With the Knesset's defeat this week of the proposed referendum on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's planned withdrawal of Israeli forces and expulsion of Jewish communities from Gaza and northern Samaria, the last parliamentary obstacle to the establishment of a de facto Palestinian state with provisional borders was overcome. Although attention in Israel has been obsessively focused on our internal…
Last June, during a NATO summit in Istanbul, US President George W. Bush blamed the dictatorial rulers of the Arab world and their supporters for the culture of extremism that engenders terrorism and hatred of the West. Bush said, "In the last 60 years, many in the West have added to this [state of affairs] by excusing tyranny in…
During the course of his negotiations with Damascus-based Palestinian terror masters in Cairo this week, PA chieftain Mahmoud Abbas made two revealing statements. First, on Tuesday, Abbas said that upon receiving security control of Jericho, he would release from custody all of the Palestinian terrorists who have been incarcerated there since May 2002. Those terrorists, who were transferred to…
Amir Drori was my hero and my friend. Since I met him 10 years ago, Amir had been a rock of stability for me, as he was for anyone who was lucky enough to be close to him. Just knowing he was here, in Israel, on this planet, helped maintain my faith in the justice of the universe. And so…
Common wisdom has it that until Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah launched Tuesday's pro-Syrian demonstration in Beirut, his terror organization had been more or less on the fence regarding its position on Syria's occupation of Lebanon. This view is belied, however, by a speech Nasrallah broadcast on Hizbullah's Al-Manar television on February 17. In the speech, which was documented by…
Today the US is on a collision course with Syria. Monday, tipping its hat to international pressure, Syria began a redeployment of its military forces in Lebanon to the eastern Bekaa Valley. The Bush administration reacted to the announced redeployment plan by bluntly stating that it is insufficient. In so doing the US held to what has been its…
In the history of Israel's relations with the US, there has been no precedent for the influence that Minister-without-Portfolio Natan Sharansky has had on US foreign policy. While in the past Israeli leaders have worked closely with their American counterparts, no one other than Sharansky has managed to actually influence the way that American policymakers think about foreign affairs or…
"The terrorism is not anonymous. It has a name, it has an address…. It is spearheaded by a country – Iran. Teheran has become the capital of terror. A conclusion must be drawn on how to contain it." So said then prime minister Shimon Peres in March 1996 after Hamas and Islamic Jihad went on an eight-day murder spree…