Monthly Archives : August 2014

Embracing the obvious truth


    It isn’t hard to understand the truth about Israel and Hamas.   Four-year-old Daniel Tragerman was murdered on Friday afternoon in his home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz by Hamas terrorists.   They shot him with a mortar launched from a school in Gaza’s Zeitoun neighborhood. At the time of the launch, the school was filled with civilians who…

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Understanding the Israeli-Egyptian-Saudi alliance


  Hamas’s war with Israel is not a stand-alone event. It is happening in the context of the vast changes that are casting asunder old patterns of behavior and strategic understandings as actors in the region begin to reassess the threats they face.   Hamas was once funded by Saudi Arabia and enabled by Egypt. Now the regimes of these…

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Why Israel is losing the information war


    For most Israelis, the international discourse on Gaza is unintelligible.   Here we were going along, minding our own business.   Then on a clear night in June, apropos of nothing, Palestinian terrorists stole, murdered and hid the bodies of three of our children as they made their way home from school.   Before we could catch our…

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Anti-Semitism and its limitations


  Outside the US, throughout the Western world, anti-Semitism is becoming a powerful social and political force. And its power is beginning to have a significant impact on Israel’s relations with other democracies.   Consider South Africa. Following a lopsided vote by the University of Cape Town’s Student Union to boycott Israel, Jewish students fear that their own student union…

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Obama’s new plan for Hamas


    President Barack Obama has a plan.     He wants to use the ceasefire talks in Cairo to strengthen Fatah.     In remarks Wednesday, Obama said, “I have no sympathy for Hamas. I have great sympathy for some of the work that has been done in cooperation with Israel and the international community by the Palestinian Authority. And they’ve…

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Fighting without silver bullets


    Hours before Israel accepted the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire deal on Monday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu traveled to the south to try to allay the fears of area residents.   It’s not at all clear how successful he was.   Residents of the communities bordering the Gaza Strip who evacuated their homes are skeptical of the IDF’s claims that…

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Interview on Shalom TV


Below is the YouTube of a telephone interview I did with Shalom TV yesterday. In the 30 minute segment, the first 20 minutes are devoted to a discussion of the Obama administration’s anti-Israel positions during the war with Hamas in Gaza. The last 10 minutes are a discussion of the US media’s hostile coverage of Israel during the war. I…

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Congress, Obama and the way to defeat Hamas


As often happens in war, plans are overtaken by events. Following Hamas’s attack this morning on Givati forces in Rafah during the US-UN ceasefire, I realized that my assumption that a ceasefire is possible, on which I based my latest column was no longer supported by evidence.    I wrote the following column in light of what I now realize…

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Israel’s Endgame in Gaza


  The fighting is still raging in Gaza. Each day the IDF destroys more and more tunnels and other terrorist infrastructure. Each day, we discover new facets of Hamas’s depravity.   The three soldiers from the Maglan commando unit who were killed on Tuesday in the southern Gaza Strip, were buried in the rubble of a UN clinic. They entered…

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