יום רביעי, י״ט תשרי תשפ״זWednesday, September 30, 2026
Follow Us
What was G-d thinking when he sent Hurricane Sandy and what could have been its purpose? In truth, I don’t much care, because our role as humans is not to understand G-d’s plan in the face of horror and tragedy, but to challenge God and demand that human life always be protected and preserved. Did I say demand? Yes, humanity has rights before God. We are His children. He commanded us to preserve and promote life always. “Choose life,” Moses orders the Israelite nation in God’s name, on the last day of His life. And the Creator must abide by the same dictates He expects His creatures to.
In Union Square the chess players sit alone under the statue of George Washington waiting for a game. A Latino family, father, mother and son, sit on the sidewalk holding cardboard signs and singing. “I’ll be your friend, when you’re not strong.” The big chain stores are closed but the bodegas are open and Muslim and Chinese storekeepers charge up to ten dollars for a gallon of water. New York City in blackout, in short, is much like New York City as usual.
Just yesterday I was fully engaged in my campaign for the United States Congress. Winning, elections, and victory were on my mind. Boy, what a difference a day can make. Today, I just want my family and the 50 million people in the storm’s path to be safe.
As Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi looked on smilingly, the cleric told the crowds that, "We can see how the dream of the Islamic Caliphate is being realized, Allah willing, by Dr. Muhammad Morsi and his brothers, his supporters, and his political party. We can see how the great dream, shared by us all -- that of the United States of Arabs …shall, Allah willing, be restored. The United States of Arabs will be restored by this man and his supporters."
By Lee Kaplan
In a clear distortion of information, the once prestigious Freedom House, a not-for-profit organization that purports to monitor which societies in the world are truly free, appears deliberately to have omitted and misrepresented easily verifiable information in what can only be seen as an attempt to downgrade Israel from "free" to "partly free."
By Barry Rubin
There is a debate over the causes of terrorism and anti-Americanism in the world. One possible view is that the principal problem is that of genuine conflict. The adversaries hold certain ideological ideas—say, revolutionary Islamism—to which American society and policies are antithetical. The collision (as with Communism, Nazism, and aggressive Japanese militarism in earlier decades) is inevitable. The United States is inconveniencing the totalitarians both because of what it does (policies) and because of what it represents (freedom, democracy, capitalism).
The story of how the Obama Administration failed to secure a U.S. consulate and then failed to send in support while it was under attack may turn out to be the biggest scandal of this administration. But that will only happen if Benghazigate is the subject of a thorough and rigorous investigation. And that means basing stories on facts or on reliable reports, rather than on speculation and internet rumors that no one would take seriously in any other context.
By Joe Kaufman
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, founded in 1994 by operatives from Hamas, this month continued its tradition of embracing individuals with ties to terrorist organizations, such as Mousa Abu Marzouk and Yusuf al Qaradawi, by featuring, as the speaker for the annual banquet of its Florida chapter, Kifah Mustapha, an imam from Chicago, whom the U.S. government has named a party to Hamas financing.
One-hundred and thirteen years ago, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about the American enterprise in the Philippines. The title of that poem has since become a byword for racist colonialism and yet its text is a sardonic recitation of the dim virtues of the "Savage wars of peace." "Go bind your sons to exile, To serve your captives' need;" Kipling wrote. "To seek another's profit, And work another's gain. Fill full the mouth of Famine, And bid the sickness cease." This moral imperialism has never gone away, though it is no longer thought of in racial terms. For over a hundred years, the United States has gone on trying to feed and cure the world, sacrificing for others and seeing nothing in return.
By Barry Rubin
One of my most fun professional memories was when I walked endlessly, circling round and round and round that hall in Algeria in November 1988 with a burly, no-nonsense, and brilliant newspaper correspondent named Youssef Ibrahim, who was then working for the New York Times. Friendly, funny, sarcastic, and with absolutely no illusions or romanticism about the absurdities of Arab politics and the idiocies of Arab political ideology, Ibrahim’s only shortcoming is that there are not one thousand more exactly like him. If he was the kind of person leading Arab countries and people they would be far more prosperous, peaceful, happier and democratic.
