Eight Years Of Unheeded ‘Daniel’ Warnings About Iran What Happens Next? (Part VI)

Posted on: March 23rd, 2011

Project Daniel understood that international law has long allowed for states to initiate forceful defensive measures when there exists "imminent danger" of aggression. This rule of anticipatory self-defense was expanded and reinforced by then-President George W. Bush's issuance of The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Released on September 20,2002, this document asserted, inter alia, that traditional concepts of deterrence would not work against an enemy "whose avowed tactics are wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents...." As Israel is substantially less defensible and more vulnerable than the United States, its particular right to resort to anticipatory self-defense under threat of readily identifiable existential harms is beyond legal question.

Eight Years Of Unheeded ‘Daniel’ Warnings About Iran What Happens Next? (Part V)

Posted on: March 16th, 2011

It is highly unlikely, The Group reasoned, that any enemy state would ever calculate that the expected benefits of annihilating Israel would be so great as to outweigh the expected costs of its own annihilation. Excluding an irrational enemy state, a prospect that falls by definition outside the logic of nuclear deterrence, all state enemies of Israel would assuredly refrain from nuclear and/or biological attacks upon Israel that would presumptively elicit massive counter-value reprisals. Naturally, this reasoning would obtain only to the extent that these enemy states fully believed Israel would actually make good on its threats.

Corrupted Middle East Class At Brooklyn College

Posted on: March 16th, 2011

Brooklyn College's Middle East politics graduate course made headlines at the beginning of this semester. The newly hired adjunct professor, Kristofer Petersen-Overton, was fired and shortly thereafter rehired. Instead of employing responsible measures to ensure a balanced Middle East course, the college's administration chose an extreme and spineless response - one that is overwhelmingly obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and specifies on the syllabus that it will "not include details about Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan or Pakistan."

The Best Revenge Is To Build

Posted on: March 16th, 2011

Even for a region accustomed to brutality, last week's Sabbath massacre in Itamar stands out for its sheer savagery and barbarism.

What’s So Dangerous About Dividing Jerusalem?

Posted on: March 2nd, 2011

With attention focused on the intensifying unrest in the traditionally undemocratic Arab countries across the Middle East and North Africa, let us not think for a moment that Israel is no longer under pressure. The short-term view is misleading; the long term - the one that counts - indicates that the rise of Islamic forces is likely to mean a more concentrated focus against Israel in general, and against a Jewish Jerusalem in particular.

Pain And Martyrdom In The ‘New Middle East’: Hidden Meanings Of Impending Jihadist Terrorism

Posted on: March 2nd, 2011

Revolutionary fervor still sweeping the Middle East is plainly ongoing and perilously "contagious." Above all, perhaps, these eruptions confirm that the so-called "Palestinian Problem" has never been more than a manipulated contrivance of corrupt Arab monarchies and dictatorships, and that Israel has had absolutely nothing to do with the region's core problems. Indeed, to the contrary, this fervor reveals that if the Arabs had simply embraced rather than demonized Israel from the start - a fully rational and deserved embrace that would have been enthusiastically welcomed by all Israelis - the Arab states would have benefited politically, intellectually, medically, scientifically and materially.

Eight Years Of Unheeded ‘Daniel’ Warnings About Iran What Happens Next? (Part IV)

Posted on: February 23rd, 2011

Both Israeli nuclear and non-nuclear preemptions of enemy unconventional aggressions could lead to nuclear exchanges. This would depend, in part, upon the effectiveness and breadth of Israeli targeting, the surviving number of enemy nuclear weapons and the willingness of enemy leaders to risk Israeli nuclear counter-retaliations. In any event, the likelihood of nuclear exchanges would obviously be greatest where potential Arab and/or Iranian aggressors were allowed to deploy ever-larger numbers of unconventional weapons without eliciting appropriate Israeli and/or American preemptions.

Eight Years Of Unheeded ‘Daniel’ Warnings About Iran What Happens Next? (Part III)

Posted on: February 16th, 2011

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.

