יום חמישי, י״ח חשוון תשפ״זThursday, October 29, 2026
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By J. E. Dyer
Iran is making full use of strategic ambiguity on the high seas to advance its interests and dictate outcomes. Unless each new measure is directly challenged, strategic ambiguity would be a lot more fun for Iran than for the rest of us.
Anyone who travels through Judea and Samaria and sees the Arab cities and villages there will discover a highly-westernized living standard and rapid expansion, belying the the claims of suffering and discrimination.
By Barry Rubin
One factor that is not taken into account in Washington, or at least in the White House, is how U.S. policies and actions are distorted, often on purpose, in the Arabic-speaking sphere. When someone says that Arabs or Muslims hate America because of its policies, the proper wording should be: because of what they think those policies are, regardless of what is actually happening.
By Ayman Masri
Abbas's peace process will only lead to a Palestinian government or state controlled by Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood.
There are certainly substantive questions and concerns that can be raised about Naftali Bennett’s proposal to annex Area C in Judea and Samaria, but when people associated with Oslo, the Geneva Initiative, and Peace Now trash the idea on the grounds that it is out of touch with reality, one can only respond: “look who’s talking.”
The red carpet, with which the West welcomes Palestinian leaders, is transformed into a shabby rug when the same leaders land in Arab capitals. What do Arabs know about the Palestinians that the West has yet to learn?
By Ted Belman
The Obama administration needs to lead the world in providing direct aid to the Syrian people to stop the genocide in Syria
Refraining from preemption would gravely destabilize the Mid-East and beyond. The only effective way to prevent Iran’s nuclearization and its devastating cost is to preempt!
By Barry Rubin
It is now conceivable that the two leading presidential candidates will be Islamists and thus Egypt will have an Islamist president. That would mean the timetable for turning the country into an Islamist Sharia state could be vastly accelerated.
Countries whose immediate danger from Iranian bombs is far less than Israel's are remarkably hypocritical and insulting when they warn Israel against a military strike. Telling Israel that it should not defend itself is like saying “just die, but don’t make a mess.” When have Jews heard this before? It’s become a cliché, but one that still resonates. The difference is that then they had no choice because they had no power to defend themselves. Today there is a Jewish state, which should not be expected to act as though it is as powerless as the European Jews of WWII. All this is part of the “Israel is expected to…” syndrome.
By J. E. Dyer
Did Iran's warships actually visit Syria this past week as was widely reported, or did was that Iranian disinformation?
The stories in this column are translations by Mr. Nollet from Die Juden In Der Welt (The Jews in the World) by Mark Wischnitzer, a long out-of-print book published more than seven decades ago in Germany. The book examines Jewish communities, one country at a time, as they existed in 1935.
To my fellow Israelis, I say this: The door is open. Just start marching toward leadership, toward liberty, toward destiny. It is not easy, but it is doable. That is what we proved in these elections. The nation is waiting. It is yearning for a life of national meaning and anticipates your leadership.
In the strict Islamic view, not merely in the more narrowly Jihadi or Islamist perspectives, Israel must be seen as the individual Jew in macrocosm. The Jewish state must be despised on account of this relationship – that is, because of the allegedly “innate evil” of each individual Jew.
By Dov Gilor
Shabbat in Santa Fe, New Mexico with the local Chabad reminds the author of the fantastic kiddush Hashem done by the Chabad emissaries; impressed anew each time by the warm and wonderful families who willingly suffer their personal isolation from the centers of religious Jews in order to bring a little Yiddishkeit into the lives of their fellow Jews.
A young teacher described this episode that occurred early in her teaching career: “One beautiful spring morning when I arrived at school, I was surprised to see a youngster waiting at the door. ‘It’s locked,’ he said sadly. His expression brightened as I began to fumble for my keys. ‘You’re a teacher!” he exclaimed in obvious delight.
By Bracha Goetz
Wikipedia says it this way: In 2009, Guiness World Records cited her as the most-awarded female act of all time. Her list of awards includes two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, and 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards as of 2010. Houston was also one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide. So, didn’t she almost have it all?