Fatah leaders were quick to declare victory in the October 20 local elections in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria -Ed.]. But the results of the vote for 93 municipal and village councils show that the vote was anything but a victory. True, in some cities and villages, Fatah did win a majority of seats. But this is not the same Fatah that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and the old guard leadership of the faction had backed.
By Daniel Pipes
The Nation of Islam's historic role as a bridge between American blacks and Islam ended in 1975 when W. Deen Mohammed followed his father, Elijah Muhammad, as leader of the Nation and immediately disavowed his father's folk religion, bringing his followers to normative Islam, the Islam of the Middle East. From then on, despite the theatrics of Louis Farrakhan, the Nation has been in a long downward trajectory. Now comes evidence, thanks to Tony Ortega in the Village Voice and Eliza Gray in The New Republic, of a jaw-dropping turn by Farrakhan, 79, to Scientology; as Gray's subtitle puts it, "America's two weirdest sects join forces."
The more people die of Muslim violence, the more the principle of the innocence of Muslims must be upheld, because it is no longer just the innocence of Muslims that is at stake, but the innocence of the political establishment that has looked away while the fires burned. And a political establishment determined to protect its innocence will go to any length, and political prisoners are the least of it.
By Shiraz Maher
Herein lies the problem in Pakistan. The political class is simply unwilling to confront the Taliban which operates freely across much of the FATA region. Instead, they make political capital from criticising the drone program operated by the United States which targets terrorists in FATA. It is true that drones can sometimes be a blunt and clumsy tool, but in the absence of any will by Pakistani authorities to chase down the terrorists operating in FATA, this program is the only lifeline available to residents there who oppose the Taliban.
The visit of the Emir of Qatar to the Gaza Strip is certainly an important landmark on the course that the Hamas movement has been advancing since it took over the Strip in June of 2007. Hamas is trying its utmost to establish the independence of the Gaza Strip, vis à vis the PLO, the Palestinian Authority, Israel, Egypt, the Arab world and everyplace else as well.
By Barry Rubin
A reader asks: “I agree that democracy and economic development are not panaceas for the Middle East, just as they are not for any other location on the planet. But aren't they a start? And since it is possible to chew gum and walk at the same time, does it hurt to at least pay lip service to doing things to bring the rest of the Middle East into the 21st century? And what would those things be in your opinion?” As you noted, both candidates in the presidential election spoke of economic development as a top priority in their Middle East policy. This sounds good to voters but is pretty meaningless.
A leisurely Shabbat stroll around town recently turned a calming experience into a rather upsetting one, as graffiti sprayed on quite a few buildings in my neighborhood defaced the beautiful Jerusalem stone with the words; “Dabru Ivrit/Speak Hebrew”!
Last Shabbat I sat at a table in my local synagogue while a group of men argued over the election. They weren't arguing over who they should vote for, they were arguing over just how bad Obama was, their voices rising and falling as they named one detail after another. They weren't necessarily Republicans, but they were politically conservative, as my community and as almost all of the traditional Jewish communities in America are.
The U.S. Administration has sought to downplay the significance of this week's visit to the Gaza Strip by the Emir of Qatar, Hamad al-Thani. "We have seen the reports that Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa visits Gaza today on a humanitarian mission," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. "We share Qatar's deep concern for the welfare of the Palestinian people, including those residing in Gaza." Many Palestinians, especially the Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank, do not share the U.S. Administration's position regarding the emir's visit.
The New Israel Fund recently announced that it “is undertaking a comprehensive survey to identify those most involved in inciting racism and violence.” Incitement to violence and intolerance is a particularly troubling problem plaguing Israeli society today. This problem is all the more severe when the incitement comes from respected public figures and political leaders. But will the New Israel Fund will also include anti-Jewish incitement coming from the Israeli Left?
