The rapper's spectacular show at the Egyptian landmark is officially cancelled at the last minute.

Al Jazeera Media Network denounces the Egyptian move to reinstate a number of its journalists on 'terror' list.

The anti-Islam demonstration in Copenhagen comes after a string of Quran burnings in Sweden and Denmark in recent weeks.

A high-profile Egyptian activist who was recently released from prison landed Sunday in Italy, where the government championed his case.

Patrick Zaki had been sentenced to three years in prison on Tuesday after being accused of spreading 'false news'.

The Egyptian government hosts a regional summit, but the warring sides are not invited.

At the Vilnius summit, the United States and Germany have led the coalition of the squeamish in opposition to announcing a timetable for Ukrainian membership in NATO. They have some modestly plausible reasons, including fear of an automatic commitment to immediate war with Russia and reluctance to bring in a country whose territory is still partially occupied and whose institutions are not fully reformed.

Other arguments suggest a less thoughtful view. Ukraine has to show that it can handle modern military technology, or that it is a thriving democracy? Compare it with militarily negligible and politically contemptible Hungary, and the absurdity of these kinds of requirements becomes clear. One might infer from some official pronouncements that NATO membership is like joining a snooty club to which only those with good pedigree, clean shirt collars, and immaculately shined shoes need apply. It is not. NATO membership for Ukraine is a guarantee of Western (and not only Ukrainian) security and stability. It is not a favor to Ukraine but a move to avert another big European war.

The notion that NATO membership cannot be given to a country at war means that Russia has every incentive to keep the war simmering, no matter the cost. Similarly, the idea that a country that is partly occupied and whose borders are not universally recognized cannot be admitted will cause Russia to cling desperately to any piece of Ukrainian territory it can hold. Let it be noted that Germany joined NATO while under occupation by both the Soviet Union and the Western allies, and before it had acceded to its post-1945 borders.

[Ivo Daalder: Let Ukraine in]

The alternative advanced by President Joe Biden in a CNN interview is the so-called Israel model, in which the West, led by the United States, arms Ukraine to the teeth, guaranteeing the country, as an act of Congress put it with respect to Israel in 2008, “the ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors.”

Making strategy by dubious analogy is a bad idea. The historical differences are both illuminating and cautionary.

America extended its guarantee of a “qualitative military edge” to Israel in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In other words, it came after Israel had defeated its Arab enemies in four major conflicts (1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973), in part by taking the war into their territories. Israel staged bombing raids against targets deep in Syria and Egypt, including their capitals, from the 1960s forward, and unlike the Ukrainian drones flying to Moscow, these were not mere symbolic strikes. The Six Day War, in 1967, was an overwhelming Israeli victory, which involved the annihilation of its neighbors’ air forces and the advance of Israeli armor and infantry across the de facto 1949 border. The 1973 war similarly ended with Israeli forces within artillery range of Damascus and on the verge of destroying half the Egyptian force that had crossed the Suez Canal. Is maintaining that kind of capability and superiority what Washington and Berlin intend for Ukraine? Do they understand what it would require?

Ukraine, at present, has no comparable edge over the Russian military. It is struggling to expel the Russian invaders from territory they seized in 2022, let alone 2014. Ukraine undoubtedly has an edge over Russia in motivation, skill, and determination, but nothing like what Israel had already demonstrated in 1967 and would do again in 1973 and 1982 against Syria.

Military superiority rests on demography and economics. Over the course of its existence, Israel’s population has grown (1.3 million in 1950, 3.1 million in 1970, nearly 10 million today). Its economy, which was just under a third the size of Egypt’s in 1960, is now substantially larger. Ukraine has been, in essence, bankrupted by the war, and has had a quarter to a third of its population displaced—this on top of a declining birth rate. One projection has Ukraine’s population shrinking (and aging) from 41 million in 2020 to 35 million in 20 years. In short, it cannot tap the demographic and economic vitality that helped make Israel a going military concern.

