יום חמישי, י״ד אלול תשפ״וThursday, August 27, 2026
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By Barry Rubin
The United States is only at the start of a nasty conflict in Libya which is going to be very anti-American. It is shocking that there is so little recognition of that fact and an apparently sincere belief that all the problems there are due to a You-Tube video. Having a big problem is bad enough; refusing to recognize that one has a bad problem is potentially fatal.
By JTA
The U.S. State Department removed a terrorist designation from the Mujahedin-e Khalq, the Iranian anti-regime group that has acquired in recent years the backing of some pro-Israel figures in its quest for legitimacy. Numerous media reported MEK's removal on Sept. 21, although the State Department has yet to formally announce it. MEK, founded during the […]
By Barry Rubin
The Obama Administration is backing (Islamist) Turkey as the distributor of weapons supplied by (opportunistically pro-Islamist) Qatar.
Middle East expert Dr. Mordechai Kedar outlines how weak U.S. policy in the Middle East has encouraged more aggressive behavior on the part of radical Islamic groups.
Imagine Jews launched massive protests for every anti-Semitic youtube video.
The current clash between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu over U.S. policy regarding Iran’s efforts to secure a nuclear capacity calls to mind the contretemps between President Lyndon Johnson and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in 1967.
Iran's nuclear chief said the country's nuclear program had been attacked twice by elements related to the U.S. military.
Thinking that he had loaded a car bomb into the Jeep Cherokee that he was driving, he parked it outside a bar in downtown Chicago and walked away into an alley after doing everything he thought necessary for it to detonate. Safely distant, he then pressed the trigger mechanism in the presence of the agent, intending an explosion and deaths to follow. He was then arrested. Unknown to him, the bomb was inert and was designed not to explode. A preliminary hearing is set for Monday at a U.S. courthouse in Chicago.
By Barry Rubin
These waves of demonstrations are relatively small ways of advancing the ideological readiness of the masses to accept the radical Islamist groups’ program.
By Shiraz Maher
It needs to be clearly understood America's civil space program is just as much an instrument of national power as the US Navy or the State Department. It is to be hoped that the President and Congress will in the future recognize this fact.
By Barry Rubin
Libya tells the story with a terrible irony but we should understand precisely what is going on and how the situation in Libya differs from that in Egypt. For it is proof of the bankruptcy of Obama policy but perhaps in a different way from what many people think.
The US Government has forbidden government personnel from visiting the Old City of Jerusalem on Friday, and is restricting their travel within Judea and Samaria too (no information if that restriction also includes Jerusalem neighborhoods such as Gilo and Har Homa). The US also recommends that all US citizens stay far away from (presumably Arab) […]
By JTA
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday dismissed a request to help posthumously restore U.S. citizenship to convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk's estate had asked the full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to take up the case. In June, a three-judge panel of the court had ruled that Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship […]
Warren Weinstein, 71, is an American aid worker who was kidnapped more than a year ago in Pakistan. Now he is asking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for help in his release by acquiescing to al-Qaeda's demands.
Soon after the attacks on American embassies in Egypt and Libya, Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan criticized President Obama for lack a clear and forceful message to the world. Soon after, the administration provided another example of why this was true, with Obama stating that Egypt was neither friend nor foe, while the State Department confirmed that Egypt is indeed an ally.
There are no bloodless victories, but we can choose whether to bleed our enemy or to bleed our hearts. And when our hearts bleed for the enemy, than the blood sooner or later stops being a metaphor and becomes a sticky dark red liquid on the boots of the brave Afghan people, the brave Iraqi people, the brave Libyan people or the brave Syrian people and all the other brave peoples we will set out to save from the hells they make for themselves.
The Western media are not the only ones who fail to see the symbolism of raising al-Qaeda’s banner on 9/11. Our President missed it as well.
By Barry Rubin
Egypt tells us everything we need to know about the horror of Obama's Middle East policy. The latest development is that a group of several Salafist and Jihadist groups--including the local affiliate of al-Qaida--announced a demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy. This was explained as a protest against some obscure film made in America by a crackpot that criticizes Islam but has never actually been shown to an audience and probably never will be!
