Hamas has joined the big leagues. No longer can it be seen as a local terror group that concentrates its efforts on destroying Israel. According to testimony given last week to the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee by Lt. General Peter Pace, the deputy chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Hamas has joined Hizbullah and Al-Qaida…

Thursday afternoon the Shin Bet released information regarding operational planning by Islamic Jihad aimed at launching terrorist attacks against Israeli targets from fishing rafts in Gaza. The Iranian-backed group had $500,000 allocated to the plan which involved the purchase of motorized fishing rafts from which it would conduct shooting and grenade attacks against Israeli civilian targets and military installations along…

My home is alongside the ambulance route in Jerusalem so I don't need to listen to the radio to know when bombs go off in the city. If I don't hear the blasts themselves, I hear the ambulance convoys – their sirens screeching and howling as they pummel into traffic on their way to evacuate wounded and take them to…

Acting Attorney General and State Attorney Edna Arbel has had a busy week. On Sunday, she let it be known that she will find it difficult to defend the government's decision to build the security fence on land located in the disputed territories.   On Wednesday, she let it be known to Channel 2 that she supports indicting Prime Minister…

Speaking to the press Wednesday after a Palestinian woman suicide bomber murdered four Israelis at Erez, Gaza Division commander Brig. Gen. Gad Shamni spoke of the seeming pointlessness of the attack. Erez, Shamni noted, is a tangible manifestation of Israel's commitment to coexistence with the Palestinians.   Some four thousand Gazans work at the Erez industrial park, which was built…

In an address at Haifa University on Tuesday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon told his audience, "The dilemma regarding targeted killings [of terrorists] takes into account how the action will impact the public debate. As the chief of staff I have a dilemma: to wait for a terrorist attack in order to be just, or to attack in…

This week The Los Angeles Times published an investigative report exposing the depth of Syria's collaboration with Saddam Hussein in the years, months and indeed weeks and days preceding the US-led invasion of Iraq last March.     The report, which ran under the headline "Paper trail leads to Syria as Iraq's main arms link," is nothing less than devastating…

"How could you report the war in Iraq if you sided with the Americans?" "How can you say that George Bush is better than Saddam Hussein?" These are some of the milder questions I received from an audience of some 150 undergraduate students from Tel Aviv University's Political Science Department. The occasion was a guest lecture I gave last month…

The US war on terror hit a new high and a new low this week. The capture of Saddam Hussein was a great victory. It showed that as far as the ousted Iraqi regime is concerned, President Bush is fulfilling the pledge he made on September 20, 2001, that, when it comes to fighting international terrorism, "We will not tire,…

The 20-day ground offensive that ended with the fall of Baghdad on April 9 to U.S. forces was characterized as much by the levelheaded courage of the men who fought it as by its speed and brilliance of execution.   Its signature finish — the fall of Saddam Hussein's statue in downtown Baghdad — was celebrated in the streets of the…