There has been a lot of hand-wringing in official Israel over the brief questioning of anti-Israel author Peter Beinart at Ben-Gurion Airport this week. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement on the episode calling it “an administrative mistake.” Netanyahu added, “Israel is an open society which welcomes all – critics and supporters alike.” Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy Michael…

  For decades, the increasing radicalism of the political Left in the West has been swept under the rug. In the U.S., for instance, Republicans were loath to fight an ideological or culture war with the Left. Republican leaders from George H.W. Bush through Mitt Romney figured that the media’s support for the Left on its journey to radicalization meant…

George Orwell once quipped, referring to a conspiracy theory that American soldiers had been brought to England in World War II to put down a working-class rebellion rather than to fight Nazi Germany: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” His insight is certainly valid in connection to the…

President Donald Trump’s offer Monday to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani caught senior administration officials as well as U.S. allies off guard. Many wondered what Trump could possibly be thinking. Trump’s offer needs to be seen in the context of events in Iran. Iran is in the throes ofrapidly growing, country-wide protests which may be the largest it has seen…

The threat that Iran will choose to initiate a devastating war in the Middle East, from its perch in Syria, continues to rise. Last Thursday, forces wearing Syrian military uniforms along the Syrian side of the border with Israel at Quneitra in the Golan Heights hoisted the Syrian flag at the border crossing. It was the first time the regime had asserted…

  There is no connection between the substance of Israel’s newly passed Nation State of the Jewish People law, and the debate its passage unleashed. On the one hand, supporters of the law led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insist that the law is a vital step in entrenching and protecting Israel’s Jewish identity. After the law passed last Thursday…

  Last week, President Donald Trump’s Middle East team signaled a shift in the administration’s policy for contending with Hamas-controlled Gaza — one no prior administration had the courage to make. On July 19, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, his special representative for international negotiations Jason Greenblatt, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman published a joint op-ed in the Washington…