JERUSALEM – Barring any scheduling changes during the forthcoming UN General Assembly gathering, President Obama will not formally meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York. This follows Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s rejection of Netanyahu’s demand that the U.S. and its Western allies deliver a red line ultimatum to the Iranian regime regarding their escalating nuclear weapons program.
Despite President Obama's assertions at the 9-11 memorial that the fight against terror is only against al Qaeda, it was still good to hear him speaking about the enduring nature of a nation’s memory of its terror victims. Here in Israel, we (the bloggers behind This Ongoing War) waged a campaign for years to require the Jerusalem municipality to remember Jerusalem’s victims of terror.
A U.S. official was killed and at least one other American wounded as armed Libyan militiamen stormed the US consulate in Benghazi in eastern Libya. "One American official was killed and another injured in the hand. The other staff members were evacuated and are safe and sound," Libya's deputy interior minister Wanis al-Sharif told AFP. […]
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an interview stating that the U.S. would not be setting any deadlines for Iran.
By Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency
The Jerusalem Sacred Music Festival recently brought a variety of musical traditions from different areas and faiths to Jerusalem.
By Barry Rubin
The basic grand strategy for the Middle East should be to form and lead a very broad and very loose—not institutionalized—alignment of forces opposing Islamism.
President Morsi is continuing the evolution toward an Egyptian definition of Egyptian interests that began with the decline of Hosni Mubarak and that promises to hasten the decline of American influence.
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?
By JTA
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu erupted in anger at the U.S. ambassador to Israel over what Israel's government regards as unclear signals from the United States on Iran. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, described an encounter he wtinessed last month when he was visiting Israel for […]
Wealth transfer is a hot topic in financial planning. Thinking about how to pass funds from one generation to the next can be emotionally difficult. Perhaps the older generation doesn’t approve of the way the younger spends the money, or the younger generation isn’t involved in the family business. Furthermore, tax and legal issues can complicate matters.
Jewish community and organizational leaders gathered recently at the home of Sarita Spiwak in Century City, California to meet and hear from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The congresswoman, the first Cuban-American female elected to Congress, is the longest-serving Republican woman the House of Representatives.
A strategy of stopping Iran by getting the US to promise to enforce red lines is only a promise; and nations — the US is not alone in this — do not keep promises when doing so is not determined to be in their interest.
JERUSALEM – White House and Israeli government officials criticized Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper for publishing what they described as two patently false stories during the past week.
In tough economic times, you make tough economic decisions. Unless you're the Palestinian Authority. Palestinians receive the highest levels of aid per capita, use it to fund terrorists in prison and at the same time rack up high debts, such as their NIS 700 million debt to the Israel Electric Company. The bulk of the aid comes from the U.S. and Europe.
In March, President Obama said "when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back," but U.S. actions since have shown otherwise.
U.S. taxpayers traveling to the United States with unpaid U.S. tax assessments can be detained at the border, questioned, and flagged for follow-up enforcement. If a taxpayer has an unpaid tax liability and is subject to a resulting Notice of Federal Tax Lien, the IRS may submit identifying taxpayer information to the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS), a database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
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.
It turns out, the ambassador's position appears to simply be the opinion of Rachel Corrie's parents, the plaintiffs in the case against the government of Israel.
Eventually, it became the story of the boy who cried wolf.
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.
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.
By JTA
U.S. authorities announced the seizure of $150 million allegedly linked to a money-laundering scheme by the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. The Lebanese Canadian Bank and other unidentified institutions sent nearly $330 million to the United States between 2007 and 2011 to finance the purchase of used cars that were shipped to West Africa, according to […]
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.
The Taliban fired rockets into the American Bagram Air Field outside Kabul in Afghanistan Monday night, damaging the plane serving the chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff Gen. Martin Dempsey. The general was out on a visit at the time of the hit, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition said on Tuesday. Two maintenance workers were lightly harmed by shrapnel from the two rockets, coalition spokesman Jamie Graybeal said.
