08/21/2014
Hamas’s war with Israel is not a stand-alone event. It is happening in the context of the vast changes that are casting asunder old patterns of behavior and strategic understandings as actors in the region begin to reassess the threats they face. Hamas was once funded by Saudi Arabia and enabled by Egypt. Now the regimes of these…
08/20/2014
For most Israelis, the international discourse on Gaza is unintelligible. Here we were going along, minding our own business. Then on a clear night in June, apropos of nothing, Palestinian terrorists stole, murdered and hid the bodies of three of our children as they made their way home from school. Before we could catch our…
08/15/2014
Outside the US, throughout the Western world, anti-Semitism is becoming a powerful social and political force. And its power is beginning to have a significant impact on Israel’s relations with other democracies. Consider South Africa. Following a lopsided vote by the University of Cape Town’s Student Union to boycott Israel, Jewish students fear that their own student union…
President Barack Obama has a plan. He wants to use the ceasefire talks in Cairo to strengthen Fatah. In remarks Wednesday, Obama said, “I have no sympathy for Hamas. I have great sympathy for some of the work that has been done in cooperation with Israel and the international community by the Palestinian Authority. And they’ve…
08/07/2014
Hours before Israel accepted the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire deal on Monday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu traveled to the south to try to allay the fears of area residents. It’s not at all clear how successful he was. Residents of the communities bordering the Gaza Strip who evacuated their homes are skeptical of the IDF’s claims that…
08/01/2014
As often happens in war, plans are overtaken by events. Following Hamas’s attack this morning on Givati forces in Rafah during the US-UN ceasefire, I realized that my assumption that a ceasefire is possible, on which I based my latest column was no longer supported by evidence. I wrote the following column in light of what I now realize…
07/29/2014
When US President Barack Obama phoned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday night, in the middle of a security cabinet meeting, he ended any remaining doubt regarding his policy toward Israel and Hamas. Obama called Netanyahu while the premier was conferring with his senior ministers about how to proceed in Gaza. Some ministers counseled that Israel should…
07/22/2014
Operation Protective Edge is now two weeks old. Since the ground offensive began Thursday night, we have begun to get a better picture of just how dangerous Hamas has become in the nine years since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. And what we have learned is that the time has come to take care of this problem.…
07/18/2014
Israel deployed ground forces in Gaza Thursday night both because Hamas’s terror tunnels into Israel have become an unacceptable threat, and because it had to break the deadlock that had developed between it and Hamas. Until the ground invasion, Israel and Hamas were in a holding pattern. Hamas would not accept a ceasefire deal because Egypt’s offers provided…
07/16/2014
If the Palestinians are merely engaged in a nationalist struggle for self-determination, then why are they inciting genocide of Jewry? In the midst of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas released a music video in Hebrew calling for the Palestinians to bomb Israel and kill all Israelis. “Raze it [Israel] to the ground, exterminate the cockroaches’ nest, and…