This has been a banner week for Syrian diplomacy. First, together with their big Iranian brothers, the Syrians were given a place at the table alongside US officials at the conference on Iraqi security in Baghdad last weekend. At the same time as their underlings exchanged recriminations with the US, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and Iranian Defense Minister Mustafa…
Last November 26, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the IDF to withdraw its forces from Gaza. Sounding oddly triumphant, Olmert announced that he had reached a cease-fire with the Palestinians. The strangeness of his statement became apparent when just hours later Sderot absorbed yet another bombardment of rockets from Gaza. And as the IDF grudgingly withdrew its forces…
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is certain that he has nothing to be ashamed of. As the first Israeli leader to have led the country to military defeat, Olmert is proud of his performance in office and thinks that we should be, too. Thursday, Ha'aretz reported the gist of Olmert's February 1 testimony before the Winograd Committee which he appointed…
Israel's man in Mecca is at it again. Five years ago, for the first time, the Palestinians were beginning to feel diplomatic pressure. In January 2002, the IDF's interception of the Gaza-bound Karine-A Iranian weapons ship in the Red Sea exposed the close relationship that Fatah terror chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat had developed with the mullahs…
What are the dire threats Israel now faces? Will it be able to equip itself to face them? To explore these questions with us today, Frontpage Symposium has assembled a distinguished panel. Our guests are: Rael Jean Isaac, the editor of Outpost, the newsletter of Americans for a Safe Israel. She is the author of two books about Israeli politics:…
With the Bush administration now happily basking in the glory of positive coverage in The New York Times and enjoying the warm embrace of the James Baker/Brent Scowcroft wing of the Republican Party, it is hard to imagine that it will reconsider its decision to abandon the Bush Doctrine. That doctrine, named after President George W. Bush and most forcefully…
The general tendency of Westerners is to view global jihad as a foreign policy issue. But today it is clear that it is also a domestic policy issue. Over the weekend The Sunday Telegraph reported that a recently circulated British intelligence report warned: "The terrorist threat facing Britain from home-grown al-Qaida agents is higher than at any time since…
Iran has an interesting take on international law. According to Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki, the UN Security Council's Chapter VII resolution from last December requiring Iran to cease all its uranium enrichment activities is illegal. As he put it Wednesday during a friendly visit in Turkey, "We were against [the resolution] for being illegal and politically motivated." Anyone…
Last week it was reported that major supporters of Brandeis University have cut off their donations in retaliation for the university's hosting of Israel and American-Jewry basher and former president Jimmy Carter on campus. Carter was invited to the American Jewish university shortly after fourteen Jewish members of an advisory board at the Carter Center resigned their positions in light…