The US military is without a doubt the most powerful fighting force in the   world. The forces arrayed in the Kuwaiti desert are stunning by any   standard. Last Thursday night and Friday morning, the Fifth Corps, which   commands all army ground forces in the country staged a rehearsal of the   invasion of Iraq.   The main…

KUWAITI DESERT – Monday afternoon I ate a hamentaschen on the hood of a humvee in the Kuwaiti   desert, 40 km. south of Iraq with US Army 1st Sergeant Michael Mansfield. I   lit a zippo lighter for a candle and we said the blessings.   We clinked hamentaschen for l'haim. In lieu of the megilla reading, I told his…

The indictment and arrest of University of South Florida professor Sami   Al-Arian by the FBI last week was a watershed event in the US war on   terrorism. This was so not because Arian was the CEO of the Islamic Jihad, although   that he was. Nor was it a watershed because by arresting Arian, the US has  …

Today Labor Party Chairman Amram Mitzna is set to meet with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for a discussion that has been touted as "critical" for determining whether the Labor party will join Sharon's next government.   The Labor party has made four demands of Sharon that its leaders — from Mitzna to Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Haim Ramon — maintain must…

Americans were shocked this week to discover that while their attention was focused elsewhere, Europe — or large swathes of Europe — has become a hotbed of Iranian-like anti-American sentiment.   The same irrational, insurmountable hatred of America that fuels Iranian rhetoric and dictates its policies against the Great Satan also characterizes much public opinion throughout Europe and informs the…

The tragic loss of the US space shuttle Columbia and the death of its crew just moments before their return home sealed in common blood the foundations of the US-Israel alliance.   As we saw at Tuesday's memorial ceremony at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, this alliance's roots run far deeper than shared forms of government. The stories of…

In 1981, IAF Col. Ilan Ramon flew one of the F-16 jets that blew up the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak. In so doing he saved the country and perhaps the entire world from the specter of a nuclear holocaust.   For the past 16 days, as Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon again saved us. This time he was not…

Discussions of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's options for forming his next governing coalition began immediately after the polls closed on Tuesday night. Will he form a coalition with the Right or a coalition with the Left? Will he bring in the religious parties or will he form a secular government with Shinui? Then again, perhaps he will decide to mix…

The faces of the audience in a packed school auditorium near Moshav She'ar Yishuv on Wednesday afternoon were the hollow faces of bereavement. There, hundreds of parents, brothers, sisters, and friends of the 73 soldiers who died in the collision of two IAF helicopters en route to southern Lebanon were joined by army brass, President Moshe Katsav, and Defense Minister…

If anyone doubts the power of the media to transform the policies of democratic governments, one need only to look to The New York Times' columnist Thomas Friedman for proof. It was Friedman, after all, who a year ago invented the so-called Saudi plan for peace in the Middle East.   Last February, reacting to the precipitous drop in American…