Incoming New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren has been exhibiting not only questionable judgment but also an overt bias against Israel even before she’s landed in the country.
We are all aware of the terrible divisions among Israel’s Jewish population. My friends and colleagues in Israel tell me they cannot remember a time in recent years where so much fragmentation existed. All this when the external threats facing Israel grow greater by the day.
By Lee Habeeb
There are two kinds of Arabs in this world. Those who hate Jews, and those who don’t. And in my life, I have met more of the former than the latter.
By Aaron Klein
The revelation of The Tides Foundation donations to Media Matters may raise more questions about the partiality of the media group. Tides is one of the biggest financial backers of progressive and radical left groups in the U.S.
It seems like only yesterday that the Obama administration missed no opportunity to declare its solidarity with Israel regarding the threat of a nuclear Iran.
We were disappointed by the Obama administration’s announcement that it intended to ask Congress to waive a ban on funding UNESCO because of its recognition of Palestinian statehood.
“Rabbi, did you ever think you would see this day?” It was 1971, and the university official who asked this question was inviting the rabbi to the dedication of the kosher dining room in Stevenson Hall on the campus of Princeton University.
The Knesset conference on Compensation for Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries, hosted by MK Nissim Zeev (Shas), raised the profile of his cause and will lead to the creation of a Knesset caucus. Speaker Reuven Rivlin, Vice Prime Minister Benny Begin, Israeli MKs, foreign leaders, and diaspora groups of Arab-country origins filled the Knesset's Jerusalem […]
Lapid proclaimed that the country belongs not to interest groups, lobbyists, business tycoons, ultra-orthodox parties, stone throwers, or those who threaten army officers, but to law-abiding middle class army-serving citizens. He unabashedly identified the three main problems with politics: the current electoral system, the ultra-orthodox parties and corruption.
The New York Times’ newly-appointed Bureau Chief Jodi Rodoren came under fire this week from pro-Israel bloggers who noticed that she sent a friendly tweet to a very obnoxious anti-Israel propagandist based in Chicago. Rodoren, an American Jew, was asked by one blogger whether she was a Zionist. Her response was that the only "ist" she would call herself is “journalist.” Well, that is really what is expected of her.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights announced that Palestinians -- not Israel -- were to blame for the electricity crisis.
What will Syria look like the day after Bashar al-Assad's downfall?
Dennis Ross, former State Department advisor, NSC official, and special assistant to President Obama, is the latest voice in the Obama administration’s campaign to convince an already skeptical public that Iran should not be attacked – by either the US or Israel. Their obsession with diplomacy plays right into Iran's hands, as the Mullahs stretch out “negotiations” while crossing every one of the Obama administration’s "red lines".
According to the poll, PM Netanyahu could form a coalition of 62 seats with Yisrael Beitenu, National Union and Jewish Home without the need for any ultra-orthodox or center-left parties.
No one has a license to lie, manipulate or manufacture falsehoods. Make no mistake, the primary characteristics of Israel Apartheid Week programming are terrible, unjustified charges expressly aimed at demonizing Israel.
By J. E. Dyer
The only way to secure a positive outcome in Syria is to use US power, under US strategic direction, to do it. This has never necessarily meant military intervention, but it does necessarily mean acting with purpose and determination, rather than throwing random reconnaissance assets into the fray while handing the political problem over lock, stock, and barrel to the Arab League and the UN.
By Rafi Harkham
Khadar Adnan, a self-described leader of Islamic Jihad, is currently on a hunger strike against his administrative detention in an Israeli prison. Human rights groups are lining up to support him, solidarity marches are being held in his name, and the EU foreign policy chief has expressed her concern. But who really IS Khader Adnan?
By Elke Weiss
We are forgetting the lessons of the churban Beit HaMikdash, how we were not finished off by Rome, but destroyed ourselves through mindless hatred and zealotry. We bled each other dry through violence and bigotry until we were weak enough for Rome to come in and step all over our broken bodies. Rome did not defeat us - we defeated ourselves.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
Over the past year, KeepJerusalem has been keeping you informed in these pages about developments in Jerusalem that are likely to affect its Jewish future, for better or for worse. We strive to educate readers regarding the importance of a United Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.
