Mark 2012, however, as the year the Obama administration took its most overt steps yet to tell the Arab and Muslim World the the U.S. was severable from Israel. How much of what the US and Israel developed over the years was shared with countries overtly hostile to Israel?
The good news is that I believe that most marriages can work. Often, all they need is a little guidance and direction, and when necessary, a bit of first aid. I call this simple yet revolutionary idea Relationship Theory, which states that for a marriage to work, both husband and wife need to make their relationship their main goal.
By Barry Rubin
When I read the platform I am shocked and disappointed. I can pick at the issues of popularity, Afghanistan and Iraq. But the failure to deal with revolutionary Islamism is ridiculously glaring (they didn’t use the tiniest fig leaf to cover themselves), making a mockery about the democracy and human rights’ pretensions. The treatment of Middle East allies is shockingly insulting. The issues of Syria and Egypt are simply dodged. There is not a single mention of the opposition in Iran. All terrorists not involved directly in the September 11, 2001, attacks are ignored. There is not the slightest hint that any regional strategy exists at all.
So let no one praise a nation that murdered a million Jewish babies and children for shedding crocodile tears over the plight of the poor little baby boy who, following a many thousand year old tradition, is circumcised 8 days after birth. Every good person should condemn Germany for what really lies at the heart of efforts to ban circumcision—old-fashioned anti-Semitism, a term coined by Germans for Germans and against Jews.
The Jewish Press endorses Shlomo Mostofsky for Civil Court Judge in the 5th Judicial District in Brooklyn, New York. Mostofsky is a prominent attorney specializing in family law and served for eleven years as president of the National Council of Young Israel, representing the organization in national and international venues. This video interview took place at The Jewish Press office in New York.
The Gemarah in Kiddushin (82a) indicates that homosexuality is not something that Jews have to deal with because “Jews are not suspect to be homosexual”. In fact the Rambam (Issurei Biah 22:2) uses this Gemarah as a basis for a Halachik ruling. So, how do we understand this Gemara and Rambam in the light of the many people who present to therapy struggling with this issue?
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
The Jewish people have had bitter experience in recent decades with enemies who repeatedly vow to destroy them. Despite this, here are some of the arguments being presented as to why Israel should not attack Iran:
The shocking video of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa trying to push through Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in the Democratic platform highlights the strong reservations that many American Jews are feeling toward the Democratic party.
If it wants to survive and thrive, Israel must base itself upon three key concepts: identity, meaning, and liberty.
For the New York State Legislature in the September 13 primaries for the Democratic designation in the November general election:
By Jason Maoz
The charade is played out every evening on election day. Television news anchors and beat reporters, on local stations and the networks, come on the air full of breathless anticipation, seeking to build an atmosphere of nail-biting uncertainty.
By Ed Lion
Forty years ago this week, Jews the world over watched in agony as Arab terrorists kidnapped and eventually massacred eleven Israeli Olympic athletes. The International Olympic Committee, bowing to Arab pressure, has repeatedly refused these Israelis a proper commemoration. But we as Jews ought to pay them the tribute of remembering their individual lives, deeds, and accomplishments.
“Fair and Balanced” is fast becoming more slogan than operating system at Fox News, and nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the way Israel is increasingly being treated and the extent to which anti-Semitism is tolerated as part of the cable channel’s conversation.
By Steven Plaut
It is now official. Rachel Corrie, patron saint of the pro-terror radical left and its Islamofascist allies, essentially committed suicide in order to assist Palestinian terrorists. She was not killed in cavalier fashion by Israel. Israel had no particular reason to want her dead (as opposed to deported).
The start of the Jewish New Year, the month of Tishrei, is filled with holy days, among them four foundational celebrations: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Simchat Torah-Shemini Atzeret.
Bob Weintraub chuckled appreciatively the first time he heard that Barack Obama described his job before he went into politics as “community organizer.” Bob knows a thing or two about community organizing: during the late 1940s, he helped organize a series of remarkable grassroots election campaigns in New York City that sent a powerful warning to President Harry Truman about the Jewish community’s unhappiness over his administration’s waffling on Zionism.
Recently an Egyptian Muslim posted a YouTube videotape of himself cursing Islam and its holy book, the Koran; then tearing it to pieces and throwing it in the garbage. On a talk show guests called for the man's death. Already under President Morsi's first two months, Islamists have become more emboldened—whether by pressuring women to wear the hijab, by killing a Muslim youth for publicly holding hands with his fiancée, or by disseminating flyers that call for the total genocide of Egypt's Christian Copts.
