As US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice embarked on her maiden voyage, it was reported that she departed from America armed with a new policy paper on how to implement the Quartet's road map produced by the James Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. According to Edward Djerejian, the former US ambassador to Syria who directs the Baker…

Speaking with State Department personnel on Monday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave form to the Palestinian state that now stands at the center of American Middle East policy. "The Israelis," she said, "were going to have to recognize that there was going to have to be land for – contiguous land for the Palestinian state to exist on."…

Last Wednesday Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz did something unpardonable. He decided that the state can no longer abide by the law of the land. That law, the Basic Law for the Israel Lands Authority from 1960 provides the legal basis for the ILA's administration of both state-owned lands and lands owned by the JNF.   The law states that lands owned…

In America, the Democratic Party is in a state of tumult following its defeat in last November's presidential and Congressional elections, as voters deepened Republican control over both the legislative and executive branches of the government.     Because in the US judges are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate, over time they inevitably reflect majority sentiment.…

In a recent poll, 62 percent of Germans said they were "sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews." Two thirds of Germans said they believe Israel is waging "a war of extermination" against the Palestinians.   Jews often focus their attention on Holocaust sentiment among non-Jews to gauge anti-Semitic feelings. But while feelings about the…

Writing Tuesday in The Daily Telegraph, British military historian John Keegan compared the Palestinian terror war to the Iraqi insurgency. "What is going on in Iraq," Keegan writes, "resembles the second Palestinian intifada, though it is more intensive and better organized. It is also more difficult to counter, since the Western forces lack the detailed intelligence to which the Israeli…

New York Magazine published a long article this week outlining the dispute between pro-Israel students at Columbia University and the overwhelmingly pro-Arab professors in the university's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department. The students allege that the department's professors promote the notion that Israel is a racist, terrorist state.   While the dispute has been simmering for years,…

For the past generation, Israel has found itself engaged in post-modern warfare. Whereas Arab armies have proved themselves in five wars to be no match for the IDF on the battlefield, our enemies over the last 20 years, since the IDF withdrawal from most of Lebanon, have found that the most effective means of fighting Israel is on the post-modern…

Amid low turnout and allegations of vote fraud and voter abuse, Mahmoud Abbas, longtime associate of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, appeared to have won yesterday's vote to succeed Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority. Exit polls placed his electoral majority at between 66% and 70% of the vote.   Mr. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was Arafat's deputy…

In his testimony before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday, Shin Bet director Avi Dichter described some short-term threats inherent in carrying out Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to pull the IDF out of the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria.     "In a situation where Israel is not in control of the Philadelphi corridor [which separates Gaza…