12/16/2020
For 72 years, U.S. presidents sought to achieve peace between Israel and the Arab world. For 72 years, they largely failed. What for so long eluded presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama seems to have come effortlessly to President Donald Trump. In the space of just four months, together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has achieved four peace deals between…
12/14/2020
Last week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview to Michael Doran from the Hudson Institute. As a scholar, rather than a reporter, Doran asked questions that related to the ideas that have animated Netanyahu’s actions over the years. The first part of their discussion revolved around Netanyahu’s speech before the joint houses of Congress in March 2015 where he…
12/05/2020
In an interview with the New York Times Tuesday, presumptive President-elect Joe Biden reaffirmed his plan to return the US to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. The US will rescind its economic sanctions on Iran if it complies with the nuclear deal’s limitations on its nuclear activities. Once this happens, Biden said he will seek to negotiate a new, longer-term nuclear…
11/27/2020
Last month, in a small town in West Virginia, a 74-year-old husband and his invalid wife were hospitalized for several days after eating rotten food the husband fished out of a dumpster. For the past decade and a half, former Pentagon intelligence analyst and operative Col. (retired) Lawrence (Larry) Franklin and his wife Patricia have lived in utter destitution. During…
11/27/2020
Over the past week or so we have been witnessing the emergence of a new sort of anti-Semitism in the Democrat Party. The new form of Jew hatred is a combination of anti-Zionism and identity politics. It is convoluted and hard to follow. But contradictions and all, it has arrived. And Jewish Americans, sensing the partisan disposition, are adapting themselves…
11/20/2020
Three diplomatic events transpired this week. Together they describe the crossroads before which Israel now stands following the US presidential elections. First, on Tuesday, the Palestinian Authority announced it is renewing its security coordination with the IDF after suspending it six months ago. The PA also expressed willingness to accept tax revenues that Israel collects on its behalf. The PA has…
11/13/2020
No matter who ultimately wins the presidential election, the Jews in America are the big losers. As Professor Ruth Wisse of Harvard has long explained, Jews are the bellwether for the health of democracies. Hatred of Jews rises in societies whose democratic institutions and values are in crisis. Jew-hatred is generally low in healthy, working democracies. If we learned nothing…
11/13/2020
The day before the U.S. presidential election, the progressive Israel Democracy Institute published the results of a poll of Israeli Jews asked whether they believed President Donald Trump or former vice president Joe Biden would be better for Israel. 70 percent answered Trump, 13 percent said Biden and 17 precent said they didn’t know. Since Election Day, and since the…
11/06/2020
On Wednesday, supporters of President Donald Trump gathered outside ballot counting centers in Arizona and Michigan to demand a clean and honest vote count. An MSNBC reporter in Arizona filmed the protesters in Maricopa Country where 400,000 ballots were being counted. Standing behind the protesters, the reporter tried to paint the crowd as violent and dangerous even as they kneeled in silent…
11/06/2020
Without knowing the results of the US presidential elections, certain conclusions can already be drawn safely. For instance, we can say with certainty that between 70 and 80% of American Jews voted for the Democrat, former Vice President Joe Biden. On the face of things, American Jews could have been expected to vote in the same proportion, in the exact…