A series of conventional victories brought a cold peace to Israel’s frontiers after the 1973 war, just as the societal and economic forces that underlay Israel’s military edge were beginning to open the gap with its Arab neighbors. Ukraine’s advantages over Russia are proportionally much less.

Israel’s relatively peaceful accommodation with its neighboring states had one other large element: its nuclear arsenal. By most accounts, Israel developed nuclear weapons as early as 1973. Indeed, during the most intense period of that war, it may have signaled its preparedness to deploy, if not use, them. Even by that year, neither Egypt nor Syria believed, as they had in 1967, that the destruction of the Israeli state by conventional means was possible; their territorial ambitions were strictly limited.

A Ukraine that has no allies pledged to come to its aid in the event of war, whose demographic prospects are poor, whose economy has been devastated not only by brutal battles but by deliberate and massive Russian sabotage and destruction, would be foolish not to pursue nuclear weapons. It has the technical skills not only to build the bombs but to construct delivery systems for them.

That is an outcome no one should want. The Russians might very well be tempted to strike at such a program preemptively, and if the Ukrainians were to get the jump on them, Kyiv might very well detonate a nuclear weapon as a warning against proceeding further.

Ukraine is a large country with few natural borders and a powerful enemy that is likely to attack it again absent NATO membership. The immensity of Russian oil and gas reserves means that Russia can eventually rearm; the stubbornness of the Russian elite’s belief in an imperial state and its rejection of Ukrainian sovereignty suggest its intent to do so. The position, in short, is entirely different from that of Israel versus its immediate opponents in the 1970s and ’80s.

The only security commitments that can give Ukraine some prospect of peace are those that guarantee the active and effective support of Europe and the U.S. in the event of a renewed invasion. Bilateral guarantees, however, simply take the burden off America’s NATO allies and are hostage to the vagaries of American domestic politics. Far better to achieve the same result by bringing Ukraine into NATO as soon as possible. Let it be remembered, too, that in the three-quarters of a century it has existed, NATO has had a 100 percent success rate in deterring conventional Russian attacks on its members, including postage-stamp-size Estonia and other states, like Ukraine, that were once subject to rule from Moscow.

At the 2008 Bucharest summit, NATO declared that it supported Ukraine’s application to join the alliance. We know what good that did. Regrettably, the 2023 Vilnius summit has simply reaffirmed the same in language of comparable mushiness, removing only one bureaucratic hurdle for Ukraine without solidifying its prospects for joining the alliance.  A firm invitation to join NATO and a deadline by which that will occur would have been infinitely preferable, and would deny Russia indefinite time and latitude to prolong this war.

Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty declares that an attack against one member is an attack against all, a fundamental premise of the alliance. But it only commits the alliance and its members to undertake “individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.” It does not, in other words, cause an automatic declaration of war against Russia—but it is a high and demanding commitment to Ukraine’s security. It will thereby be a far more effective deterrent against future Russian aggression, which otherwise is a virtual certainty in the years to come, with all the risks that adhere to that probability.

[Anne Applebaum: Multilateral man is more powerful than Putin realized]

Has NATO membership for Ukraine been excluded for good by the Vilnius summit? No more than the supply of vital weapons to Ukraine was by Washington’s reluctance to provide HIMARS or tanks or Patriot missiles or F-16s, or by Berlin’s initial belief in February 2022 that providing 5,000 surplus helmets to Ukraine was enough of a contribution for it to make. Time and again NATO’s largest members have been pulled—hesitantly, sometimes morosely and resentfully—into doing the right thing by allies closer to the front or with stronger spines and clearer vision. In this case Poland, the Baltic nations, and other frontline states have been joined by Britain, France, and other NATO members in arguing for moving on Ukraine’s membership firmly and quickly.

There is another moment ahead: the 75th anniversary of the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, which will be held in Washington in 2024. On that occasion President Biden can be the statesmanlike leader NATO needs in ensuring European security for decades to come by admitting Kyiv to the alliance.

Unless, of course, he prefers to be the father of the Ukrainian atom bomb.

New evidence further challenges the official version of last month's deadly sinking.