Lior Sternfeld, a professor of history and Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University, has written a nuanced work on Iran’s Jewish community and Israel’s relations with Iran. These are highly-charged topics, given Iran’s hostility to Israel since the 1979 Islamic revolution and the sometimes precarious position of Jews in Iranian society. In his book, Between […]
The announcement from U.S. President Donald Trump on September 11 that the tiny pro-American Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain would normalize relations with Israel was yet another milestone in Israel’s dogged campaign to win regional recognition and acceptance from conservative Arab states. Bahrain, an archipelago of islands near Saudi Arabia and Iran, was the second […]
A sober voice of reason was heard in Lebanon a few days ago, debunking sacred myths and misconceptions about Israel that some Lebanese hold dear. Sejaan Azizi, Lebanon’s former minister of labor and a leading member the mainly Christian Kataeb Party, conveyed two major truths to his fellow Lebanese citizens: Israel seeks peace with Lebanon […]
We have seen this movie before, but it’s the only one in town. Israel and Hamas have agreed to abide by yet another truce, the latest in a long line of ceasefires. It went into effect on August 31, ending several weeks of cross-border fighting in and around the Gaza Strip. It was brokered by Qatar in […]
The late Karl Plagge was an uncommonly resolute and courageous dissenter. A member of the Nazi Party in Germany, he saved some 250 Lithuanian Jews while stationed in Vilna in the early 1940s. In 2004, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, recognized him as a Righteous Gentile. The Good Nazi, a Canadian documentary broadcast […]
American funding of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has become a source of heated debate in the U.S. Congress. Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate, such as Lee Zeldin (New York) and Ted Cruz (Texas), contend that aid should be curtailed or cut altogether unless LAF rids itself of Hezbollah influence or acts […]
Israel’s image on the political Left has been increasingly tarnished since the 1967 Six Day War, which utterly transformed the Arab-Israeli conflict. Once embraced by most progressives as a shining light of democracy in a dark region of despotism, Israel was repudiated by leftists as a colonialist, racist state, while its adversary, the Palestinians, were […]
On his English-language Twitter feed a few days ago, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, predictably lambasted the United Arab Emirates’ normalization agreement with Israel. He accused the UAE of betraying Islam, the Arab world and the Palestinians. “The UAE rulers opened the door of the region to the Zionists,” he tweeted angrily. And […]
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exulted in the news that the United Arab Emirates would normalize relations with Israel, the third Arab country to do so, the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot reported that the United States intends to sell the highly regarded F-35 stealth fighter jet to that Gulf nation. It suggested that the […]
Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law, declared yesterday that a script for a “new Middle East” is currently being written. This is not a freshly-minted expression. It was coined by the late Shimon Peres after the Olso accords were signed in August 1993. Peres, Israel’s former defence minister, foreign minister, prime minister […]