By Barry Rubin
One of President Barack Obama’s main themes has been to convince Middle Eastern Islamists and Arabs generally that America is not their enemy. But the reason this strategy never works is that the radicals, be they Islamists or nationalists, know better. They see the United States as their enemy and they are right to do so.
By Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg
To My Fellow Rabbis: I write to you at this time of dire trouble for our country and for Israel. Last week America was under attack. Our ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were slaughtered by Muslim extremists. This was not a spontaneous "protest" against an admittedly stupid video. This was an organized military assault, coordinated expressly for execution on September 11.
By J. E. Dyer
In the early dawn of 24 October, an arms factory in Sudan was attacked in the Yarmouk Industrial Complex approximately 6 miles south of central Khartoum. Video of the exploding building makes it clear that it was an arms factory, with an extended series of powerful secondary explosions characteristic of ammunition dumps. A Sudanese official claims that four Israeli aircraft conducted a strike on the factory.
It should come as no surprise to readers that The Jewish Press endorses Governor Mitt Romney in the November 6 presidential election. We’ve regularly expressed serious concerns about Barack Obama’s views on the Middle East in general and the Arab-Israeli situation in particular from the onset of his 2008 presidential campaign through his four years in the White House.
Whenever an insurgent group resorts to openly unjust means, its actions become incontestably terroristic. Even if the ritualistic Palestinian claim of a hostile Israeli "occupation" were somehow reasonable rather than invented, the corresponding right of entitlement to oppose Israel "by any means necessary" would be false.
By Dov Gilor
The title of this article is the supposed motto of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, but for Americans living in Israel it means, literally, vote twice. Both Israel and America are holding important elections and, hopefully, most Orthodox Jews will be voting. The United States will be holding its regular four-year elections for president and many other offices, and Israel will be voting for an entire “new” Parliament (Knesset).
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
What is the source of Prime Minister Netanyahu's apparent scorn for the religious, Land of Israel-faithful public in Israel?
By Soeren Kern
An Islamist radical convicted of stabbing two German police officers during a protest against "offensive" cartoons has been sentenced to six years in prison. Murat K, a 26-year-old German-born Salafist of Turkish heritage from the western state of Hessen, openly admitted that he had attacked and wounded the two police officers with a kitchen knife during the cartoon riots in May. He showed no remorse, however, during his trial at the district court in the city of Bonn; he said he had been morally obligated to follow Islamic Sharia law.
By David Mandel
What can a yeshiva do to institute practices that will help prevent any form of abuse? Our community has become a focal point of scrutiny for not responding with greater fervor to the allegations and occurrence of sexual abuse. Not only does this create pain and suffering for victims and their families, it greatly undermines the very institutions built to help protect them. Yeshivas are bedrocks of our community, not only for education but also as a safe harbor for our children.
The American presidency came to an end on October 15, 1992 during a Town Hall debate between President George H.W, Bush, Ross Perot and Bill Clinton. The stage seemed more like a place for Phil Donahue to strut around, biting his lips and dragging out tawdry tales for audience applause than for three presidential candidates to discuss the future of the country.
George McGovern is widely remembered for advocating immediate American withdrawal from Vietnam and sharp reductions in defense spending. Yet despite his reputation as a pacifist, the former U.S. senator and 1972 presidential candidate, who died Sunday at 90, did believe there were times when America should use military force abroad.
If any single business lobby—yes, business lobby—stands as an obstacle to entitlement reform, it is the American Association of Retired People [AARP]. There is nothing wrong with being a successful business, and the AARP should be credited for being just that. But there is something unsavory, at least, about being in the business of duping the elderly. Dissimulating—even to the elderly—is not illegal, nor should it be.
By Sara Lehmann
New York City Councilman Dan Halloran is looking to pull off a BobTurner-like victory as a Republican congressional candidate in a predominantly Democratic Queens congressional district (the newly redistricted 6th CD).
