Analysis

Planning timelines of days and weeks are very comforting for policy-makers seeking to avoid costly decisions. But the purpose of the exercise is not to indefinitely postpone what is best done today. The decision-makers owe it to their constituents to look beyond the next weeks and even months.

The war on terrorism cannot be won by defensive – but only by offensive – means, notwithstanding the impressive performance of the Iron Dome missile defense system.

Israeli intelligence authorities need to assess the threats coming from Iran. This is not a public relations issue. Obama and the other world leaders can support or oppose our actions, but Israel will have to do what is best for the future and well-being of the Jewish State. No one else will do the heavy lifting for us. While we cannot diminish the possibility that Iran actually has the technology and the motivation to strike Israel, we also cannot afford to overlook other real and obvious threats to Israel.

The difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and “Salafists” is purely tactical. The Brotherhood has learned how to maneuver politically, an advance similar to what Lenin instituted for the Marxists of his day. You can’t just declare a revolution and change everything overnight. And just as Lenin planned to get the capitalists to sell him the rope with which to hang them, the Brotherhood plots the same course with the infidels.

A survey released two weeks ago, titled “The American Mosque 2011,” revealed a tremendous growth in the number of mosques across the US since 9/11, and claims that Islamic radicalism in the US is on the wane. But Islam expert David Yerushalmi says that many of the numbers presented in the survey don't add up, and in fact contradict similar surveys conducted in recent years.

Would it be prudent for Israel to launch now the kind of unilateral initiative proposed by former Yesha Council Director Naftali Bennett, or is it best to leave well enough alone?

On March 7, the PA President convened yet another urgent meeting of PLO and Fatah leaders in Ramallah to discuss the content of this "mother of all letters" which he intends to send to Israel. The meeting, which came less than 48 hours after Obama's speech, reflected the increased concern of the Palestinians over the world's fading attention to their problems.

The Jewish homeland guarantees Jews their security -- which is why every attempt to rob them of this homeland, or endanger its existence, is an anti-Semitic act endangering the entire Jewish community.

The "Arab Spring" is anything but a "great revolution." It is a spring of massacres, destruction and violence, as Patriarch Beshara al-Rai, the head of Lebanon's Maronite Church, put it. "We are with the Arab Spring but we are not with this spring of violence, war, destruction and killing," he told Reuters. "This is turning to winter. We cannot implement reforms by force and arms. How can it be an Arab Spring when people are being killed every day?"

Since its establishment, the Kingdom of Jordan has suffered from a split personality between two identities, the Jordanian and the Palestinian, that are intertwined like a pair of Siamese twins who hate one another, but cannot part from each other. The source of the problem is the fact that most of the citizens of the Hashemite Jordanian monarchy define themselves as "Palestinians", but their state is "Jordanian". So how should they relate to it - as their country or as a foreign interloper?

An uprising could take place due to some major or symbolic incident, forcing Palestinian leaders to rush to the front of the army. But least likely of all would be Abbas and the current leadership making a calculated decision to launch a war from which they would expect to benefit.

Whether he realizes it or not, President Obama changed history with his AIPAC speech. What he did is make a war between Israel and Iran almost inevitable - let’s say more than 90 percent probable - most likely some time in late 2013, 2014, or 2015.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet U.S. President Barack Obama at a time when Israel has been gaining in popularity among Americans, and at a time when his approval rating is a frail 43%, according to recent poll. Unlike previous visits by Netanyahu, this time Obama will be anxious for warm photo opportunities with Israel’s prime minister.

It is chilling to watch Ahlam Tamimi smile as she is told that she murdered not 3 children, but 8. But it is important to understand that this woman is not a psychopath. She is the true face of the Palestinian cause.

Whether or not Israel builds another porch in Jerusalem or for that matter entire new communities beyond the Green Line has no impact on the resolution of the problems in Egypt, Syria and the rest of the states on the neighborhood.

The broader aims of Global March to Jerusalem, according to the project’s official website, are as follows: “[To] end the Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and [racist]...Judaisation policies affecting the people, land and sanctity of Jerusalem… [which] is a crime not only against Palestinians but against all humanity.”

The presence of Israel physicians in Ramallah drew furious reactions from workers at the Palestine Medical Compound and many Palestinians, including the Western-backed Fatah faction headed by Mahmoud Abbas. The fact that thousands of Palestinian patients receive medical treatment in Israeli hospitals each year did not stop their vociferous oppostion.

The new Middle East strategic battle is heating up and this is only the start. It has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with two more serious lines of battle: Arabs versus Persians and Sunni versus Shia Muslims.

Why has it become the dream of many Arab Christians and Muslims to immigrate to the "Apartheid State"? Is it possible that all of these people are uninformed? Or do they really know the truth about Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East? In Egypt, Syria, and Iran, for example, government officials put journalists in jail, but Israel is the only country in the region where a single obscure journalist nobody can put a government official in jail.

More than anything else, the likes of Arab MKs Hanin Zoabi and Ahmed Tibi frame the tension of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in stark terms, and reveal what is in store for the country should it shift more towards modern liberal democracy and away from a state that reflects a Jewish character culturally and politically.

Billy Graham had for decades been one of America’s most admired figures, a national icon, a man respected across the board for his seeming sincerity, rock-solid faith and openness to working with those whose beliefs differ from his own. He was also a staunch friend of Israel. But a different side of Graham emerged during the 90-minute White House meeting with Nixon. Graham was particularly exercised by what he saw as the “stranglehold” Jews maintained on the American media.

The Iran issue may be moved somewhat down the agenda as flailing Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is being pressured by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to move both his WMD cache and long-range Scud missiles to well-protected Hizbullah bases inside Lebanon.

The Supreme Court’s interventionist approach was pioneered by Aharon Barak, who served as the court’s president from 1995 till 2006. Dorit Beinisch, who is retiring from the court this week after serving as president since her mentor's retirement, upheld the tradition of judicial activism, keeping the court at the center of Israeli public debate and making it a lightning rod for Orthodox and right-wing critics. That could change as Beinisch is replaced by Asher Grunis, a conservative justice who has made a name for himself as a supporter of judicial restraint.

Any real and workable solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict must be based upon this sociological fact: tribalism and loyalty to traditional religious and sectarian frameworks are the prevailing cultural and political framework of the Middle East.

The Muslim Brotherhood's logo exhibits a Qur'an, with two swords underneath; below that, the Arabic word for "prepare" -- from Quranic verse 8:60: "Prepare against them [the enemy] whatever you are able of power and horses by which you may strike terror into the [hearts of] the enemy, of Allah, and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom Allah knows." The Brotherhood's motto, only available in Arabic is - "Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death in the way of Allah is our highest objective."