InDepth

So while some of us were celebrating the Jewish New Year and taking the last couple of days off from politics, it appears a video has more or less decided the election. That’s the assumption of much of the mainstream media about the impact of the release of the video of Mitt Romney speaking back in May at a private fundraiser about the 47 percent of the country that doesn’t pay taxes. They think this means it’s time to put a fork in the Republican candidate.

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,...

In six weeks, Americans will be going to the polls in what could prove to be one of the most fateful elections in decades.

Let’s face it: this is not going to be an ordinary year. We are praying very seriously this year because we are praying for our lives. Yes, I know: every year we pray for our lives. But how many feel it? This year, whether we want to or not, I think we are beginning to feel it.

A monastery in Israel is desecrated, almost certainly by nationalist extremists. The desecration was condemned by the prime minister and others in the government. Chief Rabbi Metzger called it a “heinous deed.” The Internal Security minister did not hesitate to use the word “terror” and announced the formation of a special police unit to combat it. Many people traveled to the monastery to personally apologize, including Rabbi Dov Lipman of Beit Shemesh, who took brush in hand to help scrub the offensive words from the walls.

One of my searing early memories from Israel is a visit nearly four decades ago to the Ghetto Fighters Museum in the Beit Lohamei Hagetaot kibbutz. The world’s first Holocaust museum, it was built soon after the Independence War by survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Ironically, the less credible the threat of military force is, the more likely it is that military force will eventually have to be used.

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It is no secret that Fatah has long been trying to get rid of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad who, its representatives argue, had been imposed on the Palestinians by the Americans and Europeans.

Last year the governor of the Punjab, Salman Taseer, was shot dead for merely suggesting the blasphemy laws should be changed.

With memories of the Siyum HaShas still fresh in people’s minds, many Jews around the world have been purchasing a Tractate Berachot in order to take part in the 13th cycle of Daf Yomi, the daily study of one daf of Talmud Bavli.

Many of the problems of the Middle Eastern states can be traced to the mistakes of the European state charged with developing them between the World Wars. The fierceness with which the Alawite minority - led by Bashir al Assad - will fight to retain control can be explained by their fear of Sunni Muslims. Way back in 1936, Assad's grandfather, Suleiman Assad warned France, which was then the power in charge of Syria, of the dangers of a Sunni Muslim takeover of Syria in 1936. He also spoke warmly about Jewish accomplishments in then Palestine and the injustice of Arab-Muslim violence towards Zionism.

Of course, Romney was correct in what he said. Indeed, he was merely stating the obvious. In the current upside-down era, telling the truth is heresy, or at least there are powerful establishment figures who try to make it seem so.

When the full-tide of left-wing smear and innuendo are arraigned against them conservatives have developed a tendency not of standing up for, or explaining, their principles, but running for the left-wing foot-hills.

Being forced to pay taxes does not make us more virtuous people. If it did, our founding fathers would have thanked George III for his coercion.

These waves of demonstrations are relatively small ways of advancing the ideological readiness of the masses to accept the radical Islamist groups’ program.

The Palestinians' two illegitimate governments have once again denounced Israeli "aggression" against the "helpless" residents of the Gaza Strip. Such denunciations always come after the Israel Defense Forces succeed in foiling a terror attack from the Gaza Strip or fire back at terrorists who launch rockets and missiles at Israeli targets.

Fears for the future of religious minorities in Egypt were accentuated earlier this month when it was announced that the last synagogue in the country would be closed down. The Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, which had operated in Alexandria, was the last functioning center of Jewish life in the country. It is now clear that its cavernous halls, built in the nineteenth century, will not be open to worshippers hoping to mark Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services this year.

Former Israeli Consul General in the U.S. Yoram Ettinger offers a series of points regarding Rosh Hashanah.

Let us begin our year on the right foot towards another Super Bowl season.

It needs to be clearly understood America's civil space program is just as much an instrument of national power as the US Navy or the State Department. It is to be hoped that the President and Congress will in the future recognize this fact.

Libya tells the story with a terrible irony but we should understand precisely what is going on and how the situation in Libya differs from that in Egypt. For it is proof of the bankruptcy of Obama policy but perhaps in a different way from what many people think.

Publicly, J Street repeatedly states that Halutz is against the drawing of "red lines," that is, the line in the sand beyond which military action against Iran must be taken. There are commentators who crow that Halutz's opposition to red lines reveals a reluctance to use force against Iran, and that it is an explicit criticism of the Israeli prime minister. J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote: "Gen. Halutz has repeatedly said that … there is nothing to be gained from the public calls for deadlines and red lines." But Halutz, who is definitely against red lines, doesn't like them because he thinks they interfere with effective military strategies. Halutz says that Israel may even have to “go it alone.”

Despite the news of Canada's decision and Baird's justification for breaking diplomatic ties with Iran, much more action needs to be taken by Western nations. For example putting Hizbollah on the EU's terror list.

Netanel Hershtik wears many hats but perhaps the one he is best known for is a soft, puffy headpiece known as a mitre, traditionally worn by chazzanim.

The Palestinians have asked the World Heritage Committee (WHC) of UNESCO to recognize Battir, a village about 5 miles west of Bethlehem, as a World Heritage Site and add it to the 936 sites already maintained by UNESCO. The city's original name was Betar, the last fortress of Bar Kochba and the name of Jabotinsky's Zionist youth movement.

We wonder about the endlessly volatile markets and also (not often enough) about plainly unequal distributions of national wealth, but are the nation’s official policy responses based on correct views of classical economic theory? In particular, what about Adam Smith and his oft-quoted arguments for “free market capitalism”? More than any other classical theorist, Smith has been embraced by conservatives.

Egypt tells us everything we need to know about the horror of Obama's Middle East policy. The latest development is that a group of several Salafist and Jihadist groups--including the local affiliate of al-Qaida--announced a demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy. This was explained as a protest against some obscure film made in America by a crackpot that criticizes Islam but has never actually been shown to an audience and probably never will be!

Somehow, the common question in Israel today is whether the prime minister has the right to decide to attack Iran. “He has the chutzpah to think that he can decide,” former Supreme Court justice Eliyahu Winograd more or less pontificated, capturing all of the major news outlets’ headlines.

By the summer of 1947, British Mandatory Palestine was in flames. Jewish underground fighters waged guerrilla warfare against the British administration. Refugee ships, such as the S.S. Exodus, challenged London's refusal to let Holocaust survivors enter the Holy Land. A United Nations committee visited the region and returned with a plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.