By Jason Maoz
There was at least one prominent figure in the Bush administration whose support for Israel was up front and genuine – the much maligned vice president, Dan Quayle.
The Obama Campaign, that strange 4 year marriage of Generation X hipsters, inner city bosses, suburban college educated boomers longing for racial healing, Big Green businessmen and shady Saudis, appears to be finally sinking beneath the waves. It isn't going out in a blaze of glory, but with mumbles of trending topics.
By J. E. Dyer
Romney sees the Navy as a core element of our enduring strategic posture. For national defense and for the protection of trade, the United States has from the beginning sought to operate in freedom on the seas, and, where necessary, to exercise control of them. We are a maritime nation, with extremely long, shipping-friendly coastlines in the temperate zone and an unprecedented control of the world’s most traveled oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific.
By Barry Rubin
A full analysis of the foreign policy aspects of the third debate between President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Remember that the idea that someone “won” the debate in terms of an outside observer’s standpoint or even based on a poll is misleading. The only important thing is whether either candidate swayed additional voters to his side.
How does a mild mannered CPA from Far Rockaway, Queens grow a set of vocal cords of such power and presence that a once meek and put-upon bean counter is now a vital part of the burgeoning Jerusalem acapella scene? And what causes an environmental lawyer from Marin County to discard all her eco-friendly (or at least carbon neutral) possessions to hop a fume-belching El Al Boeing 747 flight with the goal of thoroughly amending her life’s trajectory? Perhaps it’s the pale-pink light bouncing off the Old City’s ancient walls on a typical Jerusalem summer’s evening that somehow catalyzes a reaction, diffusing all reason and refracting all rational thought.
The Palestinian Authority says it is worried because of the rise in the number of Palestinians from Jerusalem who are seeking Israeli citizenship. Hatem Abdel Kader, who is in charge of the "Jerusalem Portfolio" in the ruling Fatah faction in the West Bank, revealed that more than 10,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem have been granted Israeli citizenship.
Many of us can, I am sure, remember where we were when we realized that the resplendence of the Nobel Prize had diminished. For some this realization can be traced to the news that Yasser Arafat had become joint recipient of the Peace Prize (an award of which he was never stripped). For others it will have been the announcement earlier this month that the award had been given to the E.U.
By Daniel Pipes
Barack Obama has a weak record in the Middle East, but one would not learn this from the debate, where Mitt Romney praised Obama's achievements ("It's wonderful that Libya seems to be making some progress"), agreed with Obama more than he disagreed, and rarely pointed out his failings. Presumably, Romney took this mild approach to establish his likability, competence, and suitability to serve as commander-in-chief.
Obama's greatest Foreign Policy error was the same one that had been made by Bush and by numerous past administrations. The error was that the problem was not Islam, but Islamic violence. It was Obama however who took that error to its logical conclusion by pursuing a foreign policy meant to part Islamists from their violent tendencies by allowing them to win without the need for terrorism.
A wave of anti-Jewish violence has taken place in France and Sweden over the past few weeks. The difference in government response is notable, and yet there is something similarly disquieting about their actions. The Swedish government alternately denies the problem, blames the Jews and blames Israel -- it recently funded a book on Israeli "apartheid." The French are more complicated. French counter-terror police have been good at tracking domestic radical Islamists, but the government has made overtly anti-Israel gestures that appear to be nothing so much as "compensation" to its increasingly angry and radical Muslim community and to the Arab world.
Democrats do not have a great track record in the White House. The number of Democratic presidents who have won second terms is small and becomes much smaller with the second half of the 20th Century. Unlike Congressional shifts which reflect regional politics more than a national referendum, the Presidency is a referendum on the usages of the nearly unlimited power of its holder.
By J. E. Dyer
The news keeps getting worse. The Washington Free Beacon reports today that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has “blocked” four senior military officers from answering questions on the Benghazi attack posed by Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC).