A more important and stronger phenomenon than Islamization is the escape of the factional genie from the bottle in which it was confined while dictators controlled the region.recognized the "factional genie" well , whether in the Shi'ite version or the Sunni version. The dictators took every means at their disposal, principally torture chambers, in order to deal with the factional jihadism which has no boundaries of law or ethics. Today, dictators are taken down one by one, and jihadism is flourishing.
The interesting question is “why did they change it?” A platform is not a binding document; it is intended as a general statement of a party or candidate’s positions. Its planks are generally written to appeal the broadest possible constituencies. Most voters never read platforms or care about them. Is the change is intended to send a message to the leadership of the Muslim nations that Obama has been courting since his 2009 speech in Cairo that he is taking concrete steps to weaken the bond between the U.S. and Israel?
When I said I wish someone had been there to tell me all the things I know about Judaism now, I was wrong. There were people who would have told me, had I been brave enough to ask. I have had many amazing influences in my life - my siblings, friends, families in my community. Now, looking back, I can see the effect that they had on me. But when I was fourteen and feeling like I didn't fit in, I didn't think anyone would understand.
Reason #1. Iran's regime is outspokenly dedicated to the goal of destroying the State of Israel. Iranian political, religious, and military leaders have expressed their desire to annihilate Israel at every opportunity they have received....
By Barry Rubin
Egypt, the Arab world’s most important single country, has been turned from an ally of America—albeit an imperfect one of course—in maintaining and trying to extend Arab-Israeli peace into a leading advocate of expanding the conflict and even potentially going to war.
By Malcolm Lowe
After Greece's second parliamentary election this year (June 2012), there was a collective sigh of relief in Europe. The political parties that negotiated the bailouts of Greece in 2010 and 2011 had secured a majority in the new parliament and formed a government that was committed to avoiding a Greek default. Europe's political leaders could now hasten to damp down the next brush fire in the Eurozone, the crisis of the Spanish banks. What those political leaders overlooked was that the Greek political scene has undergone a revolution.
By J. E. Dyer
There has been a tremendous growth in vague, elliptical, and/or tendentious narration of what’s going on in the nation and the world. The people can be pardoned for being tired and confused.
By Barry Rubin
The information released about the Democratic convention seems to show it is designed to prove how radical the party is, to play to the most limited possible sector of the population.
Does the German government really want to get into a public battle over whether they are better guardians of the health and welfare of Jewish (and Muslim) children than their parents?
By J. E. Dyer
The U.S. is being made to look weak in Egypt, and is actually acting weak with allies and foes alike.
There is no doubting the Islamist revolution in Tunisia.
Russian worries about Israel gas potential may be causing it to lesson support for Iran; More U.S. companies are investing in Israel; Will Congress pass the US-Israel Water Cooperation Act?
In Bais Yaakov, you were either they way they wanted you to be, or you were wrong.
Extremist Sunnis could eventually ruin what began as a peaceful movement for reform and change in Assad's Syria. It would be even more tragic if they did the same thing in Lebanon after the Beirut Spring showed so much promise.
The first step to remaking Zionism in the future is learning what Zionism meant in the past.
The world often thinks of the Gaza Strip, home to 1.4 million Palestinians, as one of the poorest places on earth, where people live in misery and squalor. But an investigative report shows that it is home to at least 600 millionaires, who have made their wealth thanks to the hundreds of underground tunnels between Gaza and Egypt.
By Barry Rubin
Muslim communities in Europe and America hardly ever renounce terrorism or fight the Islamists. Why? Because those radical forces are in power, often with collaboration from Western leftists.
By Steven Plaut
In November 1947, the United Nations was considering the creation of a Jewish state in parts of Western Palestine and a new Arab state in the other parts.
By Dov Shurin
In Israel today there is a new generation whose members may not be outwardly observant but who are intrinsically religious and have the utmost respect for the Torah and its scholars.
Alan Dershowitz writes that President Obama must make it clear that he has rejected the view of those who are prepared to contain a nuclear Iran and that he will indeed employ military action if that is the only option other than a nuclear Iran.
Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future seems to expand with each passing year. Founded in 2005, the Center – among other activities – now educates hundreds of ordained rabbis through its Rabbinic Training Placement and Continuing Education program; sends 1,000 students every year to help communities around the world through its Experiential Education and […]
On January 30, 1968, in the midst of the Vietnam War, tens of thousands of Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers launched a coordinated attack on 100 cities across South Vietnam against the forces of the United States, South Vietnam and their allies.
