יום ראשון, כ״ו אב תשפ״וSunday, August 9, 2026
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By J. E. Dyer
At least Russia and China are probably as mystified as we are about where Obama is going with his missile defense policy.
If the world does not wake up in time to see the danger, Syria will be only the first domino to fall.
By Barry Rubin
The problem of this government is more likely to be one of personalities, marginal issues that get blown up in importance, and jockeying for financial benefits for different constituencies.
By Barry Rubin
In August 2010, Obama ordered a secret report on unrest in the Arab world.
By Barry Rubin
Despite the current policy's serious problems and visibly dangerous outcomes there is no major debate it.
By Barry Rubin
Israeli officials will be very polite in discussions and sarcastic when they talk among themselves afterward.
By Barry Rubin
If the US cannot depend on its new “allies,” despite the supposed popularity of Obama and its policies in those places, then how can they be said to be allies at all?
Visits of Western leaders complicate old problems and create new ones, and moreover, the chances that these visits will yield a positive effect or result in a real solution to any problem, is quite low.
By Barry Rubin
The Egyptian regime doesn't want a war or even a high level of conflict at this time.
By Barry Rubin
Historically, inasmuch as there was any European or American “imperialism” in the Middle East it made use of Arab political factors over Israel.
By Barry Rubin
We are going to be told often in the next two months that things are going to get better in Egypt. It's likely that they are going to get worse.
By Barry Rubin
Despite Obama's disastrous Middle East policy, in practice, there have been no real, material, or huge problems in direct U.S.-Israel relations.
By Barry Rubin
What the Obama Administration has done is like trying to reduce crime by turning over the cities to the Mafia and letting it make the laws and also run the police and court systems.
By Barry Rubin
Classic westerns demonstrate that Americans have long been tolerant and understanding toward other peoples.
Arabs outside of Israel envy Arab citizens of Israel, labeling them "Arab al-Zibda," or "whipped cream Arabs."
By J. E. Dyer
It is unconscionable of Obama to handle the sequestration threat the way he has - crippling our ability to readily strike Iran.
By Barry Rubin
Pretending there’s no elephant in the world doesn’t protect anyone from getting trampled.
By Barry Rubin
This is all a tragedy for the poor victims in the Middle East and a farce for the well-paid, much-honored careerist opportunists and ideologues in the West.
By Barry Rubin
Especially remarkable is the behavior of Esther. Warned of Haman’s plan, Esther wants to do nothing lest she place herself at risk.
By J. E. Dyer
There is a foreign-policy aspect of 'perception benefits' Obama hopes to garner from a photo-op tour of Israel.
By Barry Rubin
It’s bad enough to be mugged repeatedly but it’s even worse to provide the weapons and money for the assailants while also praising them.
A Purim lesson: Be wary of enemies, posing as partners of peace, concealing a strategic goal of extermination.
By Barry Rubin
A secretary of defense should not just be a “yes-man.” He should represent an independent point of view and also represent his department’s interests.
By Barry Rubin
Obama went to sleep and he has yet to wake up. And there's graphic proof for that assertion in the streets of Benghazi today.
Iran is waiting for the United States to flee from Afghanistan in order to take control of it and its resources.
Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer said that Israel is a start-up center, and there is always something to challenge us there.
By Barry Rubin
If they could have pressed a button and Israel would have disappeared, almost none of them would have hesitated.
By Barry Rubin
Obama's State of the Union address touted an American return to world leadership, but concealed the failure of Obama's policies, especially in the Middle East.
Political correctness is what dictates conduct in the highest echelons of leadership in the United States.
By J. E. Dyer
To advance our objectives in the War on Terror there was and will be nothing to justify the extra-judicial, standoff-distance execution of a US citizen.
By Barry Rubin
In Tunesia, where non-Islamists are actually the majority, the elimination of Choukri Belaid wasn't just a crime, but a political strategy.
By Barry Rubin
After going along with Obama, it is now said in the United States that Netanyahu tried to undermine Obama or didn’t cooperate.
By Barry Rubin
This may be a cautionary lesson about how the fear of seeming to be a 'racist' or 'Islamophobe' can be manipulated to fool people into forgetting law and logic.
