Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s accession to Egypt’s presidency is yet another stunning blow to the already battered Muslim Brotherhood. Sisi, previously chief of staff of the armed forces and defence minister, defeated his only credible opponent, Hamdeen Sabahi, a disciple of the late Abdel Gamal Nasser, by a whopping margin in last month’s election. Sisi, who […]
The United States, with Harry Truman as its president, recognized Israel only 11 minutes after its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared statehood on May 14, 1948. And so Truman was immortalized by Zionists as a great supporter of Jewish statehood. But as John Judis points out in Genesis: Truman, American Jews, And The Origins […]
Russia, backed by China, vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on May 22 that would have empowered the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate the terrible contagion of war crimes in Syria. This was Russia’s fourth veto of a Security Council resolution dealing with the Syrian civil war, which broke out three […]
Menachem Begin, the prime minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983, was a man of war and a man of peace, but above all else, he was an ideologue who stuck steadfastly to his beliefs. A Zionist Revisionist in the mould of his hero, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Begin devoted himself, body and soul, to the attainment […]
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, faces a May 28 deadline to form what has almost always eluded the Palestinian movement — a national unity government that can speak with one voice, particularly with respect to Israel. It’s a daunting challenge, since the Palestinians have only once capitalized on this opportunity. In March […]
It was indeed a “sad day” for Israel, as Ehud Olmert himself murmured after a judge in Tel Aviv’s district court sentenced him to six years imprisonment on charges of corruption. Olmert now has the dubious distinction of being the first former Israeli prime minister to be saddled with the indignity of a criminal record. […]
As Syrians slaughter each other in an increasingly vicious civil war whose death toll now exceeds 150,000 and whose outcome is still uncertain, Israel is straining to remain aloof from that conflict. Israel’s policy of neutrality was succinctly summed up by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last June: “Israel is not interested in intervening, as long […]
To no one’s surprise, the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are dead in the water, having expired on April 29, and the prospects for reviving them in a meaningful fashion are extremely slim, if non-existent. At this point, it’s worth asking two relevant questions: Was it all a waste of time? Was […]
Mohammed Dajani, a professor at Al Quds University in eastern Jerusalem, is the kind of Palestinian the Palestinians need more of. Once a flaming radical, he’s now a pragmatist who supports a two-state solution to defuse the Arab-Israeli conflict and espouses such eternal and precious values as reconciliation and dialogue. Driven by these laudable ideas, […]
Let’s be realistic. The American-brokered Middle East peace talks, revived late last July by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry amid an aura of cautious optimism, are as good as dead, having crumbled more than three weeks before the April 29 expiry date. The talks had been faltering long before they broke down at […]