To Whom Does Jerusalem Belong?

Posted on: February 16th, 2011

When discussing Jewish rights in Jerusalem, it would seem nothing would be more natural to a Bible-believing world than the acceptance of these as self-evident.

Freedom And The Middle East

Posted on: February 16th, 2011

Even for a region that has experienced more than its fair share of upheaval, the downfall of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak last week was nothing less than a political earthquake.

Eight Years Of Unheeded ‘Daniel’ Warnings About Iran What Happens Next? (Part II)

Posted on: February 9th, 2011

Although The Group drew explicitly upon contemporary strategic thinking, we were also mindful of certain much-earlier investigations of war, power and survival. One such still-relevant investigation was identified in Sun-Tzu's classic, The Art of War.

Eight Years Of Unheeded ‘Daniel’ Warnings About Iran: What Happens Next? (Part I)

Posted on: February 3rd, 2011

"We are often asked," said the late Italian Jew and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, in The Drowned and the Saved, "as if our past conferred a prophetic ability upon us, whether Auschwitz will return." However we might choose to answer such a terrible but unavoidable question, the Jewish past seems not to have conferred the most indispensable abilities to anticipate new and still-possible genocides.

Flashpoint: The Shepherd Hotel

Posted on: February 2nd, 2011

As we focus on Jerusalem as the central issue of the on-again, off-again - but always looming - negotiations with the PA, let us take a look at the latest flashpoint in our holy city: The Shepherd Hotel.

Bnei Akiva World Convention

Posted on: February 2nd, 2011

Fifty years ago, when I served as the director of Bnei Akiva of New York, I wondered how my relationship with Bnei Akiva would develop. Today, years later, after coming on aliyah to Israel in 1973, I find that I still cherish my Bnei Akiva past and still enjoy the friendships that were developed so many years ago.

Now With Saudi Arabia On Its Side: Israel And Anticipatory Self-Defense Against Iran

Posted on: January 26th, 2011

International law is not a suicide pact. This particular sentence should be very familiar to this column's readers. Every state facing plainly existential harms always has the right to defend itself beforebeing attacked. In the increasingly urgent matter of Israel and Iran, a subject on which I have been commenting for some time, any further delay in undertaking permissible acts of preemption could irrevocably doom the Jewish state.

Disorder And Early Sorrow: Israel’s Special Vulnerability to Global Chaos

Posted on: January 19th, 2011

In the past I have written about global anarchy and its strategic implications for Israel. Today, I want to assess something far more specific and ominous: global chaotic disintegration. Such an unraveling is already an evident fact of life in several different parts of the world. Moreover, substantial and sudden extensions of this perilous condition to other far-flung parts of our planet are both plausible and probable.

The Facts Are On Our Side

Posted on: January 19th, 2011

We lost biblical Jerusalem for 19 years, between 1948 and 1967. Are we now facing the same danger again?

Slurpees Make Aliyah to Israel

Posted on: January 19th, 2011

Hashmonaim is a community in central Israel blessed with wonderful neighbors, and lovely houses and greenery. However, it has few commercial enterprises. It is a typical bedroom community, and most of those with jobs drive out each morning and return home each evening. Some commuters even get on a plane Sunday evening and do not return until the following Thursday or Friday. Yet, those who remain behind each day enjoy some of the most wonderful experiences available. The community is warm and friendly, with a strong social support system. Many families share meals on Shabbat and rotate between the many invitations available each week. The children practically live in each other's homes and enjoy the community almost as much as the adults do.

Bring The Bnei Menashe Home To Israel

Posted on: January 19th, 2011

Several time zones away, in the farthest reaches of northeastern India, live thousands of men and women longing to rejoin the Jewish people.

Is Columbia Joking?

Posted on: January 19th, 2011

With Columbia University having recently established the very first Center for Palestine Studies (CPS), the Jewish community - especially Jewish donors - has failed miserably. We have been sleeping at the wheel for way too long.