11/10/2017
Princeton University Hillel’s last minute decision on Monday to cancel Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipy Hotovely’s scheduled address was the tip of a very dangerous iceberg. The iceberg itself was revealed the next day on Capitol Hill. On Tuesday the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2016. The bill is intended to facilitate the fight…
11/07/2017
The purges in Saudi Arabia are a shocking development with strategic implications. But to understand their potential promise, it is important to understand the context in which they are taking place. For 70 years, Saudi Arabia served as the largest and most significant incubator of Sunni jihad. Its Wahhabist Islamic establishment funded radical mosques throughout the world. Saudi princes have…
11/03/2017
The United States has a credibility problem. Put plainly, aside from Israel, no one in the Middle East appears to take the Americans seriously. Let’s start with the Palestinians. In the wake of last month’s unity deal concluded between US-backed Fatah and Iran-backed Hamas, US President Donald Trump’s special Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt announced, “Any Palestinian government must unambiguously…
10/29/2017
There are stunning parallels between US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of alleged collusion between US President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia and the ongoing criminal probes against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara. Monday, after a weekend filled with speculation due to an illegal media leak regarding sealed grand jury indictments, Mueller and his team indicted…
10/29/2017
This week Israel’s judo team was harassed and discriminated against by UAE officials when they tried to board a flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul, en route to Abu Dhabi to participate in the Judo Grand Slam competition. Apropos of nothing, UAE told the Israelis they would only be permitted to enter the UAE from Amman. And once they finally…
10/24/2017
It is no longer a secret that Israel and much of the American Jewish community are moving in different directions. Leftist American commentators like Peter Beinart and Roger Cohen, and the Jewish organizations that keep them on perpetual speaking tours insist that Israel no longer merits American Jewish support. Aside from their pique at Israel’s refusal to equalize the positions…
10/17/2017
On Friday, US President Donald Trump initiated an important change in US policy toward Iran. No, in his speech decertifying Iran’s compliance with the nuclear accord it struck with his predecessor Barack Obama, Trump didn’t announce a new strategy for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, or stemming its hegemonic rise in the Middle East, or limiting its ability to…
10/05/2017
In an interview with Walla news site Tuesday, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said that “the more active the US is [in the Middle East], the better it will be for Israel.” On paper, Liberman’s sentiments seem reasonable enough. President Donald Trump is far friendlier than his predecessor Barack Obama was. The tone of US-Israel relations has vastly improved since Trump…
09/29/2017
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had an applause line that should have brought the house down in his speech at Wednesday’s official ceremony celebrating 50 years of settlement in Judea and Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights. Netanyahu was speaking before a crowd of thousands in Gush Etzion, which was destroyed by the Arab Legion in the War of…
09/26/2017
Since 2015, Britain has been one election away from having an antisemitic prime minister backed by antisemitic voters. If current trends in the Democratic Party continue, in the not-so-distant future, the United States might be in the same position. Two years ago, Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of Britain’s main opposition Labor Party. That officially put an end to Tony…