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.
By JTA
The estate of convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk again has asked an appeals court to help posthumously restore his U.S. citizenship. In a filing Monday, Demjanjuk's estate asked the full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to take up the case. In June, a three-judge panel of the court ruled that Demjanjuk’s […]
During the Yom Kippur War, when the IDF was running out of ammunition in the middle of the fighting, and there was a need for an airlift but Nixon and Kissinger where not quick to respond at first, Wolfson employed every resource he had in the House and in the Senate, enormous resources. He later told me that he even desecrated Shabbat for the sake of his effort, anything to save the nation of Israel.
Arguably, no previous U.S. president has had as many disconcerting friends and associates as Barack Obama. Many Americans know of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Rashid Khalidi, but few have heard of perhaps the most important figure in Obama’s life: Frank Marshall Davis.
By JTA
Three U.S. lawmakers urged the Obama administration to take action against two ship registry companies that they claim have violated Iran sanctions. Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) sent a letter Tuesday to President Obama asking him to designate the United Arab Emirates-based Tanzania Zanzibar International Register of Shipping and the Singapore-based Tuvalu […]
Debra Ryder, a Jewish resident of Florida and an El Al passenger, is asking the carrier for 50,000 shekel ($12,500) in compensation for allegedly switching her seat on a flight from the U.S., after a Haredi man refused to sit next to her. She claims that the flight attendant moved her without her expressed consent […]
By JTA
Gold-winning American Jewish gymnast Aly Raisman has accepted an invitation from Israel Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein for her and her family to make their first visit to Israel. Raisman, who performs floor routines to the melody of “Hava Nagilah,” won an individual gold medal in her floor exercise last week and a bronze on […]
A reporter mentioned to White House Spokesman Jay Carney yesterday's scoop in Ha'aretz, which cited Western diplomats and high level Israeli officials about the special National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear program submitted recently to President Obama, which is almost a word for word copy of the Israeli intelligence assessment. But State Dept. Spokesman Patrick Ventrell confirmed that the U.S. is concerned with the possibility of Iran attacking its Gulf neighbors.
US President Barack Obama has in recent days received an National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which upgrades the current view of the progress achieved by Iran's nuclear program to more critical, according to Western diplomats and high level Israeli officials. The new evaluation was conducted because of concern within the Administration that Israel would unilaterally attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
By Jason Maoz
Several years ago the Monitor ranked the U.S. presidents (from Truman through Clinton) in terms of their relationship with Israel. Since then, readers occasionally have asked whether time and added perspective have had any effect on the list and where Barack Obama would place on it.
By JTA
The Israeli Olympic team will go home without any medals for the first time since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea, but Jewish-American gymnast Aly Raisman has done us proud, winning a gold medal in the floor exercise as well as a bronze on the balance beam at the London Olympics. Raisman, 18, of […]
I call upon President Obama to honor his campaign pledge of 2008 to recognize the Armenian slaughter of 1918 by the Ottoman Turks for what it was - a genocide. I also ask my political opponent Bill Pascrell, to join me in a press conference and call upon the U.S. to put a $25 million bounty on the head of Bashar Assad for his arrest for crimes against humanity, and for the removal of the U.S. Ambassador to Russia so long as President Putin continues to protect Assad.
The Palestinian Authority will likely bid in September to become a UN “non-member observer state.” A document prepared by the PLO’s negotiations support unit, says both Israel and the U.S. have an arsenal of punitive measures at their disposal. It says the U.S. could close the PLO mission in Washington, suspend aid to the Palestinians or withhold contributions to any UN agency the Palestinians try to join. The Arab League last month gave Abbas its backing for a new General Assembly bid, but did not specifically recommend its timing.
