US Vice President Richard Cheney's visit to Iraq on the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom was given scant coverage in the media. And yet it may go down in history as a pivotal moment in the transformation of post-Saddam Iraq into a beacon of democracy and freedom in the Arab world. Hours after Cheney's departure, the Iraqi presidency council…
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's speech in German before the Knesset this afternoon will be the culmination of what the Israeli media has referred to as an "historic" three-day state visit to Israel. The day before Merkel launched her "historic" visit, Der Spiegel reported on the "historic" visit of another German to Afghanistan. That visit ended on March 3 when the…
To understand the strange twists that Hamas's war against Israel has taken over the past week, it is instructive to cast a glance at the current situation in Pakistan. For in their dealings with Hamas, the Bush administration and the Olmert-Livni-Barak government have apparently been operating in accordance with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's playbook. In a radio interview this week,…
Last Thursday, a 28-year-old IDF non-commissioned officer was killed by a roadside bomb along the border with Gaza. A Beduin from the South, he served as a combat tracker. At his funeral, his cousin said, "He did everything he could to convince [Beduin] youth to enlist in the army to serve the state. He said his service was hard, but…
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left many Israelis and supporters of Israel scratching their heads in disbelief this week. Rice arrived in Israel in a week marked by Fatah-incited violence against Israel and Israelis, both in Judea and Samaria and within sovereign Israel. On Monday, a well organized group of hundreds of Arab thugs threw rocks at Jewish motorists…
The Olmert-Livni-Barak government's latest exercise in saber-rattling has ended with customary haste. Sunday Palestinian terror forces maintained their rocket and missile offensive against Israel, shooting 40 rockets, including upgraded Katyusha missiles at Sderot, Ashkelon, Netivot and surrounding areas. Whereas in 2005, 25,000 Israelis lived within Palestinian rocket and missile range from Gaza, the past week has shown that the number…
Ten days after the Pakistani elections, the geopolitical consequences of President Pervez Musharraf's defeat are beginning to come into focus. And they are grim. By any measure, Pakistan is a dysfunctional state. At least 25 percent of its 160 million people live in abject poverty. A third of Pakistanis suffer from illiteracy. The only prospering school system in the country…
Sunday thousands of IDF and police forces began streaming to the border with Gaza. In a massive show of force, they successfully deterred Gazans from participating in Hamas's first attempt to assault the border with Israel on Monday morning. Israel's successful response to Hamas's provocation stemmed from the IDF's understanding of the doctrinal source of Hamas's call for tens of…
Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence is deeply troubling. By setting a precedent of legitimizing the secession of disaffected minorities, it weakens the long-term viability of multi-ethnic states. In so doing, it destabilizes the already stressed state-based international system. States as diverse as Canada, Morocco, Spain, Georgia, Russia and China currently suffer problems with politicized minorities. They are deeply concerned by…
It is quite possible that terror master Imad Mughniyeh was not killed Tuesday night in Damascus for his past crimes, but to prevent him from carrying out additional attacks in the future. On January 30, French security services raided a Paris apartment and arrested six Arab men. Three of the men – two Lebanese and one Syrian – were travelling…