Tag: international

With the ongoing about Syrian regime atrocities, regional and global attention has seemingly shifted from more usual concerns about Palestinian statehood. Nonetheless, the two issues are closely related, especially in their common reflection of irremediable fragmentations in the Arab world and in their resultant propensities for escalating violence and cruelty.

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,” wrote the poet W.B. Yeats, “and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.” Now, assembled in almost two hundred armed tribal camps politely called nation-states, all peoples – not only the people of Israel – coexist insecurely on a plainly anarchic planet. The core origins of this anarchy lie in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which put a codified end to the Thirty Years War.

The United States can survive without the international order, but it cannot survive the international order. If the United States is going to survive the century, it will have to do so as a rogue nation.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, will see the start of new talks, in Baghdad, intended to persuade Iran's government to halt the enrichment of uranium, and also allow international inspectors complete access to its facilities. Ideally, President Obama would have liked to manage the progress of these talks, but both Republicans and Democrats don't completely trust the executive branch to do the right thing on Iran.

Israel's American football team took the field last Thursday in Petah Tikva, and lost its first international match by a score of 49-6 to...

Danny Ayalon: Denial of request to hold a minute silence during the upcoming London Olympic Games in memory of the 11 Israeli Olympic team members murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics tells "Israelis that this tragedy is yours alone and not a tragedy within the family of nations."

In the past few years, on these pages of The Jewish Press, I have written several times about critical strategic implications of “chaos” and also of “irrationality” and “madness.” Still, I have never written about the fusion or juxtaposition of these seemingly distinct issues. However, because there are increasingly obvious and important potential interactions between them (military strategists would call such interactions “synergies,” or sometimes “force-multipliers”), I shall now examine these utterly core security matters with a view toward acknowledging their possible ways of coming together.

At a time when many Western governments, the World Bank, and various international organizations are continuing to heap praise on the Palestinian Authority for implementing reforms, the deputy speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Hasan Khreishah, announced that financial and administrative corruption was now more widespread than ever.

AG Weinstein warned Netanyahu that expropriation of Palestinian land could lead to war crimes charges against senior Israeli officials. Harel Koren, representing the residents of the Ulpana Hill, urged the PM to disregard fear and save thousands of homes from demolition.

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.

A "bolt-from-the-blue" CBN (chemical, biological or even nuclear) attack on Israel launched with the expectation of city-busting reprisals might not necessarily exhibit irrationality or madness. Within such an attacking state's particular ordering of preferences, any presumed religious obligation to annihilate the "Zionist Entity" could represent the overriding value.

‘Global Winds of Change’ Conference addresses role of religion in democracies and changing societies.

Over the years, in several of my columns in The Jewish Press, I have examined the critical bases of Israeli nuclear deterrence. Recently, in consequence of the growing threat of Iranian nuclearization, increasing attention has been directed toward pertinent issues of enemy rationality. With this in mind, the following three-part column will seek to explain the impact of "irrationality" on Israel's deterrence posture, and also the vital differences between prospective Iranian irrationality and "madness."

Turkey blocked the participation of Israel in next month's NATO Summit in Chicago, a Turkish newspaper reported. Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu vetoed Israel's participation...

It is time to look behind the news. Operation Iraqi Freedom is officially concluded; U.S. operations in Afghanistan are reportedly moving in a similar direction. More generically, however, debate about combat operations, strategy and tactics remains ongoing.

In strategy and law, war, terrorism and genocide are not mutually exclusive. Now, following the “Arab Spring,” even as the usual suspects maintain their explicitly genocidal threats against Israel, certain “progressive” Jews proudly lead various rallies and publications for "peace” and “democracy” in the Middle East. Such “progress,” we might learn from Roman Polanski’s film “The Pianist,” could only be fashioned upon yet another generation of Jewish corpses.

Judge Margaret Marrinan dismissed a lawsuit looking to force the state of Minnesota to sell the $18 million in Israeli bonds which is held in its portfolio. The Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota published this understatement: "Divesting from the State of Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, one of our nation’s strongest allies, and an important trading partner for the State of Minnesota, is wrong."

As an American of Sephardic heritage, I was raised on the mouth-watering delicious foods that define Middle Eastern fare. For as far back as I can remember the kitchen has been my comfort zone. Whipping up culinary creations to please the palates of an Ashkenazic husband, Sephardic kin, fussy kids, and guests who frequent our dinner table can be quite challenging, but at the same time tremendously satisfying.

On the surface, “The Pianist” is “merely” the true tale of a talented Jewish musician, Wladyslaw Szpilman, caught up in the unfathomable depths of Nazi occupation and terror. More profoundly, of course, it is a disturbing visual microcosm of the generic human struggle between good and evil, a titanic contest that is sometimes utterly clear but at other times distressingly “gray."

In a key defeat for NGO "Lawfare", the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Tuesday decided that it does not have jurisdiction to begin an investigation over cases related to the 2008-09 Gaza War because "Palestine" is not a state. But this victory over Israel's Palestinian foes may not be long lasting.

A new feature-length documentary starring one of Harvard University’s all-time most popular professors reveals the secret components of Israel’s success as an international leader in innovation and humanitarianism.

President Obama continues to favor the creation of a "nuclear weapons-free world." This explicit preference is more than naive; it is also undesirable in principle. For Israel, in particular, Obama's solution could likely open the doors to unendurable enemy aggressions. However unintended, therefore, it could become an utterly Final Solution.

It would be unreasonable for Israel to draw any comfort from an argument that Iranian intentions are effectively harmless. Rather, such intentions could impact capabilities decisively over time. Backed by appropriate nuclear weapons, preemption options must somehow remain open and viable to Israel, augmented, of course, by appropriate and complementary plans for cyber-defense and cyber-warfare.

In January The Marker reported that Elbit Systems Ltd., an Israel-based international defense electronics company had won a contract worth $50 million to supply the unmanned drone Hermes 900 to an unknown state on the American continent. Now Aviation Weekly reveals it must be the Mexican government.

If Syria and Egypt have nothing to fear from the President of the United States, what will Iran fear?

For forty years I have studied the stunningly complex problem of enemy rationality, especially in certain earlier published writings concerning the particular nuclear threat from Iran.

Ambassador Haim Waxman: "In previous letters . . . we warned of the dangers of inaction by the international community. We alerted the Council that these attacks had the potential to ignite a serious escalation of the conflict, which could affect the entire region. The events of the last two days have proven the danger of silence on behalf of the international community at large, and the Security Council, in particular."

The month of February 2012 has broken records in the tourism industry in Israel, with 232,000 visitor arrivals, 6% more than the same month last year, and an increase of 4% compared to February 2010, which marked the previous record. Out of 232,000 arrivals, 200,000 were tourist entries, another all-time record high.

Would it be prudent for Israel to launch now the kind of unilateral initiative proposed by former Yesha Council Director Naftali Bennett, or is it best to leave well enough alone?

As only a distinctly last resort, Israel needs nuclear weapons for nuclear war fighting.