12/22/2017
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley glared at her colleagues at the UN Security Council Monday as she cast the lone nay vote against a draft resolution presented by Egypt to nullify US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Haley then berated her UN colleagues for their assault against US sovereignty and for their prolonged efforts…
12/15/2017
What is President Donald Trump’s Middle East policy? Monday Trump is scheduled to release a new US national security strategy on Monday. This past Tuesday Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster gave a speech laying out some of its components in a speech in Washington. McMaster’s speech was notable because in it he laid out a host of policies that…
12/15/2017
Europe is the epicenter of the political war against Israel. Europe fights Israel on the streets of Europe. Europe fights Israel in the corridors of power in Brussels, other Western European capitals and the UN. Europe fights Israel in Israel itself. Europe’s war against Israel is a passive-aggressive campaign fought and denied simultaneously. But in recent years, the mask has…
12/08/2017
With his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump gave a Hanukka gift to the Jewish people. But he also gave a Christmas gift to the American people. Trump’s gift to Israel is not merely that 68 years after Israel declared Jerusalem its capital, the US finally recognized Israel’s capital. In his declaration, Trump said,…
12/05/2017
Monday, The New York Times published the Palestinian response to an alleged Saudi peace plan. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly presented it to PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas last month. According to the Times’ report, Mohammed told Abbas he has two months to either accept the Saudi proposal or leave office to make way for…
12/02/2017
Five months ago, 28 year old Ziv Moyal, an Israeli security officer at Israel’s embassy in Amman, was stabbed in his apartment by a Jordanian assailant, whom he shot and killed. Moyal also accidentally killed his Jordanian landlord, who was present on the scene. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, incited by the state-controlled media, the Jordanian public was…
11/28/2017
Over the weekend, The New York Times published its latest broadside against US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for what the newspaper referred to as his “culling” of senior State Department officials and his failure to date to either nominate or appoint senior personnel to open positions. But if the State Department’s extraordinary about face on the PLO’s mission in…
11/21/2017
Is the PLO’s long vacation from accountability coming to an end? How about the State Department’s? In 1987 the US State Department placed the PLO on its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The PLO was removed from the list in 1994, following the initiation of its peace process with Israel in 1993. As part of the Clinton administration’s efforts to…
11/17/2017
Speaking at the Zionist Organization of America’s annual dinner, Steven Bannon, US President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and current CEO of the Breitbart news website, said the US political establishment has “lowered the bar on what [pro-Israel] is supposed to be.” Bannon invited the pro-Israel activists to join what he referred to as the “insurgency movement against the Republican…
11/14/2017
Friday, long-time US diplomats and Middle East experts Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky published an article in Foreign Policy expressing “buyers’ remorse” over Saudi Arabia’s newfound willingness to take the lead in regional affairs. Titled, “Donald Trump has unleashed the Saudi Arabia we always wanted – and feared,” Miller and Sokolsky note that for generations, US policymakers wanted the…