US President George W. Bush found himself immersed last week in a political crisis of his own making. For the first time in his presidency, Americans told pollsters that they trust the Democrats more than the president on issues of national security. There is an Israel angle to Bush's misfortunes. In fact, the nature of the mess in which Bush…
This week, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu took a vital step towards reinvigorating Israel's democratic system. By forcing the Likud's Central Committee members to transfer their power to select the party's Knesset candidate slate to the rank and file membership of the party, Netanyahu brought about a change which optimally will make Likud Knesset members directly responsible to more than 100,000…
On February 6, the General Synod of the Church of England voted to impose a selective boycott of firms that do business with Israel. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams supported the motion. This was not Williams's first swipe against the Jewish state. To take just one example of his consistent anti-Israel bias, in June 2004, during an official visit to…
Ilan Halimi's barbarous murder in France should awaken all Jews to the most significant truth of our times: Today, every Jew in the world is on the front lines of war. As was the case 70 years ago, every Jew today is a target for our enemies, who shout from every soapbox and prove at every opportunity that their…
At its Sunday morning cabinet meeting did Israel's interim government finally lay out a strategy for contending with the fact that Hamas has taken over the Palestinian Authority? The Israeli and international media reports of the meeting could easily lead a person to think so. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. The interim government's decisions Sunday show…
Since Israel withdrew its citizens and military forces from the Gaza Strip last summer, a great deal has been written about the consequences of the destruction of the Jewish communities there for the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. Much has also been said of the rising threats to Israel's security in the south as a result of the retreat…
Yesterday was Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish Arbor Day festival. While, as is traditional, Israeli schoolchildren marked the day by taking nature walks and planting trees, militant Israeli leftists, funded by American Jewish donors, found a different way to mark the holiday. In a junket sponsored by the New Israel Fund, militant Israeli leftists, led by cultural icons like War…
Israel's public debate is known for its ferocity and general nastiness, but very rarely is the prime minister called a bald-faced liar. The fact that both the Likud and Labor called Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert just that after he gave his first televised interview as acting premier Tuesday night is therefore significant. In that interview, as during the…
After reading the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision Saturday to refer Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council it is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Teheran greeted the resolution with the indignant and combative announcement that it would cease all cooperation with IAEA inspectors. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday: "If this…
On Thursday, for the second time this week, a group of Palestinian terrorists took over the European Union's offices in Gaza. Armed with rifles, the terrorists demanded an official apology from the Danish government for caricatures of Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last September. At the same time as the EU offices were commandeered, another group of terrorists in…