Since Israel withdrew its citizens and military forces from the Gaza Strip last summer, a great deal has been written about the consequences of the destruction of the Jewish communities there for the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. Much has also been said of the rising threats to Israel's security in the south as a result of the retreat…
Yesterday was Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish Arbor Day festival. While, as is traditional, Israeli schoolchildren marked the day by taking nature walks and planting trees, militant Israeli leftists, funded by American Jewish donors, found a different way to mark the holiday. In a junket sponsored by the New Israel Fund, militant Israeli leftists, led by cultural icons like War…
Israel's public debate is known for its ferocity and general nastiness, but very rarely is the prime minister called a bald-faced liar. The fact that both the Likud and Labor called Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert just that after he gave his first televised interview as acting premier Tuesday night is therefore significant. In that interview, as during the…
After reading the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision Saturday to refer Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council it is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Teheran greeted the resolution with the indignant and combative announcement that it would cease all cooperation with IAEA inspectors. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday: "If this…
On Thursday, for the second time this week, a group of Palestinian terrorists took over the European Union's offices in Gaza. Armed with rifles, the terrorists demanded an official apology from the Danish government for caricatures of Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last September. At the same time as the EU offices were commandeered, another group of terrorists in…
Whether it realizes it or not, American Jewry today stands before a precipice. It can force its way back onto stable ground, or it can fall. The chasm before which American Jewry now finds itself relates to the basic question of whether Jews in America have found a permanent, stable home in America where they are free to be Jewish…
Yesterday we awoke to a new reality: Hamas is the official leader of the Palestinian Authority and – thanks to the US and Israeli governments – the official representative of Arab Jerusalemites. If before Wednesday's poll Hamas concentrated its efforts in conducting its terror war against Israel and indoctrinating Palestinian society to support jihad, now the terror group will continue…
Apparently, the Olmert government's answer to the specter of Hamas's projected electoral achievement in tomorrow's elections to the Palestinian parliament is to advance the electoral fortunes and legitimacy of the imprisoned mass murderer and Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti. On Sunday, in an unprecedented step, the government allowed Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya reporters to interview Barghouti in his prison cell.…
It's official: Anti-Semitism is "in." The decision to award the Palestinian film Paradise Now the Golden Globes Award for best foreign film tells us that Palestinian terror against Israelis has become so acceptable that it is now Hollywood kitsch. The sight of the Jewish American diva Sarah Jessica Parker, of Sex in the City fame, excitedly announcing that…
As Israel's election season moves into high gear, one key question now emerging is how much is the Bush administration planning to impose itself and its preferences on the Israeli electorate? There are three sides to the question's increasing centrality. The first is historic. The US has had an unfortunate habit of meddling in Israeli elections ever…