FORT STEWART, Georgia – I arrived at Fort Stewart, the home of the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division, early this week to meet with the soldiers and officers of the 2-7 Mechanized Infantry Battalion, 1st Brigade, who had recently returned home after completing their deployment in Iraq.     It was with these men that I hitched a ride through…

A close friend was recently called up to the reserves, where he serves as a commander in an infantry battalion currently responsible for an area of operations in Samaria. On his first furlough home, he told me the story of an interchange with one of his soldiers. The soldier – a kibbutznik whom we'll call Alon – gave my friend,…

This week began with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon succumbing to US pressure and tabling a security cabinet debate on the route of the security fence. After preventing his ministers from discussing the issue, Sharon sent his bureau chief Dov Weissglass to Washington. There, he pleaded with US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice not to sanction Israel for building the fence…

This coming Sunday, Israel's Who's Who will be joined by the rich and famous from around the world at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv to celebrate Shimon Peres's 80th birthday. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to attend the festival, as is former US president Bill Clinton. Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela are also set to be there. More…

Speaking hours before Hamas began its Tuesday murder spree, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon said he ordered the air force to use insufficient force to carry out its mission of bombing the Hamas leadership during its meeting in Gaza on Saturday. Ya'alon explained that he had purposely caused the mission of decapitating the Hamas leadership to fail, because…

In a recent interview with the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat, translated by MEMRI, Syria's Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass made a number of revealing statements.   On the military front, he explained that Israel and the US are terrorist states. At the same time, terrorism-supporting countries like Syria and Saudi Arabia are victims, and terrorist organizations like Hizbullah in Syrian-controlled…

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post about the growing threat of the swiftly advancing Iranian nuclear weapons program a few weeks ago, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz placed the burden of stopping this existential danger to the Jewish state on the US.   In his words, "The question is whether the world, under the leadership of the No. 1 power, the US,…

Reacting to the IAF's strike in Gaza that took out Hamas terrorist Ismail Abu Shanab yesterday afternoon, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas minced no words. The man who had cautiously explained Tuesday that the massacre of children and their parents traveling on a bus on their way home from the Western Wall "did not serve the national interests" of…

Just past noon Tuesday, the news that the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan took Saddam's vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan into custody and transferred him to US forces flashed across the wires. Ramadan, known as 'Saddam's knuckles' was one of the ousted leader's most enthusiastic henchmen.   The fact that the Kurdish forces are cooperating with the US military government is…

Eyebrows were raised on Tuesday when, just hours after Fatah and Hamas bombed civilians in Rosh Ha'ayin and Ariel, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that Palestinian terrorism would have no effect on US Middle East policy.   "We will continue to move forward on the road map," he said. "We will not be stopped by bombs, we will…