We were hardly surprised by the final column of New York Times departing public editor (as the Times refers to its in-house ombudsman) Arthur Brisbane, in which he acknowledged the paper harbors a liberal bias on public issues.
Many people have a problem with the Chick-fil-A chain of chicken restaurants. Universities have asked it to leave campus cafeterias and mayors have tried to ban it from their cities. The Jewish mayor of Chicago summed up his displeasure by saying “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values.”
The land of Canaan was only gained in stages by the Israelites, who had to overcome many internal divisions in order to progress. The same holds true in our day, as Jewry struggles to maintain internal unity while vacillating in its attitude toward the Land of Israel. Though the Jewish right to a sovereign state in its ancestral homeland is incontestable – biblically, historically, morally, and legally – too many Jews and Israelis are self-shackled in the chains of constraint, still mired mentally in the vulnerabilities and fears of the last two millennia, unable to discard the Diaspora.
“Rabbi, is there any religious requirement for Jewish men to wear mezuzahs around their necks?” “Rabbi, if you yourself are clean-shaven, why does this inmate claim his Jewish religion prohibits him from using a razor on his face?”
Earlier this month the London Games were all the rage. Tens of thousands descended upon Great Britain’s crown jewel to witness the Olympics and cheer for their respective countrymen.
Palestinian-Arab journalist and Judea-Samaria resident Hisham Jarallah says it is time that the "pro-Palestinian" activists leave the Palestinians alone and search for another cause to advance their messages of hate and violence.
By Yoel Meltzer
In less than three months time the Jewish Home Party, formerly known as the National Religious Party (NRP), will be holding its first ever internal primaries.
When all the bubbles of rhetoric pop, there are still the hard unpleasant realities to deal with.
By Adam Levick
It is shameful that ISM will never face serious critical scrutiny for their recklessness, despite of their well-documented record of terror-abetting extremism, which ultimately took the life of Rachel Corrie.
By Soeren Kern
Areas of France have become lawless and off-limits due to non-Muslims due to Muslim violence. The government has finally embarked on "North-American style" campaign to bring the areas under control, designating an initial 15 areas "Priority Security Zones."
By Barry Rubin
It’s the age of revolutionary Islamism, especially Sunni Islamism. And you better learn to understand what this is all about real fast.
By Soeren Kern
A recent study revealed that nearly half of all Turks living in Germany say they hope there will be more Muslims than Christians in Germany in the futureIslam is becoming an increasingly important component of the value structure of Turks in Germany, especially among the younger generation of Turkish-Germans, who hold religious views more radical than their elders' views.
By Ryan Yuffe, Israel Campus Beat
As students prepare for the new academic year, the campus Israel community is stocking up with new ideas for attracting participants.
By effectively making their nuclear program appear to be primarily a threat against Israel, Iran sends a message to the Europeans and the US that they are safe.
A short video to remember all the other Rachels who were murdered by Palestinian Terrorists.
By J. E. Dyer
Dinesh D’Souza’s film, 2016: Obama’s America, is very good at putting the viewer in the milieu of Jakarta or Nairobi, which continue to feel “different” enough to engage the American viewer’s sense of distance and wonder. Conveying the difference of Barack Obama’s childhood and his idea of cultural roots – the difference from American life – is the movie’s most effective accomplishment.
Israel’s economic growth during the 2nd quarter of 2012 was 3.2%, surpassing the 2.5% expectation, compared with a 2.8% growth during the 1st quarter. Growth per capita increased 1.4%, reaching almost $30,000. Exports of goods and services –40% of Israel’s economic activity - surged 10%, following a decline during the previous three quarters.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar on the visit of a recent Israeli delegation to Turkey and why Israelis faithful to their religion and not the disciples of Left may be Israel's best chance at improving relations with its neighbors.
By Barry Rubin
America, this is not the Victorian age of dark satanic mills and brutal capitalists who laugh while watching children starve.
By Moshe Dann
The expulsion of 10,000 Jews from their homes five years ago was not a localized event in the Gaza Strip. It was a national implosion, a national disgrace. It caused enormous physical, psychological, social, cultural, military and strategic damage to the entire nation - and it still does. Like an ecological disaster, its foulness still seeps through our foundations, and continues to poison us.
The communication revolution - and the unprecedented access to information it brought - has ushered us into a new world. It is a world of wikipedia and youtube, but also a world of live-streaming al Qaeda beheadings and slow-motion car crashes. Positivecco, an ambitious online enterprise, seeks to harness the internet to promote positivity.
