Military tensions on Israel’s northern front reached a boiling point yesterday, prompting speculation whether a new Middle East war is inevitable. In the early hours of February 10, an Israeli Apache helicopter shot down the first Iranian drone to penetrate Israeli airspace. It was downed in the Jordan Valley, near the Jordanian border. By way […]
One of the world’s least progressive countries may at last be on the cusp of meaningful change. Saudi Arabia, the seat of Islam, was until very recently a major exporter of Wahhabism, an austere and intolerant strain of Islam which Al Qaeda adopted for its own malicious ends. Lest we forget, 15 of the 19 […]
Without divulging names, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has let it be known that Israel has established informal and unofficial bilateral relations with Sunni Arab regimes fearful of Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Lebanon. It’s no big secret that Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich conservative ally of the United States, […]
Last May, following talks with Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to resurrect peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to achieve what he boldly described as the “ultimate deal.” In a sweeping observation, Trump boasted, “It’s something, frankly, maybe not as difficult as people have thought over […]
In a fire-and-brimstone speech to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Council in Ramallah recently, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas claimed that Zionism and Judaism are unrelated and that Jews imperilled by genocide had no interest in leaving wartime Europe. Abbas, who wrote his PhD on the Holocaust, should have known better than to make such […]
To no one’s surprise, Iranian officials conveniently blamed the latest outburst of anti-government protests in Iran, the most serious since 2009, on outside meddling. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused external “enemies” of fomenting the nation-wide disturbances, which broke out on December 28 and have so far claimed the lives of 21 people. Iran’s […]
With the start of a new year, Israel is focused on countering a looming threat developing on the Golan Heights. Iran, which has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel, is establishing a military presence on Syria’s side of the Golan, which, until very recently, was partially held by rebel forces seeking the removal of Syrian President […]
Israel is haunted by the specter of tunnels. For years now, Israel has been consumed by the fear that Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip will sneak into Israeli territory through tunnels and attack border communities in murderous raids that will cause multiple casualties. Palestinian tunnels have been on Israel’s mind especially since the summer of […]
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been shooting off his mouth again. Since Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the Turkish president has been vocal in his denunciations of his move. But while condemning the American president, Erdogan has gone out of his way to demonize Israel, which restored full diplomatic relations with Turkey in […]
It was one of the strangest incidents in the annals of the Middle East. Middle Eastern politics can often be murky, but the Saad Hariri comic opera was unprecedented in terms of its layered opaqueness. Now, more than a month after the Lebanese prime minister tendered his resignation in Saudi Arabia, only to rescind it […]