By Peter Huessy
The major argument against taking preemptive military action against Iran is the fear that Tehran's retaliatory capability will engulf the Middle East and other regions in serious violence and turmoil, throwing the world's already fragile economy into a deep recession or even an economic depression. This mindset is coupled with a peculiar assumption that absent […]
By Barry Rubin
Are supposed negotiations with Iran the “October Surprise” intended to win the election for President Barack Obama, an Iranian trick for buying time, or both? The answer is both. It’s an incredibly transparent ploy though with the cooperation of the mass media such a gimmick might well have some effect.
By Karen Lugo
The Iranian Green Revolution had brave Neda Agha-Soltan, and the Pakistanis have the stubbornly courageous Malala Yousufzai. At fourteen, when the Taliban tried to assassinate Malala for promoting education for girls, she had been defying the Taliban for years. Whether these girls are catalysts for sustained revolutions may well depend on how many in the West […]
By Soeren Kern
In recent years, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has been the focus of an intense lobbying campaign by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of 57 Muslim countries that are aggressively pressuring Western countries to make it an international crime to criticize Islam. In August 1990, the Muslim member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation officially adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, an alternative document to the 1948 United Nations' document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cairo Declaration states that people have "freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with Islamic Sharia law."
America can be a Democracy or a Mediacracy. It cannot and will not be both. And the only way to preserve democracy is to challenge the Mediacrats and force them out of the public space that they have usurped and back into the private sphere of their financial interests where they belong.
By Barry Rubin
Perhaps you remember an incredibly sensational story from back in October 2011 that after a brief period in the headlines disappeared completely. The U.S. government arrested an Iranian-American citizen in Texas and charged him with being an agent of the Iranian government who planned at Tehran’s behest to hire a Mexican drug gang to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in a fiery terrorist attack in Washington D.C. It would have been another September 11, albeit on a far smaller scale. Knowing about such an operation should have been a real game-changer for U.S. Middle East policy.
Modern government is fixated on depth of control over people. It plots to control every aspect of their lives with the goal of creating a completely harmonious whole. Technology has fed the illusion that such control has become more feasible than ever allowing for the rise of truly scientific government. This illusion is destroying the nation-states of modern civilization by overburdening them with massive governments flailing for control and destroying their economies in order to achieve that control.
The American presidency came to an end on October 15, 1992 during a Town Hall debate between Bush I, Ross Perot and Bill Clinton. The stage of the Town Hall seemed more like a place for Phil Donahue or Sally Jesse Raphael to strut around, biting their lips, and dragging out tawdry tales for audience applause, than for three presidential candidates to discuss the future of the country.
By Daniel Pipes
Why does the Turkish government act so aggressively against the Assad regime of Syria? Perhaps Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hopes that lobbing artillery shells into Syria will help bring a satellite government to power in Damascus. Maybe he expects that sending a Turkish war plane into Syrian air space or forcing down a Syrian civilian plane en route from Russia will win him favor in the West and bring in NATO. Conceivably, it's all a grand diversion from imminent economic crisis due to borrowing too much.
By J. E. Dyer
We’ve reached a watershed here, where we either live in our own heads affirming reality, regardless of spurious inputs from demagoguery or sentiment, or we give up on reality and let demagoguery and sentiment take over at the decision table. Did the president pull off a performance last night, in terms of sounding passionate and full of conviction? To some extent, yes. Does that mean he won the debate, or even achieved a draw with Romney? No.
By Nidra Poller
We can now fairly assume that both Democrat and Republican analysts concluded that President Obama's weak performance in the first presidential debate could be attributed to the absence of a teleprompter. The president's reputation -- earned or unearned -- as a golden orator cannot be upheld without this prop. So, to level the playing field -- as he is fond of saying -- he was provided with a flesh and blood teleprompter in the shape of Candy Crowley for the second debate.