By JTA
A bipartisan slate of 58 members of Congress signed a friend of the court brief in a case involving a 9-year-old boy who was born in Jerusalem but was denied a request to have Israel listed on his passport as his place of birth. Menachem Zivotofsky was born in western Jerusalem. Neither President Obama nor […]
By JTA
Aly Raisman, a Jewish American, won the floor exercise in helping the U.S. women's team to the gold medal in the gymnastics competition in London.
Under the final version of the enhanced sanctions bill, the president has considerable leeway to postpone sanctions on insurers in order to give them time to comply. Also omitted from the final version are sanctions that congressional hard-liners had sought on individuals associated with SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, as long as the body continues to deal with Iran's central bank.
By JTA
Jewish groups were among the 42 religious and secular organizations that told five members of Congress that their recent allegations of Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government were endangering religious freedom. Last month, five Republican lawmakers wrote to various government agencies and asserted that among others, Huma Abedin, a deputy chief of staff for […]
David Delgado Shorter, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, has been given the official green light to continue using university resources to promote the boycott of Israel. Shorter prominently features links to the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel on his official class website. The founders of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel have openly stated that their ultimate goal is the dismantling of the Jewish State.
An insulin pill. That’s what Oramed Pharmaceuticals, a small Israeli-based company, hopes to offer millions of diabetics by 2016. “Oral insulin does not exist in the world today, but we are the furthest advanced in getting it into the market,” said Nadav Kidron, CEO of Oramed. “We are just about to start a Phase 2 trial in the United States, which is big news.”
The Washington Post trod over some familiar territory this past weekend with a 7,000-word retrospective on the Obama administration’s Middle East peace process misadventures.
By JTA
Supporters of Jonathan Pollard called Hillary Clinton's remarks rejecting his possible clemency "a resounding slap in the face" to Israel's leaders and its people.
In meetings Monday with Israeli leaders, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on them to take steps to strengthen the Palestinian Authority. According to a news report, Clinton has received a promise from President Morsi that he would not end the closure of the Gaza Strip. Clinton reiterated that the U.S. "commitment to Israel is rock solid. By strengthening Israel's security we are strengthening U.S. security."
As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's armored car motorcade was riding through the Egyptian port city of Alexandria where she had given a speech on democratic rights, a tomato hit an accompanying Egyptian official in the face, and shoes and a water bottle were thrown at Hillary's car. Clinton herself was not hit, but she may have been able to hear the taunts of "Monica, Monica" which the protesters were chanting. Protesters in Cairo and Alexandria accused Clinton of cutting a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, at the expense of Egyptian liberals and non-Islamists.
By JTA
Attorneys for two Jewish UC-Berkeley graduate students alleging verbal and physical assault by Muslim students have filed a federal civil rights complaint against the university. The federal complaint alleged that “Jewish students have been subjected to a pervasive hostile environment and that the university has failed to take effective measure to cure the situation,” according […]
An anonymous U.S. official has said that, in addition to stable relations with Israel, “the U.S. is expecting Egypt to use the good ties that link the Muslim Brotherhood with the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip to curtail any plans that Hamas might have towards escalation with Israel." The U.S. is also expecting President Morsi's Egypt to remain committed to its traditional policy of limited engagement with Iran.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), a senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, introduced legislation to help keep families seated together on commercial flights. In response to ever-increasing fees and decreasing transparency among airline carriers, the Families Flying Together Act of 2012 would require the U.S. Department of Transportation to direct each carrier to […]
By dvora
Earlier this year, the American Cancer Society came out with new guidelines concerning Pap smears, which screen for cervical cancer. Conventional wisdom had long held that women should receive annual Pap smears, but in March, doctors announced the new guidelines suggesting that women receive a Pap smear once every three years.
By Aaron Klein
Thousands Of Radicals Poised To Fight Assad At least 5,000 global jihadists are positioned near Syria’s borders with Turkey and Lebanon attempting to infiltrate Syria to aid the opposition fighting Bashar Assad’s regime, a senior Syrian government official told to this column. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Syrian military hopes to […]
The UN Security Council has not managed to have a discussion about Syria since April, but President Obama has finally figured out how to have the Council "briefed" on the subject by Navi Pillai – a renowned Israel-basher: give up Israel for Syria. As a veto-wielding member, the U.S. could have nixed the program, but instead insisted only that the Syrian meeting be held in the morning and the Israel-bashing in the afternoon; Ms. Pillai will have time in between for lunch.
