Columns

You have to be living on a different planet not to understand that when a hostage taker goes into a Jewish synagogue, on the Jewish Sabbath, and holds the rabbi and congregants at gun point, he is intentionally targeting Jewish people with violence.

Israel hasn't embraced its identity; We are a nation that flees our identity & message to the world

What, then, might be most important to Israel's prospectively irrational enemies, potentially even more important than their own physical survival as a state? One possible answer is the avoidance of certain forms of shame and humiliation. Another would be avoidance of the potentially unendurable charge that they had somehow defiled their most sacred religious obligations. Still another would be leaders' preferred avoidance of their own violent deaths, deaths that could be attributable to Israeli strategies of targeted killing and/or regime-targeting.

They fail to understand a traumatized nation facing genocidal foes—one that is united behind a war whose aim is the preservation of their very existence.

Is the Regulation Law an historical achievement? Or is it a farce? My head says it is a major achievement. My heart, however, is telling me just the opposite.

As the Palestinians press forward in international forums with their plans for statehood, a growing chorus of countries has expressed support for the move.

While many American presidents give off a warm gooey "Shalom Chaver" feelings, this leads Israel to accept their practical actions which hurt the Jewish state. At least Obama's anti-Israel agenda is transparent. If he should win a second term that could be a good thing in the long run.

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Following two lackluster campaigns that failed to produce a clear electoral victory for Netanyahu, Klein was credited with dramatically increasing the number of Netanyahu’s campaign appearances across the country, in addition to doubling down on an aggressive social media communications strategy.

The expectation that the impact of the Oct. 7 attacks and a surge in antisemitism would prompt a shift in the way Jewish groups operate was probably misplaced.

Parenting--and grandparenting--pearls from Rabbi YY Rubenstein.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. As I have indicated again and again on these pages, Israel remains the openly declared national and religious object of Arab/Islamic genocide. This term is used here, again, in the literal and jurisprudential sense. It is not merely hyperbole or an exaggerated figure of speech.

At this point in Israel’s problematic diplomatic agenda, there is really only one overriding policy question: Can any form of negotiation with the Palestinians,...

Some well-known writers and publications aren’t just gaslighting the world about judicial reform. They’re also playing into the hands of their country’s foes.

It would be convenient for my argument if I could dismiss all the people who offer online rabbinic courses as frauds and all those who take part in them as charlatans, but that would be untrue.

“Wisdom begins,” both Psalms and Proverbs teach, “with fear of G-d.” In other words, no G-d, no wisdom.

Outside Israel, Palestinian groups meddle in the affairs of other Arab states and are punished in the extreme.

Oddly, Israel and the United States remain intent upon committing gigantic and possibly lethal errors in world affairs. Unimpressed by history, and determinedly indifferent to glaring facts on the ground, Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama now proceed more or less smugly on the twisting road to "Palestine." Along the way, the United States continues to equip and train Palestinian Authority (PA) "security forces," a disjointed band of armed criminals that represents little more than the grotesque vanguard of future anti-Israel and anti-American terrorism.

Scholar Ruth Wisse wrote, that anti-Semitism is the most successful ideology of the 20th century—a virus that morphed from fascism to Nazism to communism and then Islamism. The continuation of this trend in the 21st century has nothing to do with Trump, and everything to do with the fact that Jews remain a convenient scapegoat for extremists of all political and religious stripes.

The title of this article is the supposed motto of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, but for Americans living in Israel it means, literally, vote twice. Both Israel and America are holding important elections and, hopefully, most Orthodox Jews will be voting. The United States will be holding its regular four-year elections for president and many other offices, and Israel will be voting for an entire “new” Parliament (Knesset).

From the start, our "international community" has stood by disingenuously as Iran prepared its atomic engines.

Isn't it comforting to know that our God loves life, grants life, and promises eternal life?

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What are brave United States lawmakers to make of AIPAC’s surrender?

Some years ago, in conversations with then Israeli Ambassador Zalman Shoval, I urged the creation of a special "brain trust" to examine Israel's increas­ingly precarious security situation. The main objective, related to Ambassador Shoval, would be to assemble a uniquely capable cadre of strategic thinkers who would be free from the various constraints that normally burden both academic and military planners. The Ambassador agreed fully, but for one reason or another, the idea never got off the ground at that time.

“…a military defeat of Israel would mean the physical extinction of a large part of its population and the political elimination of the Jewish state. To lose a single war is to lose everything” – Yigal Allon, 1976.

Senior American sources say that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already surrendered almost everything: the Golan, almost all of Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, and even some areas inside Israel's 1967 border - in order to retain a few settlement blocs. And what has Netanyahu achieved for Israel in exchange for this far-reaching agreement-in-principle? Nothing. Not peace, and not even international recognition that Israel is a Jewish state.

Though my suggestion to now back Assad to prevent Jihadi takeover and allow both sides to fight themselves to exhaustion was rejected, it seems now the administration is taking note of my counsel.

Any chaotic disintegration of the world system wouldfundamentally transform the Israeli system. Again, recalling the remarkable Swiss playwright, such a transformation could ultimately involve total or near-total destruction. In anticipation, Israel will have to orient its strategic planning to an assortment of worst-case prospects, thus focusing much more deliberately on a wide range of primarily self-help security options. This point simply cannot be overstated.

If Rabin had a crystal ball that allowed him to foresee the terrible trauma and tragedy the Oslo Agreements would cause, there is little doubt that he would have never agreed to its signature.