With eastern Aleppo back in his hands after four years of fierce fighting, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has won a significant victory in Syria’s five-year-old civil war. As the last civilians and rebel fighters were evacuated from there on December 22, Assad could truthfully boast that every major city in Syria — Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, […]
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, was demonstrably disappointed and upset by yesterday’s decision by the United States to abstain and thereby allow the UN Security Council to pass a unanimous resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. “It was to be expected that Israel’s greatest ally would act in accordance […]
A battle royale has erupted in the United States over the selection of the next chairperson of the Democratic Party’s governing body, the Democratic National Committee. Ever since Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz vacated the post last July, on the eve of the party’s national convention, several Democrats have announced their interest in running for […]
Israel’s important but mercurial relationship with Turkey has entered a promising era after years of mutual acrimony, yet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a harsh critic of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and a supporter of Hamas, continues to criticize Israel, sometimes quite stridently. Israel and Turkey — the only Muslim member of the NATO […]
In a jab at Israel, and in an ignorant and insulting assault on the historical record, Ecuador’s ambassador to the United Nations, Horacio Sevilla Borja, recently equated Zionism with Nazism. He dredged up this shameful analogy in a speech at the General Assembly to mark International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. “We repudiate […]
As he ends his tenure as U.S secretary of state, John Kerry has fired parting shots at Israel. At a forum in Washington, D.C. on December 4, he made two important points that Israel’s short-sighted leadership would be well advised to heed. He reiterated Washington’s long-held view that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are […]
A just foreign policy in the Middle East must recognize the necessity of a two-state solution, says internationally renowned human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler. Cotler, the former Canadian minister of justice and attorney general, endorsed this concept on November 29 at Holy Blossom Temple at the annual general meeting of JSpace Canada, a progressive Jewish organization. […]
The wildfires that have ravaged Israel of late have consumed approximately 13,000 hectares of forest and brush, an area far larger than the island of Manhattan. This is a catastrophic event from an ecological point of view because Israel is not a country rich in forests, like Canada or the United States. Forests in Middle Eastern […]
Shortly before Ban Ki-moon stepped down as secretary-general of the United Nations recently, he received a remarkably blunt and bitter letter from the UN ambassadors of eleven Arab countries. The envoys — representing the predominantly Sunni Muslim nations of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates […]
By a margin of 58-50, the Knesset on November 16 took the first step to retroactively legalize Jewish settlements and outposts in the West Bank built on privately owned Palestinian lands. The proposed legislation, known as the Regulation Bill, is the brainchild of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Education Minister Naftali Bennett, leaders of the […]