Who’s Pressuring Bibi?

Posted on: December 23rd, 2009

If Barack Obama didn't exist, Benjamin Netanyahu would have had to invent him.

A Political Comeback Attempt

Posted on: December 23rd, 2009

When Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak attempted to break the link between the Har Bracha Hesder Yeshiva and the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), few of us were surprised. Ehud Barak is the head of the Labor Party who seems to be using this anti-religious "weapon" in order to make a political comeback for his failing leftist party. His anti-religious position is well known, and his attempt to discredit Rabbi Eliezer Melamed and the Hesder Yeshiva movement is not unexpected. In the past, other politicians have used their opposition to religion to improve their political status, and Barak knows that he and his party are falling apart.

Trading Israeli Gilad Shalit For Palestinian Terrorists,

Posted on: December 16th, 2009

Under long-standing international law, every state has a primary obligation to protect its citizens. Yet, it appears that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may soon be prepared to exchange Palestinian terrorists for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Any such exchange, however humane to Shalit and his family, would imperil thousands of other Israelis.

Israel’s Culture Wars

Posted on: December 16th, 2009

Anyone who thought Israel was immune to the kind of divisive "culture wars" that have beset America in recent years was in for a rude awakening this past week.

Israel’s Culture Wars

Posted on: December 16th, 2009

Anyone who thought Israel was immune to the kind of divisive "culture wars" that have beset America in recent years was in for a rude awakening this past week.

Another Capitulation

Posted on: December 9th, 2009

We have now lived in Israel for more years than we lived in the USA, and our joy in living in Israel knows no bounds. We are living in our homeland with our people. We loved America and are proud to be American citizens, but Israel is our home. We strive each day to keep our focus on the wonderful things that life in Israel offers. We are happy that Israel and the USA are allies and help each other. Unfortunately, we are often upset and concerned by the political situation and by the attitude of the world to the Jews.

The Obama Plan: Raising “Palestine” Upon The Corpse Of Israel (Part III)

Posted on: November 25th, 2009

In all world politics, but especially in the Islamic Middle East, the ultimate form of power is power over death. Directed toward Jews, the violence of Palestinian terrorism is always "sacred" violence, and it is always oriented to eternal life for the terrorist. Unlike most other terrorists, the Palestinian movement fighters openly aspire to immortality. Paradoxically, that is why they enthusiastically commit uniquely homicidal forms of suicide.

The Obama Plan: Raising “Palestine” Upon The Corpse Of Israel (Part II)

Posted on: November 18th, 2009

After Palestine, conditions in the Middle East would be markedly less favorable to both Israel and the United States. The only credible way for Israel to deter large-scale conventional attacks following Palestinian statehood would be by maintaining visible and increasingly large-scale conventional capabilities. Naturally, enemy states contemplating first-strike attacks upon Israel using chemical and/or biological weapons would be apt to take more seriously Israel's nuclear deterrent. Whether or not this nuclear deterrent had remained undisclosed (the so-called "bomb in the basement") could also affect Israel's deterrent credibility and, thereby, U.S. security.

Time To Retake Joseph’s Tomb

Posted on: November 18th, 2009

It was supposed to be temporary. Nine years ago last month, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered the Israeli army to withdraw from Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus) in one of the most humiliating retreats in the nation's modern history.

Time To Retake Joseph’s Tomb

Posted on: November 18th, 2009

It was supposed to be temporary.Nine years ago last month, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered the Israeli army to withdraw from Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus) in one of the most humiliating retreats in the nation's modern history.

The Obama Plan: Raising “Palestine” Upon The Corpse Of Israel (Part I)

Posted on: November 11th, 2009

However unwittingly, President Obama is now setting the stage for Israel's dismemberment. Almost certainly, his fixed and unwavering commitment to a Palestinian state stems from the purest and most sensible of motives. Surely this principled commitment is drawn from some deeply personal and historic sense of justice and fairness, and not from any sort of insidious anti-Israel bias. The problem, however, is that this seemingly well-intentioned presidential interest in fair play is starkly at odds with an asymmetrically brutal geopolitical reality in the Middle East.