By Barry Rubin
While such a visit would resolve previous criticism that Obama never visited Israel as president, it is a mistake, especially given the timing, for a number of reasons.
By Barry Rubin
Hagel's brain is the mass market version of Kerry's and Kerry's is the collector's edition of Obama.
The crisis in Port Said has exposed deep problems in Egypt's political system.
By Barry Rubin
The pseudo-realists in charge of western foreign policy today confuse what other countries should be doing with what they are actually doing.
By Barry Rubin
The internal drive to delegitimize America may aimed at overcoming natural American patriotism by those who would transform the country’s thinking.
By Barry Rubin
Kerry subscribes--as is so fashionable today in the Obama Administration and academia--to the abusive relationship approach to foreign policy.
In Washington there are deep differences of opinion as to how to address the growing jihadi influence in Africa.
By Barry Rubin
The left has sided with the reactionaries and against their comrades in other countries because they hate their own countries’ systems more.
By Barry Rubin
Once the rebels start consolidating rule, as happened in Egypt, there will be increasing examples radical Islamist control which the West will ignore.
By Barry Rubin
Attention now turns to the question of how Netanyahu can put together a coalition that will hold 61 seats, a majority needed to form a government.
By Barry Rubin
The US government will provide arms, money, and diplomatic support to a regime whose ruling forces openly evince hysterical antisemitism and call for genocide against Israel.
By Barry Rubin
An organization that can seize about 1,000 hostages in the middle of Algeria, a country whose regime has been so tough on radical Islamists, is not dead.
By Barry Rubin
Netanyahu’s impending victory is due to the fact that the prime minister has done a reasonably good job, the economy is okay, terrorism is low, he’s kept out of trouble.
By Barry Rubin
Liberals would than blame Israel than examine the faulty assumptions that comprise their worldview.
An Israel that has a strong character and is confident of itself and the justice of its cause, might stop behaving like a dishrag.
By Barry Rubin
The issue is simply this one: When you say something or do something or spend something whose side are you on?
By Barry Rubin
Smart people can make bad judgments; regular people with common sense often make bad judgments less often. But stupid, arrogant people with terrible ideas are a disaster.
By Barry Rubin
The current voluntary, but not inevitable, decline of the United States places many US allies at risk.
The Palestinian youth sees what has happened in the Arab world and despite the suffering, has the feeling of "yes, we can," even if it requires blood.
By Barry Rubin
Al Gore has sold out his admittedly obscure channel to al-Jazeera and taken a position on its board.
By Barry Rubin
If you are really being so hurt by the existence and growth of settlements then make peace fast and get rid of them.
Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom #174.
By Barry Rubin
Winston Churchill's statement that "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on," may still be true, but due to the internet revolution, the truth may have a chance.
By Barry Rubin
A large part of the problem with Obama’s policy is that he not only treated enemies as friends and did not pressure supposed friends that acted like enemies, he joined them.
By Barry Rubin
You can learn from the Bible that people understood four thousand years ago about things that America's current leaders have forgotten today.
By Barry Rubin
The problem nowadays is that an insane interpretation of international affairs seems to be a quality defining who 'the best people are.'
By Barry Rubin
The idea that Obama is now backing Israel is what American Jewish voters who supported him desperately need to believe.
Two years after the beginning of the upheaval in the Arab world, the picture does not arouse too much optimism.
By Barry Rubin
The Washington Post is suggesting that greater military success for terrorism will lead to Middle East peace.
By J. E. Dyer
Chuck Hagel writes his own narrative, in which threats aren’t really threats and policies that actually work are just horrible.
In the arid, forsaken and violent area that we live in, if you beg for peace you get a kick in the behind and thrown out of the arena.
By Barry Rubin
Obama Administration policy is to put into power yet another anti-Western regime that will oppress its own people and put a high priority on trying to wipe out Israel.
By Barry Rubin
The democratic opposition—like its counterparts in Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Iran—has learned that the United States will not help them.
By Barry Rubin
In the Middle East, secular movements are more poorly funded and more naïve about how to operate politically than the Islamists.
By J. E. Dyer
Connecticut has some of the tightest restrictions in the country and Mrs. Lanza was in full compliance with them.
