06/29/2018
News coverage of the large and growing anti-regime protests in Iran this week has included warnings by Iran “experts” insisting that the vocal support the protesters are receiving on social media from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is counterproductive. Israeli and US statements of support for the Iranian people and their desire to rid…
06/28/2018
Turkey’s elections last Sunday did not produce any surprise results. The vote saw President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reelected with an outright 52 percent majority, as expected. Erdogan’s AKP Justice and Development Party retained control over the Turkish parliament (albeit in conjunction with the ultranationalist, anti-Kurdish MHP party). The results will not change the trajectory that Erdogan launched Turkey upon some 15…
06/27/2018
President Donald Trump will soon meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. When he does, he must respond to a challenge Putin threw down in Syria, on the heels of Trump’s diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea. How Trump and his administration respond to that challenge will affect not only the future of U.S.-Russian relations, but also Trump’s ability to operate credibly…
06/26/2018
National Security Advisor John Bolton said last Wednesday that while discussion of President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has centered on the administration’s revulsion with its institutional anti-Israel bias, the move was really about restoring American control over U.S. foreign policy. In his words: “We did talk about Israel [in setting out our reasons for leaving…
06/22/2018
A Google search of the terms “Trump Nazi,” brings up 70,900,000 results. There are a number of distressing aspects to this state of affairs. First and foremost, it is pure libel to call US President Donald Trump a Nazi. His daughter Ivanka is Jewish. His daughter-in-law is Jewish. Half his grandchildren are Jewish and his non-Jewish ex-daughter-in-law is half…
06/20/2018
President Donald Trump’s Middle East mediators, senior advisor Jared Kushner and chief negotiator Jason Greenblatt, are due in the Middle East this week to discuss aspects of their proposal for peace between Israel and the Palestinians with regional leaders. Their visit will include stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel. They will not be visiting with Palestinian…
06/15/2018
We didn’t learn this week whether North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons. Only time will tell. But we did learn that US President Donald Trump knows how to negotiate. All of the negotiations experts insist the opposite is true. “How could they agree to a presidential summit without first guaranteeing its end product?” they sigh, knowingly. “Trump’s showmanship…
Since the blow-up between President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at last week’s G-7 summit in Canada, the default position of the anti-Trump commentariat has been to compare Trump’s angry response to Trudeau, the leader of the U.S.’s closest ally, on the one hand, to his gracious treatment of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, on the other…
06/12/2018
Israel was established 70 years ago. But June 25 will be the first time the Jewish state has ever been the destination for a British royal visit. For 70 years, the British Royal family has boycotted Israel and so refused to officially come to terms with its very existence. It isn’t that Israel has been completely overlooked. While Queen Elizabeth II, who…
06/08/2018
In the past month, the leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements in America have taken steps that change the basic contours of their movements. These steps portend disaster for them and for their members. Over the past two decades, the major disputes among and within American Jewish groups have revolved around two main issues. First, they faced the challenge…