Monthly Archives : January 2020

  From 1994 through 1996, as a captain in the IDF, I served as a member of Israel’s negotiating team with the PLO. Those years were the heyday of the so-called peace process. As the coordinator of negotiations on civil affairs for the Coordinator of Government Activities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, I participated in all of the negotiating sessions…

In Israel’s early years, every time the US ambassador traveled to Jerusalem to meet with government leaders, he would have his chauffeur stop his car at the entrance to the city, and replace its diplomatic license plates with regular civilian plates. The State Department refused to recognize that Jerusalem was part of Israel. The license plates were for Israel. And…

Leaks about the details of President Donald Trump’s peace plan are contradictory. Until the President releases his plan officially, we won’t know for certain what it involves. But from what we have experienced so far with the Trump administration generally and President Trump in particular, it is clear that Trump does not accept the premise that formed the foundation of…

What the foreign leaders who came to Jerusalem this week to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day and commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz will take home from their visits is unknowable. But we do know what they brought with them. Whether they intended to or not, the leaders who came this week to Israel’s capital to bow…

“Our international position has never, ever, in the history of the state since 1948 until today, ever been so terrible.” So declared MK Yair Lapid in February 2016. Today Lapid is the leading contender to serve as foreign minister in a future Blue and White government. At the time, there were indications that Lapid merely exaggerating rather than flat out…

  Next Thursday is supposed to mark another diplomatic triumph for Israeli diplomacy. On January 23, the Fifth World Holocaust Forum will convene at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz death camp. According to Yad Vashem and the World Holocaust Forum, 45 heads of state will travel…

For the past 40-odd years, two narratives have guided American Middle East policy. Both were invented by the Carter administration. One relates to Iran. One relates to Israel. Both narratives reject reality as the basis for foreign policy decision-making in favor of delusion. Over the past two months, President Donald Trump has rejected and disavowed them both. His opponents are…

Was the machete attack at Rabbi Chaim Rottenburg’s home in Monsey, NY last Saturday night wake-up call enough? Are liberal American Jews ready to accept the truth about anti-Semitism in America? Following the December 10 massacre at the kosher supermarket in Jersey City, Chris Gadsen, a local high school principal shared an op-ed calling for dialogue between the city’s Jewish…