With Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip now a fait accompli, the question of whether the move was a mistake or not is no longer salient. The fact of the matter is that the withdrawal from Gaza created a new strategic environment for Israel and the central issue today is how Israel will contend with the strategic realities that are…

One of the most disturbing side effects of the five-year-old Palestinian terror war against Israel is the wave of global anti-Semitism that arose in its wake. The fact that the new anti-Semitic wave is rooted in the Left rather than the Right is shocking for the majority of Western Jewry, which for generations has been politically aligned with the Left.…

The announcements this week by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's top advisers, in-house generals and Vice Premier Shimon Peres (along with Sharon's dubious denials) that the government will now begin planning more land giveaways to the Palestinians after last month's destruction of our communities in Gaza and northern Samaria ought to have caused a furor in the country. And yet it…

There is not a single political leader in Israel who will not uphold the country's identity as the Jewish state. But what does that mean? Does the fact that Israel is the Jewish state mean that it has a unique mission in the world that distinguishes it from every other state?   The overwhelming majority of Israelis would say that…

In the months that preceded the forcible eviction of all Israelis from their homes and communities in Gaza and northern Samaria, and during last month's expulsions themselves, the commanders of the IDF and police responsible for the operation defined "preventing" or "not exacerbating" the "schism in the nation" as one of their principal goals.   This was all well and…

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's daily talking points are becoming increasingly delusional. Standing before foreign audiences and journalists he libels his political opponents as "radical extremists" who have stolen the Likud from him. Between attacking them personally and deriding Israel's democratic process generally Sharon found the time to launch a weird rhetorical offensive against Hamas.   In New York over the…

Less than a week after the IDF's final retreat from Gaza, Israel's senior military brass found itself warding off attacks on two fronts.   In Gaza, now empty of all Jewish presence, the Palestinians lost no time in taking charge of events in their own special way. First came the firebombing of the synagogues.     We were asked indignantly…

Last Thursday Israel sent a plane laden with relief supplies to New Orleans to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Foreign Ministry's Web site noted that the shipment included "80 tons of food, disposable diapers, beds, blankets, generators and additional equipment which were donated from different governmental institutions, civilian institutions and the IDF."   The Web site's notice of the…

They say that one picture is worth a thousand words. No doubt this is true. But what is the guarantee that those words are truthful?   On September 30, 2000, The New York Times ran a photograph that, no doubt, for the photo editor, told the entire tale of the then two-day-old Palestinian terror war against Israel. The picture showed…

Last Thursday's "historic" meeting between Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri in Istanbul was immediately extolled by the local media as the "first fruits" of the disengagement from Gaza.   In his statement following the meeting Shalom said, "I wish to particularly thank President Musharraf for his courage in promoting peace and moderation in our region…