Op-Eds

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) relentlessly grinds on. The organization and its fellow travelers just held their annual Hate Israel follies, which they dubbed “Israel Apartheid Week.” Rallies outside Israeli consulates and embassies were held in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Cleveland, Anaheim and Chicago.

The American left clings to the myth that the antiwar movement ended the U.S. war in Vietnam. In fact, the antiwar movement failed to prompt any substantive changes in U.S. war policy.

African-Americans and Jews were joined in a relationship long characterized by mutual respect and shared commitment to civil rights. But it was also one that foundered on the sensitivities and resentments that both groups often could not rise above.

In 2003, Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore attained brief fame when he placed and refused to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments in the State Supreme Court building. Moore’s actions and his subsequent removal from office by a unanimous decision of Alabama’s Court of the Judiciary were just another part of the American debate about the role of religion in the United States.

In 1974, Ronald Reagan made the best purchase of his political career: he bought a ranch. Rancho Del Cielo – the “Ranch in the Sky” – was nestled in the hills near Santa Barbara, California. Reagan said the ranch was “a sanctuary … like no other … at Rancho del Cielo, Nancy and I could put on our boots and old clothes, recharge our batteries, and be reminded of where we had come from.”

Sixty years ago, the Jews of Israel and the world learned one of the harshest lessons in political realism and the ethics of war. It was a tragedy that forced them to abandon their moral naiveté and acknowledge the harshness and brutality of military reality. And it is a lesson that Israeli politicians and the leftist media would have the country forget today.

Sixty years ago, the Jews of Israel and the world learned one of the harshest lessons in political realism and the ethics of war.

As George W. Bush begins his eighth and final year in the White House, it’s fitting to step back and look at this president who almost wasn’t, save for the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the relentless recount process in Florida.

According to recent intelligence reports, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed 40 Hamas terrorists in Gaza last month without inflicting a single civilian casualty. In fact, over the past five years, collateral damage and civilian casualties caused by Israeli military actions have decreased dramatically. Meanwhile, Hamas continues to fire Kassam rockets indiscriminately at the working-class town of Sderot and into the suburban areas of the nearby seaside city of Ashkelon.

If one wants to be a bit closer to heaven, he should come to the combined minyan of a Hebrew school and synagogue. There he’ll find the voices of children echoing with the mourners’ Kaddish and ringing with the prayers of those devoted few who begin their morning by attending services, regardless of rain or snow.

Due to term limits, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stands to be out of office come January 1, 2010, a thought he may not relish. Hence, while he continues to deny it, his aides keep sending out trial balloons alluding to an independent run at the presidency.

“We should have bombed it.” With those five words, President Bush helped shatter one of the most enduring myths of the Holocaust – the notion that U.S. forces were unable to reach and destroy Auschwitz.

For a long time now, Israel’s reputation has taken a real beating among American liberals and leftists. Many American Jewish (liberal) organizations have either agreed with the criticism or have been afraid to challenge such groups with whom they agree on other important issues.

Every January, in an annual rite, nearly half of all Americans make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight. About half of those will pledge eternal servitude to their new diet plans. Sometimes the diets work – in the short run. We drop a size or two, look younger, more svelte and bask in insincere gratuitous compliments from colleagues and friends. But two-thirds of Americans who lose weight gain it back within a year. Over 90 percent gain it back within five years.

Saul Bellow once observed that a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. President Bush’s ill-advised trip to Jerusalem and the West Bank this week to promote a “two-state solution” would seem to underscore the wisdom of Bellow’s insight.

Having spent earlier sabbaticals here in Israel, I knew the subject of aliyah loomed as a background issue but hardly expected the untold ways it would recast itself.

Every New Year, Americans everywhere honestly and sincerely make their resolutions. And before January turns into February the vast majority of those resolutions have been broken. People in Crawford, Texas are no exception. George Bush is no exception.

Whenever people ask me to explain Jewish anti-Semitism, Jewish anti-Zionism, or Israeli anti-Zionism, I pause and then try to discuss these questions calmly and dispassionately.

Events have a way of clarifying even the muddiest political puzzles. As Americans prepared to pick the finalists for the presidential contest, the chaos in Pakistan served as a reminder of a simple truth about electing our chief executive.

In Divrei Yaakov, the recently published collection of divrei Torah on Sefer Shemot by Rabbi Jack Tauber, zt”l, there is a discussion of the role played by the Egyptian people in enslaving the Jews. According to Rabbi Tauber, and as other commentators have also noted, Pharaoh did not force the Egyptians but convinced them, saying, “Behold the Children of Israel are greater than us ... and will become our enemies” (1:9).