyahu is willing to do absolutely anything to avoid it – including prolonging attacks on Gaza. It’s a devastating read.
Part of our commitment to our readership when the magazine became The New World was to tell you something you didn’t know, from parts of the world you may not ordinarily read about. In that spirit, my next highlight of the week is written by Sinorn Thang in Cambodia.
In July, the country’s border dispute with Thailand broke out into sudden, intense conflict. While a ceasefire is in place, it’s far from the end of the story. What does it all mean for ordinary Cambodians? Sinorn shares the real stories on the ground in O Smach, a town in the far northeast, close to the Thai border.
Meanwhile, there is a glimpse of light in Hungary, where Iván L Nagy believes that Péter Magyar could be on track to end Viktor Orbán’s reign. A former Orbán ally, the young MEP came out against the regime in February last year. Now, with the government’s failing economic policies, crumbling social services and rampant corruption, it appears Magyar’s popularity is increasing with every day Orbán spends in office.
Displacing the authoritarian would be no mean feat, and the same can be said about eating healthily on a budget in America. About eight years ago, I was travelling around the US as a student. The cultured individuals that we were, our group frequented a Cheesecake Factory in Seattle for food one evening, where I ordered a salad.
It being the most expensive thing on the menu, but after weeks of stateside travel, I was craving something green and that possessed a crunch. When the meal arrived, it was swimming in grated cheese, dripping in oily pancetta cubes and could’ve easily fed our entire table.
As Charlotte McDonald-Gibson writes in the magazine this week, healthy food in the US is expensive and hard to come by. The MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement may have made this its modus operandi, but the problem, she writes, goes far deeper than they care to admit. It permeates into the extreme wealth disparity that seeps into all American life. Charlotte’s brilliant feature reveals exactly what this means for families, communities – and the economy.
Alongside all this, our regular columnists take on a range of topics. In his weekly diary, Alastair Campbell looks at Donald Trump’s recent trip to Scotland, breaking the news to the president that he’s not a world king, just a narcissist.
Our philosopher-at-large, Nigel Warburton, dissects the Online Safety Bill and wonders if, while we have to protect children online, we’re in danger of going down the road to surveillance hell.
British politics may now have entered its traditional silly season, but Patience Wheatcroft argues that our lack of seriousness seems likely to stick around once the summer has gone. And Tanit Koch is on hand to offer you her summertime guide to Germany’s music festivals. Jägermeisters at the ready!
