Full program

Part 1

We begin with the surprise victory of Prime Minister Netanyahu who won a fourth term as Israel’s leader in an election that pollsters said was very tight but nevertheless Netanyahu’s Likud Party clinched a convincing win making Netanyahu Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. Gideon Levy , an Israeli journalist and columnist for Ha’aretz who is the former spokesman for Shimon Peres, joins us to discuss the consequences of Netanyahu’s last-minute racist appeals to overcome the Arab vote and his vow to ultra-nationalist right wing voters that he would not create a Palestinian state.

Part 2

Then we look into what is expected to be an even stronger and more coordinated alliance between Netanyahu and the Republican Congress in thwarting President Obama’s efforts to make a deal with Iran and stifling any chance of a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. M.J. Rosenberg, a special correspondent with the Washington Spectator and a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, joins us to discuss the extent to which a newly-empowered Netanyahu and an implacably hostile Republican Congress can block Obama’s pending deal with Iran.

Part 3

Then finally we go to Tunis, Tunisia to get an update on the terrorist attack at a prominent tourist attraction in which 20 European tourists were killed and up to 50 were wounded. Massoud Romadani, World Forum organizer and member of the Committee for the Maghreb Regional Social Forum and a Tunisian researcher on the uprisings in the region, joins us to discuss this latest attempt to impede Tunisia’s post “Arab Spring” path to secular democracy and the likelihood that the massacre was carried out by some returnees from the 3,000 Tunisians who have gone to Syria or Iraq to wage jihad with the so-called Islamic State.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks on Syria that “there is no military solution, there is only a political solution” and that we have to negotiate with Assad in the end, a statement that the State Department quickly denied marked a shift in U.S. policy, stressing that Washington was not open to direct talks with Assad. The founder and Director of FREE-Syria Foundation Rafif Jouejati, the English-language spokesperson for the non-violent umbrella group of the Syrian opposition, the Syrian Local Coordination Committees, joins us to assess Assad’s response to Kerry that he would welcome any “sincere” change in attitude within the international community that would be positive. We also discuss whether or not the U.S. is planning to sell out the Syrian opposition.

Part 2

Then with crude oil dropping to $42 a barrel on Monday and heading towards a low of $30 a barrel, we try to reconcile why the growing glut of oil on the international market is not translating into low gas prices at the pump at home. Tom Kloza, the Global Head of Energy Analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, joins us to discuss this disconnect and how falling crude oil prices will impact the shale oil boom and Canadian tar sands production.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the dire warning about the California drought from a NASA water scientist who points out that the state “has no contingency plan for a persistent drought” and that “California has about one year of water left”. The Executive Director of Water in the West, Leon Szeptycki , a professor at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, joins us to discuss how agriculture consumes 80% of the state’s water, with 20% going to urban use, 70% of which is consumed for landscape watering.