Zakaria Amara, the jihadist mastermind of a plot to terrorize Canada, has been stripped of his Canadian citizenship by the federal government. In announcing this decision on September 26, Defence Minister Jason Kenney said, “This man hated Canada so much, he planned on murdering hundreds of Canadians.” Canada should be commended for acting so decisively […]
With their relationship having sunk to a nadir in the past year, U.S. President Barack Obama hopes to mend ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the very near future. Obama has invited Netanyahu for discussions in Washington, D.C. on November 9. It will be their first meeting since the autumn of 2014. The […]
So fierce and unrelenting is the civil war in Syria that 11 million Syrian nationals have been displaced from their homes in the past four years. Of these, four million have left the country altogether. Staggering statistics. Many of the bedraggled emigrants, having landed in makeshift camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, have begun streaming […]
The refugee crisis presently convulsing Europe owes its origins, in part, to the ongoing civil war in Syria, which has claimed the lives of some 250,000 Syrians since 2011 and may go on for years. The war itself is the fault of the dictatorial Syrian regime, which opened fire on peaceful demonstrators demanding long overdue […]
In the early 1980s, Israel lodged vigorous protests with West Germany over its plan to sell state-of-the-art Leopard tanks to Saudi Arabia, claiming the sale would threaten its security. But in 2011, when unified Germany announced its intention to sell the Saudis 200 Leopards in a deal worth $2.5 billion, Israel did not object, calling […]
When Islamic State seized Palmyra in May, it announced it had no plans to bulldoze the Syrian city’s wonderful ancient ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage site. But according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights — a British-based organization which has documented the four-year-old civil war in Syria in minute detail — Islamic State recently […]
The Rototom Sunsplash Reggae Festival in Spain has apologized for having dropped the Jewish American singer Matisyahu from its program. Matisyahu had been scheduled to perform at the Valencia-based festival on August 22, but was disinvited when he declined to endorse Palestinian statehood. Pressure was brought to bear on the festival — an advocate of […]
Susan Rice, President Barack Obama’s national security advisor, put it bluntly. “We look to the next Israeli government, and the Palestinian Authority, to demonstrate — through policies and actions — a genuine commitment to a two-state solution,” she said in April, shortly after Benjamin Netanyahu won reelection as Israel’s prime minister. Wendy Sherman, the U.S. […]
Describing Islamic State as “nimble” and “opportunistic,” President Barack Obama recently warned that the struggle to defeat it will be lengthy and replete with setbacks. “This will not be quick,” he said. “This is a long-term campaign.” Obama, of course, is right. Islamic State, a Sunni jihadist organization intent on forming a caliphate, has cut a […]
Syria supposedly destroyed its stock of chemical weapons, all 1,300 tons of it, under an agreement reached by the United States and Russia two years ago. But there are strong indications that Syria, embroiled in a civil war that has claimed the lives of some 250,000 combatants and civilians since 2011, has not relinquished its […]