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Middle East

A New Reality In Israel-U.S. Relations

There was a time in American politics when Israel could usually count more on Democrats than Republicans for understanding and support. But since the accession of Donald Trump to the presidency, the pendulum has swung the other way. In fact, this is a historic process that has actually unfolded incrementally over the decades. A Democratic […]

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Middle East

Normalization And Annexation — A Clash Of Ideas

The United Arab Emirates, a conservative, pro-American Arab state, regards Israel as a potential partner, but its willingness to establish formal diplomatic relations with it is constrained by one overwhelming obstacle, the Arab-Israeli dispute. A federation of seven emirates, including Dubai, the UAE has cozied up to Israel in recent years. Two factors account for […]

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Commentary

Labour Party’s New Leader Has Kept His Promise

Keir Starmer, the new leader of Britain’s Labour Party, lived up to a solemn promise and did the right thing by sacking his shadow education secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, on June 25. Starmer, who succeeded the discredited Jeremy Corbyn as party leader in April, pledged to root out antisemitism within its ranks and rebuild trust with […]

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Commentary

Statues Of Antisemites Should Be Consigned To Oblivion

I can think of no better a statue to remove from its lofty pedestal than that of Queen Isabella I of Spain. Statues of the monarch, who expelled Jews from Spain in 1492 under the infamous Alhambra Decree, are found in a plethora of countries. Streets have been named after Isabella as well. A thoroughfare […]

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Books

The American Alt-Right And The White Ethnostate

The alt-right, a purveyor of an xenophobic and toxic brand of white nationalism, is gaining a foothold in the United States, even as it incurs intense opprobrium in the media. Having emerged during the presidency of Barack Obama, the first African American president, it has attracted still more followers during the era of his successor, […]

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Middle East

Annexation — A Disastrous Choice For Israel

As Israel mulls the possibility of unilaterally annexing parts of the West Bank, a process that was short-sightedly sanctioned by President Donald Trump under his misbegotten Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, Israel’s friends in the United States are warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he should seriously reconsider the matter. A few days ago, three of its […]

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Film

Farewell To My Country

Andrzej Krakowski was one of the victims of the antisemitic campaign that drove multitudes of Jews out of Poland in 1967 and 1968. Crudely disguised as an anti-Zionist reaction to Israel’s military victory in the Six Day War, it was primarily rooted in an ideological struggle within Poland’s ruling Communist Party that pitted Western-leaning progressives […]

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Middle East

Trump’s Mideast Peace Plan Lacks Credibility

The European Union, having rejected President Donald Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, recently invited the United States to seriously consider its own peace proposal. One can safely assume that the Trump administration is not in the least interested. Nonetheless, the U.S. should take a long, hard look at the European proposal, which conforms to internationally agreed […]

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Commentary

Facebook Should Remove All Hate Content

Facebook in recent days has removed more than 900 social media accounts linked to the white supremacist organizations Proud Boys and American Guard. Facebook sprung into action after discovering that their members had discussed plans to bring weapons to protests across the United States condemning last month’s murder of an African American man, George Floyd, […]

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Books

A State At Any Cost

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first and perhaps greatest prime minister, was a man of conviction. As Tom Segev observes in his comprehensive and excellent biography, A State At Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), “The Zionist dream was the quintessence of his identity and the core of his personality, and its […]