“We’ve been living under mortar fire for 18 years. We have to do something,” said the young woman from Sderot on Razi Barkai’s radio show. “What do you want the leaders to do?” asked Barkai. “I don't know, but what they are doing now doesn’t help,” replied the Sderot resident. “Sorry to say this to you, but they also don’t know what to do,” Barkai said. “[It’s] not because they are stupid, but because there is simply no solution.”
By Dov Shurin
Hoshana Rabbah is, according to tradition, the day the judgment of Yom Kippur is sealed and finalized. There are some changes in the morning prayers. We circle the bima seven times with our lulav and esrog and then we put them down and take five aravos and beat them on the synagogue floor as if to say, “These are being beaten instead of me.”
By Adam Levick
Rumors of a U.N. decision to introduce Holocaust studies in schools in Palestinian refugee camps run by UNRWA have outraged Jordanian teachers.
President Obama and Governor Romney strongly disagree on many issues but the daylight between them is especially great in the imminent matter of Palestinian statehood. For his part, the president still believes in a two-state solution, and in a corollary willingness of the Palestinian side to negotiate fairly. His opponent is unambiguous in a fully contrary insistence that the Palestinians are not interested in peace.
The unwillingness of the Obama administration to label the September occupation of American diplomatic facilities in Cairo and Benghazi, and the murder of an American diplomat "acts of war" make this an opportune moment to consider two lessons emanating from more than a decade of warfare in the Arab and Moslem world.
By Mordechai Smith and Yosefa Schoor
The words "Never Forget" have become synonymous with the Holocaust, but as the actual horror of the Holocaust starts to fade, it's time we add to the mantra an addendum: "Never Ignore."
Liberal pundits have coined a new saw: Sheldon Adelson and the newspaper he owns, Israel Hayom, are primarily responsible for the collapse of many Israeli media outlets, and this endangers Israeli democracy.
By dvora
Editor’s Note: In our July 13 front-page essay, “Birth of a Leather-Kippah Jew,” Mordecai Bienstock described his personal journey on the path to becoming what he called a “Leather Kippah Jew.” Here he elaborates on that vision.
By Daniel Pipes
Obama got away with saying that he had characterized the attack on the Benghazi consulate as a terrorist incident because the moderator confirmed his point; in fact he misrepresented the facts when he said "The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that … this was an act of terror."
Female Muslims are being abducted, raped, shot, tortured and forced into unwanted marriages in a number of Arab and Islamic countries. In Israel, however, Muslim women are not only allowed to drive and run for elections, but can also reach high positions. Not all Arab Israelis are an "enemy from within"; Muslim women in the Jewish state enjoy more rights and opportunities than their colleagues in Arab and Islamic countries.
By Steven Plaut
There is a species of radical leftist that believes the main purpose of taxpayer-funded universities is to indoctrinate students in radical left-wing ideology. Such people believe the only legitimate form of scholarly research and teaching is to force upon students the ideas and agendas of the left because only these represent correct thinking.
The morning after last week’s vice presidential debate, Democrats were delighted. Vice President Joe Biden’s obnoxious display was exactly what was needed to cheer them up after a week of morose speculation about why President Obama was so passive and uninspired during the first presidential debate with Mitt Romney.
While it is still unclear whether the clear victory by Mitt Romney in the first presidential debate two weeks ago will amount to a more than a mere bump in terms of his popularity, or whether Vice President Joe Biden’s aggressiveness in last week’s vice presidential debate stanched the bleeding, we certainly have been witness to some troubling developments over the past couple of weeks.
By Barry Rubin
While foreign policy did not figure large in the second presidential debate, the Middle East again emerged as the overwhelmingly main international issue. In the beginning of the debate, President Barack Obama claimed that he put a high priority on energy independence, an assertion well refuted by Governor Mitt Romney. A president who wanted energy independence, from the unreliability of Middle East supplies, could easily expand oil drilling on federal land; the use of new technology to produce oil and gas; a major pipeline from Canada; and the continued production and use of coal for generating power. To do none of these things and put his effort into restricting traditional energy sources and push hard for untested, long-term, and failed “green energy” schemes subverts energy independence. But the main emphasis in the debate was on the Benghazi assassinations.
