InDepth

1. Coming from the conservative wing of the Republican party, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin unites the GOP by helping to secure support from the conservative base, which was not enthusiastic about all of John McCain’s positions. And McCain’s choice of Palin shows his willingness to work with conservatives and recognize their concerns. Donations for the campaign will now flow in.

Project Daniel examined some of the precise ways in which a nuclear war might actually begin between Israel and its enemies.

Yehudit Dasberg was one of the first victims of Oslo. Her daughter and son-in-law were murdered in a drive-by shooting near Gush Etzion.

We all eat to live, but the vast majority of us truly live to eat. We think about what we will have for lunch while we are still eating breakfast. We conjure up scrumptious dinners before we’ve digested lunch. While we are enjoying our delicious dinners, our most compelling conversations are about other wonderful meals we’ve enjoyed or what we will be eating the following evening. We imagine outlandish desserts. We think of food between meals.

Fifty years ago the battle over a federal humane slaughter law came to a close. On August 27, 1958, Congress adopted, which established the “use of humane methods of slaughter of livestock as a policy of the United States” – forbidding the federal government from purchasing meat slaughtered by inhumane methods and giving the Department of Agriculture inspection authority in this area.

We are all too aware of the impact exorbitant gas prices have had on us as individuals and on the general economy. The surge in transportation expenses has fueled a rise in food prices and other necessities and driven our economy to the brink of recession (if not beyond).

Writing about U.S. presidents and their relationships with Israel and the American Jewish community, whether in this column or a longer feature piece (i.e., this week’s front-page essay) is never easy. Readers are quick to react to any perceived slight of presidents they admire or, on the other hand, to chastise the writer for going too easy on an irredeemable reprobate.

Israel remains the openly declared national and religious object of Arab/Islamic genocide.

A week ago Wednesday, about 50 people protested outside the Chinese embassy in Tel Aviv against Israel's participation in the Olympics.

On Thursday August 21 an unusual ceremony took place at the Baudouina Orphanage in Warsaw, Poland.

Last year I wrote on the need to monitor students who go to Israel for a year of study.

As a shrewd and brutal ploy to break up Georgia, Putin's Russia is in the process of inventing a new "nation in need of "self-determination.

Many American Jewish observers welcomed Barack Obama's selection of Sen. Joseph Biden as his vice-presidential running mate.

For those of us who still remember World War II (either because we lived through it or because we grew up, as I did, in its immediate aftermath), what's happening today in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia looks strangely ominous.

Our signature is the most practiced and utilized part of our handwriting, one we spend hours developing and perfecting to our satisfaction. And while, like any one aspect of handwriting, it does not portray the totality of the writer’s personality – any more than a doctor’s examination of an arm yields a full diagnosis of the body – our signature is nevertheless a very telling aspect of our writing, as it reveals a great deal of the persona of the writer and the image he wishes to project to the world.

Most Jews in America, from Orthodox to assimilated and everything in between, seem to view the world not as it is but as it was – 50, 60, or 70 years ago.

The kashrut certification industry is being galvanized by a provocative, innovative initiative called Hekhsher Tzedek (i.e., justice certification). The brainchild of Rabbi Morris Allen of St. Paul, Minnesota, Hekhsher Tzedek is a supplement to current kashrut certification.

As part of evaluating the competitive landscape of the popularity of nations, in a process referred to in marketing circles as “place branding,” Israel, to no one’s great surprise, came up short in brand likeability, ranking last out of 35 nations included in an August 2006 survey conducted by nation branding expert Simon Anholt – even less attractive to respondents than Indonesia, Estonia, and Turkey.

Cleaning out some old files last week, the Monitor was reminded how fickle the media can be in the matter of designating heroes and villains, and how a world leader can go from slug to statesman merely by falling into line with the media’s preconceived notions of right and wrong.

The views expressed in these six columns are those of Professor Louis René Beres, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any other members of Project Daniel, or of any government.

"He had recently become more religious," the reporters explained, as they described the second Jerusalem Muslim who attempted to use a bulldozer to murder Jews.

Jewish art in Poland, as in other places throughout the world, comes from two sources: art by Jews or art by gentiles about Jews.

Eric Cantor is being vetted by John McCain for the vice presidential slot. Congressman Cantor may very well be the best possible Republican to run with McCain – for several reasons.

The White House said President Bush’s primary purpose while in Beijing for the start of the Olympics was to “show respect” to the Chinese people.

Governor David Paterson, Rabbi Marc Schneier, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Cantor Netanel Hershtik, Rabbi Marvin Hier, Haftorahman, and Shabbos kiddush for more than a thousand men and women – put these all together, add the Hamptons as your backdrop, and you’ve got an unusually memorable Shabbos Parshas Masei weekend.

In a front-page article asserting that minors had been hired to work in an Iowa kosher meat-packing plant and in an editorial calling the plant the modern equivalent of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, The New York Times joined the media frenzy that has, over the past two months, with very little basis in fact, pilloried AgriProcessors, the country’s leading kosher slaughterer and packer of beef, and driven federal and local law-enforcement personnel to threaten dire consequences to its owner and employees.

Submitted for your amusement, a tale of two columnists, as different as it is humanly possible to be in their view of the Middle East.

For many years, any talk of preemption against a nuclearizing Iran was certain to elicit primarily harsh and uniform condemnation.

The museum at the Auschwitz death camp is warning that its historic buildings will collapse without funding from world governments.

The perfect implementation of the expulsion without significant opposition from the soldiers leaves the IDF Samson shorn and blinded.