This week The Los Angeles Times published an investigative report exposing the depth of Syria's collaboration with Saddam Hussein in the years, months and indeed weeks and days preceding the US-led invasion of Iraq last March. The report, which ran under the headline "Paper trail leads to Syria as Iraq's main arms link," is nothing less than devastating…
"How could you report the war in Iraq if you sided with the Americans?" "How can you say that George Bush is better than Saddam Hussein?" These are some of the milder questions I received from an audience of some 150 undergraduate students from Tel Aviv University's Political Science Department. The occasion was a guest lecture I gave last month…
The US war on terror hit a new high and a new low this week. The capture of Saddam Hussein was a great victory. It showed that as far as the ousted Iraqi regime is concerned, President Bush is fulfilling the pledge he made on September 20, 2001, that, when it comes to fighting international terrorism, "We will not tire,…
The 20-day ground offensive that ended with the fall of Baghdad on April 9 to U.S. forces was characterized as much by the levelheaded courage of the men who fought it as by its speed and brilliance of execution. Its signature finish — the fall of Saddam Hussein's statue in downtown Baghdad — was celebrated in the streets of the…
One week after Egypt scuttled Israel's proposed UN resolution condemning the murder of Israeli children by terrorists, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom met with Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in Geneva. Commenting on Wednesday's meeting on Israel Radio, Shalom explained, "The very existence of the meeting… show[s] more than anything that the Egyptians have tried to warm up relations with Israel."…
Two Jews were brutally murdered in Paris in the week that followed the torching of the Jewish day school Merkaz HaTorah in the Paris suburb of Gagny. In an interview with Boston's Jewish Advocate, French Jewish novelist Nidra Poller says that the two murders, of a 23 year-old Jewish DJ and of a recently widowed Jewish shopkeeper, were played…
Israel is in the midst of an economic revolution. Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has a vision and a strategy. He is steadily liberalizing our economy and springing us from our monopolistic, union-controlled prison. The Histadrut, whose economic warfare has caused a net loss of 1.4 percent of GDP in 2003, is now losing its battle to protect its privilege…
Two weeks ago, recently resigned Palestinian cabinet minister Abdel Fattah Hamayel told the BBC that the Palestinian Authority shells out $50,000 a month to members of Fatah's Aksa Brigades terror cells. Hamayel said that Yasser Arafat is aware of these payments. The BBC reporter then sat down with Ata Abu Rumaileh and Zakariah Zubaidi, the respective heads of Fatah's…
What does Europe want from the Jews? Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis's Hitlerian rant this week was the latest expression of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. To an audience which included the Greek ministers of culture and education he asserted that the Jewish nation "is the root of evil. It is full of self-importance and evil stubbornness." Theodorakis…
Thursday morning we buried former Jerusalem Post editor David Bar-Illan in Jerusalem. I was blessed to have known David and to have learned from him when we worked together in then prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's bureau. I was a young foreign policy aide and David headed the bureau's Policy Planning and Information Division. David taught me many things. But if…