How Shall Israel Decide? Mr. Netanyahu’s Remaining Choices On Iran

Posted on: November 4th, 2009

Iran continues to play a cat and mouse game with the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and with the United States. Early in October, when another secret site for enriching uranium was discovered, Tehran "magnanimously" agreed to certain future international inspections. To be sure, the actual promise of any such inspections, which was quickly and naively praised by both IAEA head Dr. Mohamed El-Baradei and U.S. President Barack Obama, will be effectively meaningless.

God’s Country

Posted on: October 28th, 2009

Approximately 1,000 years after the destruction of the Second Temple and Israel's exile from its homeland - deep in the depths of the harsh exile and 1,000 years before the beginning of the return to Zion - the great Torah commentator Rashi opens his monumental commentary on the Torah with the question of the ownership of the Land of Israel. What with all the hardships and troubles facing European Jewry at the time, with the Land of Israel but a vague and distant memory, the most pressing problem demanding Rashi's attention is what we will answer the non-Jewish world when it will claim that we are robbers in our own land - usurping its ownership from the local Canaanites.

Still Facing Catastrophic War: The Need For A Continuously, Improved Core Of Israeli Strategic Studies

Posted on: October 21st, 2009

"For By Wise Counsel, Thou Shalt Make Thy War" Proverbs 24,6 In the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel's military strategy and tactics displayed some notable strengths, but also some considerable weaknesses. Of course, in the years ahead, Israel is apt to find itself confronted with a far greater threat of belligerency.

The Iranian Nuclear Peril After Cairo; Soon Time To Take Israel’s Bomb Out Of The “Basement”

Posted on: October 14th, 2009

Following his early June speech delivered in Cairo, U.S. President Obama pretty much gave the final green light to Tehran. More precisely, with regard to ongoing Iranian nuclearization, the president signaled plainly that further economic sanctions, and not any defensive military action, were the only remaining option. In Jerusalem, one must presume, Prime Minister Netanyahu understood immediately the substantially changing drift of American foreign policy toward the Middle East. For Israel, therefore, a new plan for dealing with an unprecedented strategic menace would now be necessary. This plan would somehow have to be based on "living with Iran."

Do We Really Care About Jerusalem?

Posted on: October 14th, 2009

For a nation that swore an undying oath of loyalty to Jerusalem more than two millennia ago, we Jews sure have a funny way of showing it.

Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Religious Sacrifice

Posted on: October 7th, 2009

As U.S. President Barack Obama stubbornly proceeds with his deeply flawed resurrection of a "Two-State Solution" in the Middle East, he will bring substantial harm to the United States as well as to Israel. In this connection, Mr. Obama should quickly recognize that thecore rationale of Jihadist terror has little if anything to do with politics or with military strategy and tactics. Rather, this rationale is, and will surely remain, fundamentally, a sincere expression of religious sacrifice.

Space, Time and The Middle East “Peace Process”

Posted on: September 30th, 2009

Without getting lost in the immensely dense intricacies of quantum theory and the theories of relativity, we already know that modern physics has witnessed revolutionary breakthroughs in the rational understanding of space and time. Normally, however, these imaginative breakthroughs - which have produced entirely new "paradigms" or scientific models of the physical universe, still remain distant from analytic considerations of international relations and international law.

Understanding Our Global Misfortunes

Posted on: September 23rd, 2009

In some important respects, Iran is only a microcosm. Whatever happens next within that particularly troubled and troubling country, many of the deepest underlying problems and divisions will remain genuinely global.This is because revolution, despotism, war and terrorism are always generic issues in world politics. In the end - that is, civilizationally - they will need to be understood and confronted on a broadly international level.

Hating The Israelis As Jews: Why Territorial Surrenders Can Never Bring Peace To Israel

Posted on: September 16th, 2009

The following article was originally published in The Jewish Press in February 2000. It is being reprinted here now because over the past ten years, nothing has been learned about the central impediment to real peace in the Middle East. The core problem was, and still is, the far-reaching Islamic hatred of Jews. Doctrinally, Israel will never be accepted in the Islamic Middle East because it is a Jewish state. As with the Oslo process discussed in this 2000 article, no "Road Map" or other currently favored form of twisted cartography can hold any plausible promise for Israel. Today, as in the case of Oslo, the Road Map simply requires Israel to exchange land for nothing. President Barack Obama, please take note.