The history of reporting by UN frameworks on human rights in Israel has been characterized by biased mandates, false and unverifiable allegations, double standards and hypocrisy.
It's time for the realists to acknowledge that Israel not only has a moral and ideological claim to American support, but it also has a claim base on realpolitik.
By Barry Rubin
What is most notable about Russia's Middle East policy is that it tends to side with the extremist forces. These friends include primarily Iran, Syria, Hizbollah, and Hamas.
By dvora
In this highly politicized era, where every time Israel begins construction on any part of Jerusalem beyond the 1967 green line, it’s worth asking why the Jewish Quarter has been spared the same level of international criticism.
Obama plays the delaying game while giving a false impression to his gullible supporters – especially liberal American Jews – that he is supposedly doing everything to stop Iran short of military attack.
International law is not a suicide pact. Indisputably, Israel has a peremptory right to remain alive. It was entirely proper for Netanyahu to have previously opposed a Palestinian state in any form. Both Fatah and Hamas still see all of Israel as part of "Palestine."
Recent polls show yet again that the vast majority of Israeli society is traditional, holds from its religious faith and shies away from coercion. Thus, hasn’t the time come for our national leadership to express the desires of the large Jewish majority?
With the stroke of his pen, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas sealed the fate of the peace process, effectively declaring an end to any chance of reaching an agreement with the Jewish state.
The two apparently coordinated attacks on Monday against Israeli diplomatic personnel present Israel with a significant challenge of how to respond, aside from an obvious concern for the safety of its citizens abroad.
In many respects President Obama’s imposition of a federal mandate calling for free contraception and certain abortion procedures on demand – and the uproar it has caused – is emblematic of the problems inherent in the way he sees his role.
Rabbi Avraham Ginzberg, who passed away earlier this month, will be remembered by many for his fifty-plus years as executive director of Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim in Queens, New York. He will be remembered by his congregants as “our rabbi” – the spiritual leader of our small shul attached to the yeshiva.
By Yael Rosen
Over the past several weeks, protests have spread throughout Israel calling for a response to racism targeting the country's Ethiopian community. Sparked by a Channel 2 story on discrimination in Kiryat Malachi, citizens have taken to the streets to show their outrage at the status quo.
The real heroes of our age are pencil-protector geeks. They sit at home, behind their keyboards, determining the rules of the game that you and I live by – and we trust them to do so. They love toys. They love games. They enjoy battle. They are at the forefront of the cyber war that is enveloping the world.
Read the first five books of the Bible and the Book of Joshua. In them, God clearly specified what was expected of Israel: obedience, righteousness and faith being the gist of it. God blessed Israel when it obeyed, and when Israel faltered, God unleashed abundant wrath.
By Aaron Klein
Attack On Iran May Trigger Al Qaeda Counterattack....Middle East Christians Facing Increased Persecution....Senator Inhofe: Obama Is Disarming America
By Jason Maoz
The common lament from the smugly high-minded is that the media’s fascination with polls gives too much weight to the horse race aspect of a campaign, at the expense of the important and weighty discussions of policy for which voters presumably hunger. The Monitor says: Give us more of the horse race!
By Mati Wagner
Demonstrations last summer that protested exorbitant housing prices, high costs for basic necessities and growing income inequality managed to mobilize an unprecedented number of Israelis. Still, even if socioeconomic issues become a central issue in the upcoming elections, it is not clear that parties such as Labor or Meretz will be its beneficiaries.
By Barry Rubin
With the Obama Administration leading from behind and stressing the need for a UN consensus to do anything, it is now stuck with a passive stance on the Syrian civil war.
There is constant talk of a tuition crisis, of the growing number of yeshiva and day school parents – and potential parents – who say that full tuition or anything close to it is beyond their financial reach.
