Israel has exploited the downfall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to strengthen its defences along the border with Syria and to ensure that Syria’s arsenal of strategic weapons do not fall into the hands of hostile jihadist forces. Since the seizure of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus by jihadist rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, […]
Amnesty International has discredited itself by accusing Israel of genocide, a crime it has not committed during its just, unavoidable and necessary war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Amnesty’s 296-page report charged that “Israel committed and is committing genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. It added that Israel’s “unlawful conduct throughout its military offensive resulted […]
With bold and stunning strokes, Syrian rebels have uprooted the autocratic Assad dynasty, ended the long-running civil war in Syria, and upended the political order in the Middle East. Yesterday, rebel forces stormed Damascus, the capital, after capturing Aleppo, Hama and Homs in a lightning offensive launched on November 27 from northwestern Idlib province. By […]
Daniel Robbins’ frenetic comedy, Bad Shabbos, unfolds in a finely- furnished flat in New York City’s Upper West Side, long the abode of secular middle-class Jews. There, during a Friday night sabbath dinner, acrimony and chaos erupt, tarnishing what was supposed to be an intimate family gathering. The central figures in this edgy and sardonically […]
With Syrian rebels having captured the cities of Aleppo and Hama in the last ten days, Syria’s civil war is burning brightly again after a fairly lengthy period of dormancy. The civil war erupted in 2011 after the totalitarian Syrian regime violently crushed peaceful nation-wide protests demanding long overdue democratic reforms. The bitter conflict, having […]
It appears that Iran, Israel’s deadliest enemy, has suspended its much-anticipated retaliatory attack against Israel. Iranian leaders from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on down had promised to react forcefully to Israel’s air strikes on Iran on October 26, following Iran’s ballistic missile barrage against Israel on October 1. These tit-for-tat exchanges, the first direct clashes between […]
More than a year after one of the most egregious intelligence failures in Israel’s history, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stubbornly hews to the far-fetched claim that he should not be held accountable for the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel perpetrated by Hamas terrorists. Netanyahu contends that the time for accountability should come only […]
Syria would be wise to heed Israeli warnings that its complicity in the transfer of Iranian weapons and munitions to Hezbollah carries a severe price. For years now, Israel has been busy interdicting Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah via Syrian territory. Israel stepped up its campaign during the final phase of the third war in […]
A long-awaited ceasefire has finally ended the 415-day cross-border war in Lebanon pitting Israel against Hezbollah. On November 26, the Israeli cabinet ratified it by a vote of 10-1, with only National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir opposing it. He called for the creation of an Israeli security zone in southern Lebanon, but was overruled. Shortly […]
The fate of Jewish cemeteries in Poland has been abysmally dismal. Many of the estimated 1,200 Jewish graveyards in Poland, a country once home to 3.3 million Jews, have been bulldozed, built over and vandalized. Still others, having been totally neglected due to the mass murder of the Jewish population during the Holocaust, have been […]