By Ron Kampeas
WASHINGTON – When Yitzhak Shamir was Israel’s prime minister, he liked to point American visitors to a gift he received upon his retirement after many years serving in the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service.
By JTA
Young Judaea is en route to full independence from Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America. Hadassah's board had voted for the separation in June 2011, and both organizations announced this week that the move to independence had begun. Simon Klarfeld was hired in December as Young Judaea's executive director. Hadassah will provide $7 million […]
By JTA
Iranian nationals arrested in Kenya may have been planning to attack U.S. or Israeli targets, Kenyan security forces said. Security forces found 33 pounds of a powerful explosive after they arrested the Iranians in June, according to The Associated Press. The explosives were in Mombassa, a coastal city. The AP reported that several hotels on […]
Turkey is riding high with the Obama administration right now; and President Obama welcomed the Turkish Prime Minister in March as an "outstanding partner and an outstanding friend on a wide range of issues" -- including, apparently, in reducing relations with Israel.
About 50 of the 700 donors who attended the retreat this weekend in Park City were Jewish. Romney dropped in on the session, and said he had just been briefed by the Israeli ambassador. But the Romney campaign supports the same two-state solution as does Obama.
U.S. officials are saying Bashar al-Assad’s closest supporters are secretly making plans to defect to the other side in case the Syrian dictator succumbs to attacks by the rebellion. And a Syrian activist group reported Friday that four senior officers announced they are defecting and joining the ranks of the opposition.
The world famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith said it best: “There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.”
By Barry Rubin
While one can certainly sympathize with the idea of letting an elected parliament being allowed to take office, that's not necessarily such a clear call in strategic terms. The Egyptian parliament--which will write the constitution and thus define the powers of the president--is almost 75 percent rabidly anti-American and antisemitic.
By JTA
Ron Barber, a former aide to U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, won her seat in a special election. Barber, who decided to run after Giffords formerly resigned her seat earlier this year to recover from a shooting in January 2011, defeated Jesse Kelly, a Republican who suffered a narrow defeat to Giffords in the 2010 election […]
By JTA
A bipartisan letter is circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives soliciting signatures on a letter to President Obama asking him to commute Pollard's sentence to time served. The "Dear Colleague" letter is signed by veteran House members Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.).
By Barry Rubin
The Obama administration’s portrayal of the assassination of Osama bin Laden as some courageous decision shows more than anything how weak the President is. A normal U.S. government would have taken this choice for granted, and not felt the need to stress the president’s alleged machismo.
Jacob Ostreicher remains locked up at Palmasola Prison in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. That notorious facility was designed to hold 1,000 prisoners, but is currently home to 3,500. Unlike U.S. facilities, this prison is essentially run by the prisoners. Guards provide food and make sure prisoners do not escape, but do nothing to maintain order within the prison’s walls.
By Avi Jorisch
The United States and its allies have all the tools necessary to punish the banks, corporations and charities helping Iran achieve nuclearization. If we are truly going to stop Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, we must use as many of the bows in our quiver as possible.
Husband and wife. Both Jewish. Both history professors. Both right wing. Both combat anti-Semitism on American college campuses. Meet Stephen H. Norwood and Eunice G. Pollack.
For too long, Palestinian claims concerning the number of Arabs displaced from their homes in the course of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence have been accepted with little or no attempt at verification.
The full story has yet to be told, but even talk of the so-called Flame virus carries an important message. Certainly the widespread belief that Israel was behind this and earlier computer viruses that wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear efforts – a notion hinted at by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Vice Premier Moshe Ya’alon – should be taken as evidence that all things being equal, left to its own devices Israel is quite capable of taking care of itself. But there is an added dimension.
August 28, 2026 