By Ron Kampeas
WASHINGTON – Israeli leaders blamed Iran for two assassination attempts late Sunday and early Monday – in Tbilisi, Georgia, and in New Delhi, India. The bomb in Tbilisi was disabled before it could be activated, and the attack in India wounded the wife of an Israeli diplomat and her driver.
By Rafi Harkham
The intensified cooperation between Iran and Syria reflects their understanding that Iran's nuclear ambitions and the unrest in Syria are linked: Western nations' arming of the Syrian Opposition would cause a serious rift with Russia and China at a time when their consensus is crucial to constraining Iran's nuclear program.
Last week’s meeting between Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal highlighted their common strategic goal, despite their bitter rivalry in recent years: The PLO’s Phased Plan aimed at the establishment of a Palestinian state in all of what was 'Palestine' within the Ottoman/British Mandate borders.
Dahaf conducted two telephone polls for newspaper Yediot Ahronot on 10 February 2012 with a sample of 500 respondents and a sampling error of 4.5%.
Jordan has recently witnessed weekly demonstrations calling for far-reaching reforms and an end to financial corruption. King Abdullah did not take the protests seriously at first, but is now desperate to restore calm and order; going as far as ordering the arrest of some of his most trusted officials.
By J. E. Dyer
Robert Mackey at New York Times’ The Lede has a Friday post entitled “Crisis in Syria Looks Very Different on Satellite Channels Owned by Russia and Iran.” Well, no kidding. It’s nice to see NYT catching up with the rest of the infosphere. But it’s not just in Russian and Iranian media that the crisis […]
Egypt's prosecution of pro-democracy NGOs reflects unresolved suspicions and hostilities towards the West and democracy.
The Second Intifada may have ended seven years ago, but countless Israelis injured during that harrowing period, and in the years since, continue to suffer.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
While Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich vie with each other in expressing ever-stronger support for Israel, polls show Romney has a better chance of unseating President Obama in the November election. It is for this reason that many Israel supporters would like contender Rick Santorum to withdraw from the Republican race to ensure Romney is chosen over Gingrich.
Before we wrap up the primary campaign, I wish to express a heartfelt thanks to all of my supporters. To push the faith-based alternative uphill, over long years and against all odds, is a task that I could never have done alone.
By Rafi Harkham
A war of words has erupted between Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan and American Novelist Paul Auster. Auster seemed to hit a nerve, suggesting that his allegations might be true.
Jorge Luis Borges, the very special Argentine writer and philosopher, sometimes identified himself as a Jew. Although lacking any apparent basis in halacha, he clearly felt himself to be a kindred spirit: “Many a time I think of myself as a Jew,” he is quoted in Willis Barnstone’s, Borges at Eighty: Conversations (1982), “but I wonder whether I have the right to think so. It may be wishful thinking.”
By Dov Gilor
Is it true that creatures from outer space visited New Mexico and that the U.S. government suppressed the story to avoid worldwide panic?
While thousands of U.S. soldiers recently returned home from the Middle East, their redeployment to the area may be imminent due to the ongoing developments on the Iranian nuclear front.
Aside from the obvious looming dangers associated with a nuclear-armed Iran as well as attendant regional menaces, there exists an equally explosive strategic threat to Israel emanating from the country’s post-Zionist and anti-Zionist circles.
Our blinding attraction to drama has captivated so many of us. We love to live it, watch it, or even worse, create it.
A few weeks ago I was asked by a friend in Likud to offer my services as a non-partisan ballot member for the upcoming Likud elections. I was a perfect fit since I have never been a Likud member and have never endorsed a candidate in any Likud primary election. So I stepped up and got the job.
The most dreaded status in Israeli society is to be considered a frier – a sucker, a boob, stupid and unable to withstand being taken advantage of.
The Affordable Health Care Act is the official title of what has become known, primarily to its opponents, as Obamacare. It provides for a variety of changes in the American health care system and has generated enormous controversy, some of which will be the focus of the Supreme Court in the next few months.
