01/04/2019
When I was 12 years old, my family took our first trip outside the United States. We came to Israel on a two-week family tour. It was July 1982. The Lebanon War had just begun. In retrospect, it was the first step on what has become my lifelong Zionist journey. I was moved by everything I saw. The IDF soldiers…
12/21/2018
President Donald Trump’s sudden announcement Wednesday that he is removing U.S. forces from Syria shocked many. But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, because the move is consistent with key aspects of Trump’s military and foreign policy. Trump promised to bring the 2,000 U.S. Special Forces home from Syria in April. When his announcement sparked opposition from the Pentagon and from…
12/20/2018
On its face, President Donald Trump’s announcement that he is pulling US forces out of Syria seems like an unfriendly act towards Israel. But it isn’t. Trump’s decision to pull US forces out of Syria is of a piece with outgoing US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley’s address on Tuesday to the UN Security Council regarding the Palestinian conflict with Israel.…
12/19/2018
It appears that Israeli-Saudi ties are one of the casualties of the Jamal Khashoggi affair. As a result of the outcry in the U.S. media and Congress following the recent murder of Saudi journalist and Muslim Brotherhood supporter Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, according to the Wall Street Journal, two key advisors to Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) who were…
12/16/2018
The Left’s identity politics are becoming curiouser and curiouser for Jews. On the one hand, prominent leftists like Marc Lamont Hill, Tamika Mallory, and Linda Sarsour have no problem blowing on anti-Jewish dog whistles. On the other hand, some of their hard left comrades, like Representative-elect Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) and New York state Senator-elect Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn) are going…
12/16/2018
Imagine that in considering its responses to Palestinian shooting attacks against Israelis in Judea and Samaria, or Hezbollah’s offensive tunnels in northern Israel, or Hamas’s rocket barrages into southern Israel, Israel was required to take British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s positionsinto account. How would Corbyn’s leadership of Britain – the US’s closest ally and Israel’s largest trading partner in Europe – affect…
12/16/2018
According to the Israeli media, during his meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Brussels last Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked for the U.S. to impose an economic embargo on Lebanon. Pompeo reportedly rejected Netanyahu’s request. The meeting between the two men took place on the eve of Israel’s initiation of Operation Northern Shield last Tuesday. The operation…
12/09/2018
On November 6, I was honored to present the keynote address at the One Israel Fund’s annual dinner in New York. It was a particularly happy event because my good friend Marc Provisor was presented with the group’s Defender of Zion Award — a much deserved distinction.
12/09/2018
This is an interview I did last week for a Mexican Jewish website on my views on defending Israel, on Israel’s rights and on anti-Jewish discrimination. The writer asked me specifically about why I got angry at Anshel Pfeffer for falsely claiming that Israel’s communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines are illegal in a panel we participated in at the…
12/07/2018
Israel has no written constitution – but all the same, it is steeped in a deep and dangerous constitutional crisis. In the balance hangs nothing less than the country’s ability to remain a democracy, where the people elect their leaders and the elected leaders govern the country. Presently, a powerful group of unelected, self-appointed “gatekeepers” is challenging the foundations of…