By Jason Maoz
With all the media attention paid to the recent 40th anniversary of the Munich Olympic massacre, another anniversary – this one related to something far more consequential in terms of Israel’s history – slipped by relatively unnoticed.
By Eli Chomsky
Despite public surveys that show the general public largely opposed to negative campaigning, the overwhelming majority of candidates in contested races have refined this strategy almost to an art form.
Walid Obeidat, Jordan's new ambassador to Israel, a member of one of Jordan's largest and most influential tribes, deserves an award for being one of the most courageous diplomats not only in his country, but in the entire Arab world. His tribe has now "disowned" him because he agreed to serve as ambassador to Israel, which has a peace treaty with Jordan.
By Steve McCann
In October 1972, and twelve days before the presidential election, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger made a surprise announcement of a peace agreement ending the war in Vietnam, thus giving birth to the term "October Surprise." In nearly every election cycle since, one party or the other has attempted to spring some last minute opposition research or policy announcement in the immediate weeks prior to an election. However the Democrats, with their near stranglehold on the mainstream media, have been overwhelmingly more successful in the use of this strategy. That is until this year.
By J. E. Dyer
The short answer is: because he’s got nothing. There is no record to run on, no argument to make for four more years. The ideology that drives him is outdated and bankrupt. He has, in fact, implemented his policies – Republicans have had little means of stopping him – and those policies are the problem. But there’s a slightly longer answer too.
By Barry Rubin
One argument we will be increasingly hearing is that President Barack Obama couldn’t have done anything to change events in the Middle East. This is ironic of course because when things were going well he wanted to take credit as the inspiration for the "Arab Spring."
By Daniel Pipes
Shimon Shiffer reports in Yedioth Ahronoth that in secret talks in 2010 via U.S. government mediator Frederic C. Hof, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed in principle to a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights to the June 4, 1967, lines in return for the "expectation" of Bashar al-Assad cutting ties with Iran, and that the nearly-completed negotiations ended because of the anti-Assad uprising that began in January 2011.
The presidential and vice-presidential debates provided us with two snapshots of two different and yet very similar men. The Obama who showed up to debate Mitt Romney and the Biden who showed up to debate Paul Ryan were outwardly different types. One white and one black, one elderly and one middle-aged, one a veteran of the Senate and the other a political tyro rushed through the ranks on the promise of his electability.
Building U.S.-Canada relations is more urgent than ever, both economically and in foreign affairs. If America intends to keep its advantage as a superpower, it will greatly help to ally with its neighbor, Canada. While Canada has depended upon the U.S. historically as the stronger military might, it has, under a Conservative Government, demonstrated global leadership in economic policy and foreign affairs. Given the rise of economic superpowers such as China and India, and the challenges from our enemies, such as Islamists, a strong foreign policy and a functional economy are key.
A month before the presidential election, we know it will be close, and it will be a choice -- no mere referendum on the executive management skills of the current president. The electorate is choosing the balance between public and private sectors, between more and less government. But it is also choosing between the different ends to which government is directed, the different visions about what government is for, and in particular, the relationship politics has with suffering and sacrifice.
Recently, on this stage we have dealt with the increasing tension between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites in the Middle East. The coalitions, which are hostile to each other, reflect this inter-ethnic tension: on one side is the Shi'ite coalition that comprises Iran, Iraq and Hizb'Allah, which support the bloody, Shi'a-aligned Alawite regime, and on the other side is the Sunni coalition whose members are Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as a few other countries who offer background support, principally Jordan and Egypt. The war of Gog the Shi'ite against Magog the Sunni has been in progress since March 2011 on the soil of Assyria, modern Syria. Today we will focus on the Turkish-Kurdish-Egyptian triangle.