Many of us continue to be apprehensive about what the Middle East policy of a reelected President Obama would look like. Though Mr. Obama continues to insist that U.S. support for the security of Israel is "unshakable," his turnaround on pressing Israel on the 1967 lines and settlement growth, while welcome, was unnerving. Not only did it occur at the outset of the presidential campaign season, it was also uncommonly abrupt.
By dvora
Chaim Amsalem, a current member of Knesset and former member of Shas, is in the midst of establishing yet another Israeli political party, called Am Shalem.
“We feel that this is a critical moment in the history of property restitution,” Julius Berman, chairman of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, told The Jewish Press last week, after returning from a weeklong trip to Europe.
An index of the Talmud with more than 6,000 topical and 27,000 subtopical entries is a major undertaking and its publication a seminal event in Jewish scholarship.
Near the end of the nineteenth century, Theodor Herzl, the Viennese journalist who would wrestle with the plight of Jews amid the enticements and dangers of modernity, felt trapped. For his son’s sake he considered conversion to Christianity; to solve the vexing “Jewish Question” he even fantasized the mass conversion of Jews.
The “Syrian people” is a composite of Sunni Muslims, Alawites, Kurds, Druze, Turkmens and Circassians.
PM Netanyahu's recent opposition to two Knesset bills underscores a worrying drift in Israeli political culture from the most basic democratic governing principles like separation of powers, and checks and balances.
By Barry Rubin
The Islamists are not “moderate” and many of the alleged moderates are not moderate. Hence, the hope for moderation and real democracy is limited by the small numbers of those who hold them.
By David Ratner
Rambam Medical Center Public Affairs Director David Ratner describes how the life of a young Palestinian girl was saved by the hospital.
An official ballot member and secretary for the Likud primary gives a first-hand account of the controversy surrounding the election.
If the recent pictures of destroyed outposts had been of Bedouin villages or illegal houses in the Galilee, the whole country would have been up in arms.
“Everything in this world exudes crime,” says Baudelaire, “the newspapers, the walls, and the face of man.” But this “face” does not belong solely to what classic seventeenth-century international law scholar Hugo Grotius called “men of deplorable wickedness.”
Conventional wisdom states that the January 14th mosque fire in Tuba-Zangariya was perpetrated by vindictive Jewish vandals, but upon closer inspection, such a claim seems dubious at best.
By Jason Maoz
Americans never seem to tire of Richard Nixon, the man who strode the nation’s political stage for three decades, as congressman, senator, vice president and president, only to see his career come crashing down when his involvement in the Watergate scandal led to his resignation – the only U.S. president to so step down – in order to avoid certain impeachment.
Ordinarily, Chanukah is a time to hug and kiss the kids as we sing in front of the menorah. This past Chanukah was an exception. Instead of putting my arms around my children, I watched them light the menorah on a streaming video from my iPad while I rested comfortably in my hospital bed.
A Palestinian mufti has called for violence against Jews, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is demanding Palestinian leaders disavow him and America's presidential race could be affected.
After three-plus years of economic challenge and uncertainty, we remain anxious for positive news, the kind that will finally let us believe the worst is fully behind us. Unfortunately, the outlook for the 2012 global economy remains uninspiring: recession in Europe, anemic growth in the U.S. and a sharp slowdown in China and other emerging-market economies all weigh on economist forecasts.
People expressing reasonable, measured criticism of Israel cannot, of course, be considered anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. However, animus to Zionism itself – simply the existence of the democratic Jewish state – frequently betrays denial of Jews’ basic rights and history.
By Our Readers
Interesting Picture By now you must realize the picture in last week's My Machberes column of the Satmar Rebbe and the Belzer Rebbe meeting was not authentic. While I understand that there have been overtures between their chassidim, this meeting has not as yet taken place. But as I looked at the picture I thought, […]
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas's statement last Saturday that "Israeli intransigence" was behind the collapse of the recently convened Israel-Palestinian talks in Jordan may provide a moment of truth for President Obama.
The current controversy surrounding the film "The Third Jihad" is ostensibly over the propriety of the NYPD's airing it as part of in a training program.
October 23, 2026 