By Barry Rubin
The Obama Administration was using a barely disguised channel to pay for a revolutionary Islamist movement seeking to take over Syria.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
International opinion has it that the new planned Israeli neighborhood between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim will prevent the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state. Unfortunately, though, that is not true.
By Barry Rubin
What happens, then, if the regime doesn’t give in and the army doesn’t stop the demonstrations?
By J. E. Dyer
At least we can probably count on the Muslims Brotherhood to refrain from making bunny-snuff videos.
The constitution, as important as it may be, is not a cure for the genetic illnesses of the states of the Middle East.
By Barry Rubin
Living well, as the saying goes, is the best revenge, even if it comes at the cost of international criticism.
Chanukah highlights the moral-high-ground of Jews in their ancestral land.
By J. E. Dyer
One of the key lessons from a career in Naval Intelligence is that if you can imagine it, someone is trying to do it.
By Barry Rubin
Middle East expert, Barry Rubin discussed the region, prospects for peace and revolutionary Islamism.
By J. E. Dyer
Missile tests popping up all over Asia should be seen in this light. Everyone’s arming up, starting with Russia
By Barry Rubin
Satire but Very Close to Actual Experience.
By Barry Rubin
We must understand how Clinton's mind and that of a large portion of the Western elite works.
By Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency
Europe has not even considered what would happen if terrorist elements in Judea and Samaria would start firing rockets at civilians living across Israel.
Economic facts about Israel in the aftermath of Operation Pillar of Defense.
Egypt seems today like a rickety cart that strong, immense horses are pulling in different directions.
By Barry Rubin
Egypt's draft constitution enshrines Sharia rule without rubbing people’s faces in it.
By Barry Rubin
The non-member 'state' status will sink the Palestinian leadership even deeper into an obsession with intransigence in practice and paper victories that mean nothing in the real world.
By J. E. Dyer
Many readers are no doubt aware of the millions in taxpayer dollars that the Obama administration has contracted out to PR firms for the purpose of hawking Obamacare to a reluctant public.
By Barry Rubin
For many months before he was rushed to Paris for medical attention, everyone who followed him closely knew Arafat was sick.
By Barry Rubin
Originally published at Rubin Reports. What’s been happening in Egypt this week is as important as the revolution that overthrew the old regime almost two years ago. A new dictator has arrived and while the Muslim Brotherhood’s overturning of democracy was totally predictable, Western policymakers walked right into the trap. They even helped build it. […]
By Barry Rubin
I’m amused by those who think that Hamas won the recent conflict.
The sole purpose of this ceasefire is to allow Netanyahu to survive the coming election.
By J. E. Dyer
Morsi has assumed dictatorial powers in Egypt. Courageous Egyptians are protesting that move, but Morsi has less compunction than Mubarak did, and we can expect the protests to be dealt with effectively. Those of us who said Morsi was an Islamist extremist who would quickly reestablish authoritarianism in Egypt – with a sharia flavor – were right. There’s a new Pharaoh in town.
By Barry Rubin
Of course, everyone knows that this ceasefire won't last. The key to anything more durable is if the Egyptian government decides that it wants to avoid another war because of its own interests.
Muhammad As’ad Bayoudh al-Tamimi is a Palestinian columnist living in Jordan. In the past he has often clearly expressed the opinions of the man on the Arab street. Following the interview that Muhammad Abbas gave to Channel 2 (aired on Nov. 2, 2012), in which he gave up the right to return to live in […]
By Barry Rubin
If 2011 was the year of the Arab Spring, 2013 looks to be the year of the Arab Fall.
By J. E. Dyer
Why are we sending an amphibious readiness group (ARG) with a Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) embarked to sit off the Levantine coast? U.S. officials say it’s to be prepared for any eventuality, including the need to evacuate American citizens, as the conflict between Hamas and Israel heats up.
By Barry Rubin
This strategy has often worked against a Western adversary or Israel.
By Barry Rubin
Originally published at Rubin Reports. A lot of people have asked the purpose of Israel’s defensive war against Hamas. Some, including those supposedly expert on the region, have been mystified. They cannot seem to figure out what is going on or what the goal of this Israeli operation could be. The answer is simple. Given […]
By Barry Rubin
There will be no “permanent end” to this rocket war madness or all of the other varieties of madness that are getting worse in the region.
August 7, 2026 