By J. E. Dyer
Samantha Mathis as Dagny Taggart adds some gravitas to the second in the Atlas Shrugged series – Atlas Shrugged II: Either-Or – and director John Putch (the 2005 Poseidon Adventure, The Book of Love) keeps the story moving right along.
By Harold Rhode
The Alawites are a small, historically oppressed people, whose political future will determine whether Syria remains united in some form or disintegrates into even smaller ethnic and religious entities. As they will play such an important role, America, Israel, and other forces interested in the future of Syria might do well to get to know them, their concerns, and how others can best come to terms with them.
By Daniel Pipes
Middle East expert Daniel Pipes' thoughts on the Biden-Ryan debate.
By Barry Rubin
The Obama Administration's Middle East errors are deepened and the lessons of experience once again rejected in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s latest defense of these wrong-headed policies in a speech given at my first employers, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. Her argument is that the United States should ignore violence and extremism while helping to build democracies. The problem is that most of the violence and extremism comes from forces that the Obama Administration supports or groups basically allied with those forces. The violence and extremism is the inevitable outcome, not a declining byproduct, of this process.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
A big week for Jerusalem: Britain's Press Complaints Commission ruled that newspapers may not refer to Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital, and Palestinian Media Watch publicized five recent examples of the Palestinian Authority's ongoing attempts to erase Jewish history in Yerushalayim.
Many are saying that this year will be momentous. They say that this will be the year when the decision whether to attack Iran will be made, that this will be a decisive year in the political arena, and that this year will be an unforgettable one – engraved in history.
Today, conventional wisdom maintains that the George W. Bush administration had been a good friend to Israel and, unlike the Obama administration, had fought mightily against the creation of a Palestinian state. With this “wisdom” in mind, I ask readers to consider the following column of mine that originally appeared in The Jewish Press in August 2007.
Even before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced it would begin hearings on last month’s terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, it was clear to many that important questions needed to be answered.
We have long been dismayed by the trust some prominent Jewish groups place in the established non-evangelical Protestant Christian denominations. Aside from some occasional and perfunctory conciliatory statements on minor matters offered by the denominational leaders, the relationship has never become a true dialogue but rather an embarrassing, self-conscious cry for acceptance from insecure Jews.
Late last week former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that Washington must make it clear to Israeli leaders that the U.S. must not permit Israel to harm American interests. Previously, Gates had called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an “ungrateful ally.” It would be a serious mistake to slough off these most recent statements as the idle rantings of a retired civil servant.
I wouldn't be writing these words had your most recent video not been framed in biblical language. Its title held deep significance to me, as I am sure was your intention...
By Meir Indor
We call them sheep: heavy-sidelocked, scraggly-bearded young men and woolen-cloaked, long-sleeved young women better known as the hilltop youth. Some herd members come in couples, some even with babies, a few of whose mothers are not yet eighteen. Many impress me with the vocabulary and analytical skill that characterize their discussions.
“Americans who support Israel should take the president at his word.” So wrote Haim Saban recently in The New York Times, claiming President Obama was fully committed to the Jewish state. But is that true? Should we take Obama at his word? No, not when Israel confronts the threat of a nuclear Iran.
With the dramatic stroke of a red marker, the “Bibi Bomb” became an instant sensation. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood before world leaders on September 27 at the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly, he faced a colossal challenge. Despite the vocal skepticism of those who feel the situation is not as dire as he maintains, Netanyahu has been steadfast in his insistence that Iran is well on its way to stockpiling enough enriched uranium to construct a nuclear bomb.
Danon, 41, deputy speaker of Israel’s Knesset and chairman of World Likud, published his first book last month, Israel: The Will to Prevail (published by Palgrave Macmillan). In it, he outlines his vision for Israel’s future while also reviewing historical, religious, political, legal, and contemporary factors crucial for understanding modern-day Israel.
September 25, 2026 
