For people around the world, the United States is not merely a country, and not merely a superpower. The United States is also a symbol of human freedom. Because their country is a symbol, the way that American officials behave is rarely taken at face value. Rather, their behavior is interpreted and reinterpreted by friend and foe alike. …
It goes without saying that if and when a decision is made in Jerusalem or Washington to carry out an attack against Iran's nuclear installations the public will only learn of the decision in retrospect. All the same, over the last few weeks, it has been impossible to miss the fact that the Iranian nuclear program has become the subject…
Monday the verdict in the largest terror finance case in US history was read in a Texas courtroom. The case against the Holyland Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its principal leaders — which ended in a mistrial — was predicated on the interconnection between terrorism and international finance. The five men were accused of financing Hamas by transferring…
Apparently US and Israeli leaders think that idle chatter is risk free. Last week, the Democrats in the US Congress decided to take on the Ottoman Empire. Acting boldly, the House Foreign Relations Committee condemned the empire (which ceased to exist in 1917) for committing genocide against the Armenians in 1915. The Democrats' goal is clear. They wish to…
As expected, after bending the Pakistani constitution like a pretzel, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf won his bid for reelection on Saturday. But Musharraf has not been strengthened by the race, to the contrary. In order to secure his reelection, he was forced to agree to stand down from his command over the Pakistani military. He was further forced to accept…
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is moving boldly down the rabbit hole. Next week, Rice is due back in the Middle East for meetings in Jerusalem and Ramallah. The purpose of her upcoming visit, like her previous ones, will be to pressure the Olmert government and the Fatah terror organization to reach "substantive agreements" that she'll be able to…
As the Jerusalem Post's Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh reported Monday, over the weekend he and the newspaper fell victim to a Fatah hoax. Saturday, Abu Toameh was "summoned" to Fatah's General Intelligence headquarters in Ramallah where he was given a "scoop" – a graphic videotape of the murder of a 16-year-old girl in July perpetrated as a so-called…