Columbia University disgraced itself this week beyond repair. Defending his decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to his campus, Columbia's President Lee Bollinger said he would confront the Iranian leader with a series of "sharp challenges" to his "alleged" support for terrorism, genocide, Holocaust denial, involvement in killing American servicemen and women in Iraq and human rights abuses…
According to the commander of IDF Military Intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, Israel's raid in Syria on September 6 against what was reportedly a North Korean-supplied nuclear installation in eastern Syria restored Israel's deterrent posture which was so weakened in last summer's war in Lebanon. Yet as the execution of anti-Syrian Lebanese parliamentarian Antoine Ghanem in a Christian suburb of Beirut…
If media reports of last week's IAF raid in Syria pan out, the attack against a North-Korean-supplied Syrian nuclear facility in eastern Syria should serve as a pivotal event in the free world's understanding of the enemy it faces in the current global war. The central question now is whether this clarity will be followed by a strategic shift in…
The IDF has abandoned its official silence in a seven-year-old case that has been characterized as a "blood libel" against the IDF and the State of Israel. On September 10, the deputy commander of the IDF's Spokesman's Office, Col. Shlomi Am-Shalom, submitted a letter to the France 2 television network's permanent correspondent in Israel, Charles Enderlin, regarding Enderlin's…
General David Petreaus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker's long-anticipated Congressional testimonies this week were edifying on two levels. First, they told us a lot about the complex and challenging nature of the war in Iraq today. In their presentations, the two men did not simply inform the Congress of the estimable, indeed amazing progress that coalition and…
Something is rotten in the British Jewish community. In recent years anti-Jewish violence and the social ostracism of Jews and Israel have reached new heights in the United Kingdom. Yet rather than confront their bigoted detractors, the British Jewish establishment seems to be surrendering to them. Two recent episodes are notable in this regard. One of the mainstays…
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert couldn't have looked more pathetic when he responded this week to a rocket attack on a day care center in Sderot by writing a letter of complaint to the United Nations. But what is he to do? Olmert and his government colleagues are stumped. They are unwilling to pay the political price that comes…
One by one the warriors ascended the stage Sunday evening to receive their commendations for battlefield valor and heroism during the war with Hizbullah last summer. Showing no emotion, they stood stiffly at attention before IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi as an announcer recounted how each one in turn eschewed his own safety and voluntarily walked,…
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's statements Tuesday in support of stiffer sanctions against Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons were justifiably heartening to many. Sarkozy's remarks, like his Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner's trip to Iraq last week, marked a refreshing departure from his predecessor Jacques Chirac's knee-jerk anti-Americanism. Yet while Sarkozy's open support for sanctions serves to distinguish him…
On August 25, two heavily armed terrorists wearing Israeli army uniforms climbed over the fence separating Israel from Gaza undetected in the early morning fog. Disguised in IDF uniforms, armed with guns and explosives and wearing bulletproof vests, the men were only discovered after they opened fire on unsuspecting IDF forces at short range, lightly wounding one soldier. Both were…