A close friend was recently called up to the reserves, where he serves as a commander in an infantry battalion currently responsible for an area of operations in Samaria. On his first furlough home, he told me the story of an interchange with one of his soldiers. The soldier – a kibbutznik whom we'll call Alon – gave my friend,…
This week began with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon succumbing to US pressure and tabling a security cabinet debate on the route of the security fence. After preventing his ministers from discussing the issue, Sharon sent his bureau chief Dov Weissglass to Washington. There, he pleaded with US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice not to sanction Israel for building the fence…
This coming Sunday, Israel's Who's Who will be joined by the rich and famous from around the world at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv to celebrate Shimon Peres's 80th birthday. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to attend the festival, as is former US president Bill Clinton. Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela are also set to be there. More…
Speaking hours before Hamas began its Tuesday murder spree, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon said he ordered the air force to use insufficient force to carry out its mission of bombing the Hamas leadership during its meeting in Gaza on Saturday. Ya'alon explained that he had purposely caused the mission of decapitating the Hamas leadership to fail, because…
In a recent interview with the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat, translated by MEMRI, Syria's Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass made a number of revealing statements. On the military front, he explained that Israel and the US are terrorist states. At the same time, terrorism-supporting countries like Syria and Saudi Arabia are victims, and terrorist organizations like Hizbullah in Syrian-controlled…