InDepth

When asked whether they preferred to model Egypt on Saudi Arabia or Turkey regarding religion’s role in government, thy chose Saudi Arabia by a 61 to 17 percent margin. Note that Western pundits and experts keep insisting that there is some kind of Turkish model of moderate Islamism. Aside from the fact that Turks aren’t Arabs, this is a sign of the base of support for a fully sharia state.

You will recall that over 1000 prisoners, including some multiple murderers, were released in the ‘exchange’ for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. Many of the ones that are left were not part of the deal because they were considered more dangerous or because their crimes were more vicious.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate wants Palestinian journalists to serve as soldiers on behalf of the Palestinian cause. Journalists, according to the syndicate, should first and foremost be loyal to their president, prime minister, government, homeland, and cause. As for the truth, it appears at the bottom of the syndicate's list of priorities.

Ibrahim Hassan Tali al-Asiri is a 28 year old Saudi citizen now living in Yemen who is expert at creating bombs that can elude...

The Knesset factions are pursuing legislation that will institute an equal draft into the IDF – but something is fishy. The New Israel Fund’s propaganda has made inroads, and it looks like the upcoming elections will focus on haredi-bashing.

When Romney speaks of the US auto industry recovering, he is speaking in the language of big, dirigiste government, accepting at face value the short-term effect of a bailout process that has served mainly to perpetuate unprofitable but politically entrenched conditions. It guarantees that more subsidies will be needed down the road.

O’Donnell says that “liberal” should not be a dirty word but a badge of honor. I agree. It should be, but it has been tarnished far less by conservatives’ attacks than by radicals who have hijacked that word and use it for an agenda that is bankrupting the United States, reducing liberties, and making a mess of U.S. foreign policy.

Several headlines recently caught my attention when I heard that a man who claims to have worked as Michael Jackson's bodyguard made the incredulous charge that Michael was a Nazi sympathizer. This kind of viciousness should usually not be indulged because it just gives it more credibility for the retelling. But the slander against Michael's name in this instance is so great that it deserves to be rebutted.

The victory of the Jewish idea is celebrated on Lag B'Omer. It fits neatly between Israeli Independence Day and Yom Yerushalayim. These three days are all driven by the same spirit: the liberation of Jewish peoplehood, the return to the land, and the reemergence of authentic Jewish culture.

What, then, might be most important to Israel's prospectively irrational enemies, potentially even more important than their own physical survival as a state? One possible answer is the avoidance of certain forms of shame and humiliation. Another would be avoidance of the potentially unendurable charge that they had somehow defiled their most sacred religious obligations. Still another would be leaders' preferred avoidance of their own violent deaths, deaths that could be attributable to Israeli strategies of targeted killing and/or regime-targeting.

My father had gone to the hospital to get a simple procedure to clear the arteries. The procedure failed and the doctor made a terrible mistake in what he did next. The botched effort caused my dad to have not one but two heart attacks.

.Terrorists’ Memory Alive At Sports Tournament...John Bolton: Talks With Hamas Inevitable If Obama Reelected...Obama Official Doesn’t Recall His Own Writings

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The current issue of Commentary magazine tells of sordid – and possibly criminal – Obama administration efforts to alter some files of the George W. Bush administration that refer to Jerusalem as being part of Israel. The article also adds a fascinating footnote to the much-publicized Zivotofsky case.

When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas tried to end run the PA’s treaty obligations to negotiate its statehood with Israel and instead secure recognition from the United Nations, Congress reacted by forbidding the transfer of State Department foreign aid funds to the PA. Several days ago, however, President Obama invoked a waiver provision in the law and authorized the funding to be resumed. And therein lies an important tale.

I recently was challenged by an academic who claimed to be dumbfounded that I rejected as absurd his use of the term “Apartheid Wall” to refer to Israel’s security barrier fence.

What a difference a year makes. Last year I praised President Obama for not wanting to “spike the football” by releasing gruesome death photos of Osama bin Laden. But this year, forget spiking the football – the president is doing an end-zone dance.

The Koby Mandell Act created the Office of Justice of Victims for Overseas Terrorism in the Department of Justice, to ensure that all American citizens, irrespective of where they were killed or maimed, would get the justice under American law they deserve. I naively thought that the 54 American citizens who had been killed by Palestinian terrorists and the 83 who had been wounded would finally get a crack at the American justice they so richly deserved.

As moviegoers over the weekend flocked to see Marvel’s new superhero ensemble, they would understandably associate the idea of avengers with Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk and Black Widow.

Half a year after our marriage in 1997, my parents called and said they couldn’t attend the Agudath Israel of America convention and had extra tickets. Would my wife and I want to go in their place? We were newlyweds in every sense of the word and cherished the opportunity of a new experience. “Certainly,” we said and made the trek from Lakewood to Parsippany in the state of New Jersey.

If the Western journalists and donors continue to ignore the reality on the ground, the West Bank could soon fall into the hands of gangsters and armed clans, as has been the case in Jenin -- among the main reasons the Palestinian Authority collapsed in the Gaza Strip in 2007, speeding the rise of Hamas to power.

People don’t want to be told to sacrifice, especially because they suspect that the elite isn’t doing so and that this same elite is responsible for the mess. So they can be—easily?—manipulated into voting for those who tell them to eat, drink and be merry, with a minimal tax on billionaires and millionaires paying off the caterer.

After releasing all but two of the Salafists responsible for the brawl on May 5th, the Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Ralf Jäger, cast blame on the democratic -- and peaceful -- political party PRO NRW. He ordered police to prevent PRO NRW from displaying anti-Islam any more cartoons during the final phase of the state's regional election campaign, to be held on May 13th.

A unity government, which would give Netanyahu a massive 96 Knesset seats out of 120, would certainly clear the decks for military action against Iran. Early elections in September, on the other hand, carry a burden of uncertainty, even though Netanyahu’s Likud party is leading by a large amount in the polls. In any event, they would be disruptive.

The attempt to serve as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians has defied reality and U.S. interests. While Israel has been an unconditional ally of the U.S. and a role model for countering terrorism, the Palestinians have actively and ideologically sided with U.S. enemies and rivals: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Bloc, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, North Korea, Iran, China and Russia.

The 'Islam-is-good school' makes the West defenseless to understand and deal with the threat. The 'Islam-is-bad' school discredits serious critiques of Islamism and honest analysis of Islam, thus letting their opponents win the debates and blind the West to the best strategy and potential allies.

Tied as we are in Martin Luther King's 'single garment of destiny' where 'whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly,' courageous soldiers of the US military are forced to engage in war so that the rest of us might live in peace, to stain their hands so that our future might be clear. We do not gloat over the death of evil since its very existence must be mourned.

The whole world knows the peril Chen and his family are in. The right approach here is not to seek a “solution” that gets the governments of China and the US off the hook; it’s to stand by Chen and demand that he be treated with the respect for his rights as understood in the Helsinki Accords. While China is not a signatory to the Accords, their standard for freedom, travel and emigration, and reunification of families is the touchstone to be invoked in this instance.

The virus of antisemitism persists in haunting Europe. In recent months, antisemitism has been exhibited all too often in European countries, not just in theory but in practice.

The Obama Administration's policy toward Syria is turning into a scandal on both strategic and humanitarian grounds.