InDepth

Many campus Israel groups have brought Israeli soldiers to speak at their schools in recent years because they value the insights and perspectives IDF veterans bring to the campus Israel dialogue. But some people who have had life-changing experiences serving in the Israel Defense Forces later earn their college degree in the United States. These students offer a unique view on Israel, based on their experience, and their advocacy on campus conveys that.

Iran’s relative situation has deteriorated. To regain a sense of leadership and invulnerability – as well as to vindicate Shia Islam over the recent Sunni triumphs in the region – Iran needs a big strategic win. She needs a trump card over the emerging Sunni centers of gravity in Cairo and Ankara.

Right now the Obama administration is being very, very careful about saying what it thinks about Israel, not wanting to upset the electoral applecart. But the New York Times isn’t afraid to let it all hang out, as it did in today’s editorial on Israel and Iran. The Times is important because its positions are so closely correlated with those of the administration. At least on foreign affairs, the Times is Obama’s Pravda.

The issue of forced marriage is especially acute in Catalonia, where the Muslim population has skyrocketed in recent years. Catalonia, a region with 7.5 million inhabitants, is now home to an estimated 400,000 Muslims, up from 30,000 in the 1980s.

Prosperity has met its match. Regulation will kill prosperity by stealth unless we the people wake up to what’s going on. We are wildly, insanely overregulated today, and if we don’t attack the idea of the regulatory state on those terms – on the premise that regulation itself is mostly a bad thing, and we need far less of it than we have – then we will never recover.

As the lights dimmed on Broadway for 60 seconds last night in memory of Oscar-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch, who died on Monday, I took a moment to reflect on the moment in 1976 when I interviewed Hamlisch.

The Egyptians are finally learning that terrorism is a double-edged sword, and that those who approve of terror activities will one day find themselves targeted by the same terrorists.

Focusing on the relations between Israel and the Palestinians turns the conflict inside out. In fact it is driven by the absolute rejection of a Jewish state in the Middle East by all the Muslim nations in the region, which dates back to the beginning of Zionism, before the founding of the state of Israel, before the development of specifically Palestinian nationalism, and long before the 1967 war.

It's not easy for any Lower East Side shul these days to make a minyan – but when you're out in Yehupitz you get "not easy" on a good day. Unless you had Benny Sauerhaft in your arsenal.

The circumstances that were created after the murder of the Egyptian soldiers and the failure of the terror act against Israel proves the truth of the saying: "Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." We can only imagine how great would be the cries of joy in Gaza if 18 Israeli soldiers had been killed, heaven forbid, instead of Egyptians.

Tom Friedman’s pro-PLO stance dates back to his active involvement, while at Brandeis University, in the pro-Arafat radical-Left “Middle East Peace Group” and “Breirah” organizations. It was intensified during his role as the AP’s and NY Times’ reporter in Lebanon. There he played down Arafat’s and Abbas’ rape and plunder of Lebanon and their strong ties with international terrorism, while expressing his appreciation of the PLO’s protection of foreign media in Beirut.

Al-Destour, an independent Egyptian newspaper, has just had a full issue seized on charges of “fueling sedition” and “harming the president through phrases and wording punishable by law.”

“Israel’s moral standing” is not necessarily enhanced by failing to stand up for its legal rights and by, in effect, selling out the Jewish people.

For years the Egyptians have been trying to erode the Sinai force restrictions set in the peace treaty they signed with Israel. Force restrictions that were a necessary condition for Israel agreeing to restore the Sinai to Egyptian control. The Egyptians see the force restrictions as impinging on their sovereignty. Israel always considered the force restrictions as critical for the Jewish State’s national security.

When four of out four newspapers in Israel deal with any single subject one can count on the fact that there is a deliberate effort by some personnel to set the headlines on fire.

Although Shia and Sunnis do not pray together, as both sects have the same goal – hostility to Israel – the Shia cleric, to set a precedent, recently asked the Sunni Imam to lead a prayer service attended by both congregations.

If Muslim fanatics cannot tolerate moderate and secular Muslims, why should they be expected to accept those who belong to other faiths?

The Levy Report on the settlements in Judea and Samaria was like cold water on a parched landscape. The committee members who drafted the report and dared to publicly say what every child in Israel can and should know deserve credit and appreciation. The report factually states that there never was an occupation in Judea and Samaria because no entity there was ever occupied.

.

Several years ago the Monitor ranked the U.S. presidents (from Truman through Clinton) in terms of their relationship with Israel. Since then, readers occasionally have asked whether time and added perspective have had any effect on the list and where Barack Obama would place on it.

.

We doubt anyone attending last week’s massive Siyum HaShas at MetLife Stadium will forget anytime soon the breathtaking sight of more than ninety thousand people breaking out into dance and song in celebration of the Torah following the delivery of the siyum by Lakewood Rosh Yeshiva HaRav Malkiel Kotler. Or the chills they experienced as Cantor Yitzchok Meir Helfgott recited the Kel Moleh Rachamim prayer in honor of the victims of the Holocaust who died Al Kiddush Hashem. Or the inspiration they felt as tens of thousands of Jews prayed together as one. All were testimony to the centrality of Torah to Jewish identity, fealty to the Ribbono Shel Olam and submission to His Will.

Although by all accounts the NYPD’s stop and frisk program resulted in a significant drop in major violent crime, activists from minority communities made an issue of the fact that most of those stopped and frisked were blacks and Hispanics, many of whom were innocent of any crime.

The U.S. presidential campaign is upon us, and one of the central issues – at least based on a perusal of recent press reports – is none other than the Jewish people's right to their own capital.

With all the well-earned accolades and fanfare that surrounded last week’s monumental Siyum HaShas, one would expect to find numerous direct references in the Torah mandating the study of Torah. It therefore comes as a great surprise that there is not one direct statement in the Torah commanding its study.

It was not a necessary part of our busy itinerary. It was not even a noble errand. But the craving for a tasty lunch led our group to experience a moment never to be forgotten.

As a child in the 1970s and ‘80s in the United States, I used to define Zionism in blunt, simple terms. If you wore a white shirt with blue pants on Yom Ha’atzmaut, you were behaving like a Zionist. If you had pictures hanging in your home with Israel themes, such as the famous June 1967 photo of the three soldiers standing by the Western Wall or the one of Begin, Carter and Sadat shaking hands at Camp David, that made you a Zionist.

The Beis HaMikdash was destroyed due to sinas chinam, baseless hatred. With the Three Weeks and Tisha B’Av now behind us, have we learned anything from this national tragedy, or is history repeating itself?

A major sociological characteristic and consequence of modernity is the tendency for people to join together in associations that express a common goal or interest or a shared experience. The United States has been a nation of joiners from day one and perhaps even before independence was declared. Alexis de Tocqueville described this tendency in Democracy in America, the epic prophetic work published a century and three-quarters ago.

WASHINGTON – Call it the Adelson conundrum: What happens when the guy who acts as if he owns the room really does?