By Amos Harel
Israel had previously ignored, or sometimes secretly approved, Egyptian violations of the treaty. These always concerned deploying more battalions than agreed, but only for a short period of time, in order to fight the terrorist groups. This time, Cairo is aiming for a more serious goal.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
In the heat of the American election campaign, it's fascinating to note the large part being played by Israel's capital, Jerusalem – at least in the Mitt Romney campaign.
More than any other reason, “social justice” killed Moshe Silman. Here’s why: Who confiscated his truck and for what purpose? Social security. After all, what is social security, if not the mechanism established by the state to ensure so-called social justice? It is an institution authorized to take from the “haves” and give to the “have-nots.” And from whom will the Institute for Social Justice take if not from the owner of a moving company? And to whom will it give the value of the truck? To the tycoons? Of course not. It will give the truck’s value to the have-nots, or to those who know how to hide what they have.
President Obama recently rose to the defense of Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, when a handful of congressmen alleged that close relatives of Ms. Abedin had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (which is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations) and implied that the State Department had, as a result of the supposed connection, cut some members of that group slack in terms of gaining entry into the U.S.
As it turns out, the terrorist gunmen who killed sixteen Egyptian border guards some two weeks ago in northern Sinai presented a gift to the new Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi.
Earlier this month, a pricing error in El Al's reservations system resulted in tickets to Israel being sold online for prices as low as $325, all included.
Many American parents are passionate about providing their children with opportunities to participate in sports and develop as great athletes. A recent article in the Financial Post posed the question “Are your kids’ athletic dreams worth breaking the bank for?” For parents of elite athletes, the costs can be astronomical. Such parents designate “tens of thousands of dollars of their household budget to help their child’s athletic career blossom, a sacrifice that impacts everything from daily spending to retirement.”
For more than a decade, anti-Israel activists have sought to shoehorn Israel into the nomenclature of apartheid-era South Africa through the use of a tactic named BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions). Apartheid was a universally decried racist system. BDS activists argue that Israel is the second coming of apartheid South Africa and must be treated the same.
By Dr. Michael Goldblatt and Dr. Daniel Mandel
When Barack Obama entered the White House, he promised to make Israeli/Palestinian peacemaking his priority from "day one." And, indeed, in his own way he did. He pressured Israel into freezing Jewish construction in the West Bank for ten months in a bid to entice the Palestinians to negotiate.
White House spokesman Jay Carney recently reiterated the administration’s mantra about Iran, saying there was still “time and space” for a diplomatic solution to be found to resolve the impasse over its nuclear threat.
Internationally renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman and acclaimed Chazzan Yitzchak Meir Helfgot, chief cantor at Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue, have collaborated on a forthcoming CD titled “Eternal Echoes: Songs and Dances for the Soul.” The Jewish Press recently interviewed Perlman at his summer home in the Hamptons.
It’s important to acknowledge this right from the beginning: I love Batman. In fact, no one loves him more than I do. He and I have a history that goes back over four decades.
In the last five years there have been multiple Muslim plots to bomb synagogues. The NYPD is investigating bombs in synagogues, not bacon, because there really is a disturbing trend of anti-Semitic hate crimes. The best evidence that there is no similarly disturbing trend of Islamophobic attacks is that the NYPD is bagging and tagging bacon at a Staten Island football field.
By Sandra Ziv, Israel Campus Beat
Today, students come to study in Israel for many reasons, including professional advancement, academic requirements, personal growth, international experience, an alternative to the classroom and, of course, a connection to their Jewish heritage.
While the Obama administration continues to say that the Islamic group Boko Haram's jihad against Nigeria's Christians—which has seen countless churches destroyed, and thousand Christians killed— has nothing to do with religion, the group once again made clear that it is all about religion.
The fact is the U.S. and Israel have been somewhere between sanguine and cautiously happy regarding increased Egyptian concern about jihadists in the Sinai, and have accepted an Egyptian buildup that includes aircraft and helicopter gunships. Israel Radio reported that the deployment includes anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles near the border.
Yigal Palmor of the Israeli Foreign Ministry sent me a compilation of recent Iranian 'foreign policy proposals'. Useful to have them all in one place. I don't know about you, but to me, they just don't sound reasonable.
Much ink has been spilled about the desirability or even the inevitability of a separate State for Palestinians, whose identity stems from the middle of the 20th century, but what has been much less discussed by the international community -- and for the most part ignored -- is a similar claim by the Kurds, a people with a truly separate ethnic identity as well as a long history.
