Op-Eds

{Reposted to the author's eponymous website} U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest Mideast decisions cast Israeli airstrikes in Syria and (reportedly) Iraq in a different light....

For Jews everywhere, this has been a depressing year – with antisemitic and anti-Israel activity on the rise. Thankfully, Stephen Harper and others are there to defend Israel.

Jerusalem and Beijing have cultivated a flourishing economic relationship in recent years, but that bond is limited by the tension it has engendered with a Washington wary of China’s growing footprint in Israeli strategic assets. In an effort to mitigate this tension, Israel’s security cabinet has decided to establish a mechanism to monitor foreign investment.

A Turkish Parliamentarian hinted that the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has not only failed to do enough to prevent hate speech, but actually has been instrumental in spreading it.

Israel seeks to prevent a powder keg from detonating on the southern border as it prioritizes the more threatening front up north.

More than a few people were left scratching their heads when The New York Times claimed, “We have been and remain stalwart supporters of Israel.”

The two countries are drawn together by common values and common threats. The bipartisan support for Israel has been a testament to those values, as well as to the practical recognition that the threats require cooperation in intelligence, technology, and security policy.

“I would push for a one-state solution from Jordan to the Mediterranean. The two-state solution is a fallacy. It’s a pipe dream. I would advocate a one-state—an Israeli state—for the entire region,” says former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh, who is throwing his hat into the 2020 presidential ring for the Republican Party.

While the House Intelligence Committee negligently fixates on carrying out their coup against the President, what are they missing from the real threats arrayed against our country?

If you practice nothing, that's all Judaism will mean to you – nothing.

Due to the current impasse in Israel, Trump has been forced to suspend the release of his peace plan. It is highly unlikely that Israel will ever have a more opportune time to pursue a sustainable regional settlement with its neighbors. But alas, this opportunity will be lost if our political leaders cannot get their act together.

Avraham Avinu made aliyah when only idol worshippers filled the land. He came even though there were no deluxe apartments, no Jewish army, no flourishing yeshivot, no synagogues, and no kosher pizza shops as there are in abundance today.

The first act of creation involved making boundaries. What does this mean? That without boundaries – without distinctions between light and dark, heavens and earth, man and woman – we live in chaos. In tohu va’vohu. We, as a society, have thrown away the very first lines of Bereshit.

As Khomeini and his followers took over control of the revolution in Iran, they did the same thing where it had all began, in Lebanon:

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was created in 1949 via UN Resolution 302 (IV) with a short-term mandate. It flouted its original mission and perpetuated rather than alleviated the Palestinians’ status as refugees. It has long since become corrupt and functions essentially as a front group. The UN should close it down, and Palestinian refugees should be integrated into the economic systems of the countries that sheltered them.

The next Israeli government will have to make critical decisions on urgent security challenges stemming from multiple arenas simultaneously. It will also have to waste no time in securing the next defense budget.

In September, Jewish Press columnist Saul Jay Singer wrote an article on Felix Frankfurter to which Dr. Rafael Medoff took great exception. We decided to let the two of them duke it out in this week’s issue.

The Midrash makes it clear that the Bible specifically notes land purchases and transactions, so that nations can never castigate the Jewish people and say, “You are occupying stolen territory.”

Some see in the Cyrus Cylinder, housed in the British Museum, as a confirmation of the Bible and its historicity about captive peoples: ”All their people I collected and brought them back to their homes,” (line 32) which could be the confirmation of releasing captive Jews, even if these are not named in the text.

Misusing the impeachment power in a partisan manner would pose, in the words of Hamilton, "the greatest danger" to our Constitution.

Antisemitism is a deadly virus and has now infected many college campuses across the U.S. as a mainstream movement – and is being embraced at a national conference at the University of Minnesota this weekend.

How could Turkish intelligence not know what was going on within shouting distance of its border?

Jewish tradition links the Jews’ continued presence in their land with their moral conduct. But nowhere does it require national suicide.

One would think a renowned scholar like professor Harold Kasimow would have immediately challenged the heinous lie that Israel practices ethnic cleansing, rather than calling it a “complicated issue.”

Among the most fundamental First Amendment rights is to ridicule — regardless of the reason. The same is true of holding people or groups up to contempt. Were Connecticut's absurd statute to be upheld — which it will not be — it could be applied to comedians, op-ed writers, politicians, professors and other students.

Three leading Democratic presidential candidates recently threatened to use US military aid to Israel as leverage to force changes in Israeli relations with the Palestinians. Their statements were hypocritical and ignored both the value of military aid to the US military and defense industries and the realities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The threats should be seen in the wider context of growing antagonism within the Democratic party toward Israel. The next Israeli government will have to address this challenge.

They all shared feeling invisible, inconsequential, that they don’t know why they are here and that the world would be no different if they were gone.

The organization’s new knavery: cutting US military aid to coerce Israel into withdrawals. J Street is now less protective of Israeli security than Obama was.

Despite proudly stating that she is “the number one publisher of Palestinian voices in America” and has encouraged Israelis to vote for the anti-Israel Joint List, she was targeted nonetheless.

The nightmare of incessant pressuring of the Jewish state – so characteristic of the Obama presidency – will be upon us once again if Warren, or any of the other Democratic front-runners, win the election next November.