By Soeren Kern
Underscoring German officialdom's anxiety over home grown Islamic terrorism, the German state of Lower Saxony recently published a practical guide to extremist Islam to help citizens identify tell-tale signs of Muslims who are becoming radicalized.
By dvora
The focus of a wedding and its source of simcha changes as one ages.
By Barry Rubin
Saaed Eddin Ibrahim, arguably the Arab world’s leading sociologist and certainly the leading advocate of liberal-Islamist alliance against the old Arab military regimes has now totally changed sides, warning that the Islamists want to hijack power and establish dictatorships. He pleads for Westerners to wake up.
The center of Jewish culture — spiritual, scientific, entrepreneurial, artistic — is today, as it should be, Israel. This was not the case in 1948 or 1967, but it is true now, and I can only expect it to become more true as time goes by.
Many Israelis do not know the rules of the game of the Middle East: the more we show enthusiasm for something, the higher its price rises, and the opposite holds true as well: the less interest we express in something, the lower the demanded price will be. If we announce day and night that we want peace with our enemies or to obtain the release of a kidnapped soldier who is in their hands - the price for the peace or the soldier will be more than we can pay.
From time immemorial, the Jewish People has faced powerful adversities in asserting its sovereignty over the Land of Israel, and by undertaking unilateral national security actions. Conviction-driven defiance of adversity has earned the Jewish People deep respect.
Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad's attempts to prevent Palestinian workers from going to the settlements has failed largely because they were not able to provide them with alternative employment. Despite the billions of dollars that were showered on the Palestinian Authority in recent years by the international community, Abbas and Fayyad still have not been able to solve the problem of unemployment in the Palestinian territories.
J Street should get out of the business of telling Israel how to balance existential risks regarding the security of its citizens. It should stop undercutting American policy with regard to Iran. And as an organization that claims it is both pro-Israel and pro-peace, it should recognize that its superficial approach to this complex problem is bad for peace, bad for Israel and bad for American efforts to prevent a nuclear Iran without the need for a military attack.
By Barry Rubin
A friend of mine listened to the sermon given at the Ramadan evening prayer in a village near the north Syria town of Idleeb August 7. The closer one gets to ground level in the Middle East the crazier things become. Sure, by the time the Western-educated, suit and tie wearing leader sits down with the Western reporter everything sounds calm and cool. But the earth is boiling.
By Rotem Sella
Prominent Americans like David Petraeus have been saying non-stop that Israel does not have the capability to destroy Iranian Nuclear capacities, and surely not Iran's ambition to go nuclear. But if Israel can indeed delay the project while in the meantime having taken out of the picture one of Iran's most important allies, then things might look very different from the office of Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Senator Lautenberg, how exactly has our President demonstrated his friendship to Israel? He declared Israel's settlements to be illegitimate, put near-unilateral pressure on Israel to make peace without any expectations from the Palestinian side, declared that Israel should return to the arbitrary 1967 borders, and treated Prime Minister Netanyahu shamefully at a March 2010 meeting where he refused even a photo op with the elected leader of the Middle East's only democracy.
They are known as the Greatest Generation, and for good reason. As children of the Depression, they learned to make do with little, and lacked, most significantly, a sense of entitlement. As they came of age, they were called upon to serve and defend their country, and they did so magnificently, many with their very lives. They then went on to raise families and build the country into the superpower it has become – all with little noise and fanfare; continuing, through it all, to quietly do their duty.
Those who think that Hamas and other Islamic groups do not have a strong presence in the West Bank are completely detached from reality. True, these groups are lacking in arms and ammunition in the West Bank, but they still enjoy broad public support among Palestinians.
By Barry Rubin
I want to discuss three articles that I basically agree with to point out how they miss the key issue and thus are somewhat misleading. I’m glad to see these three articles being published but it’s a case of -to quote Lenin- two steps forward, one step back.
The Israeli media portrays Israeli brass and ex-brass who oppose Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on the Iran issue as a group whose assessment is based solely on a cold hard analysis of the situation. Unfortunately, there is a reasonable possibility that the Israeli brass and ex-brass themselves have piggy-backed their agenda to the Iranian debate.
Israel can theoretically negotiate a compromise with the Arabs in which it gives up land for an end to belligerency. There is a flavor of extortion here, but nevertheless Israel has a position from which to negotiate. But if Israel begins negotiating from the position that it is occupying someone else’s land, then the only thing there is to negotiate is the timetable for withdrawal.
If it weren’t so sad, the draft brouhaha in Israel would be the greatest show in town. It is a masquerade ball, a tragicomedy whereby each actor says the complete opposite of what he really wants.