A Refreshing Change
It’s too early to declare a trend. But the near-simultaneous publication of calls for an Arab gesture toward Israel from two unlikely sources — president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations...
View ArticleTied Up in Knots — Again
It’s a game of chicken. Bibi has agreed to present to his cabinet the Obami’s harebrained scheme to restart the non-peace talks if he can get it in writing. Why is that so hard? Perhaps the deal isn’t...
View ArticleFlotsam and Jetsam
What happens when the Democratic majority ends: “President Obama on Monday proposed a two-year freeze on federal pay, saying federal workers must sacrifice to reduce the nation’s budget deficit. …...
View ArticleRE: So How’s the Bribe-a-thon Going?
Not all that well. For starters George Mitchell isn’t even in the region. I wondered why and e-mailed State Department spokesman PJ Crowley. He replied: “His deputy, David Hale, was in the region last...
View ArticleU.S. Adopts Israeli Anti-Terror Tactics, but Waffles on Defending Israel’s...
One cable from the WikiLeaks trove raises a disturbing possibility: the Obama administration’s obsession with Israeli settlements could end up undermining America’s own war on terror. Shortly before...
View ArticleA Response to John Derbyshire
In his post responding to George W. Bush’s op-ed on combating AIDS in Africa, John Derbyshire writes this: The subsidizing of expensive medications (the biggest part of our AIDS-relief effort, though...
View ArticleObama’s Settlements Freeze Fold Is Blow to President, Not to Peace
On a day when President Obama was forced to acknowledge his defeat at the hands of congressional Republicans on the issue of tax cuts, it appears that he was also bested by another opponent: Israeli...
View ArticleEveryone Knows Why Clinton Wouldn’t Put Her Promises in Writing
A day after the news of the Obama administration’s decision to abandon efforts to force Israel to agree to another freeze on building in Jewish settlements became known, we’re starting to learn a bit...
View ArticleGoldberg Was Right About Israel’s Problems but Wrong About the JNF
Last week, Jeffrey Goldberg stirred up a minor hornet’s nest by writing in his Goldblog at the Atlantic that the proper reaction to the fire that devastated northern Israel was to stop contributing to...
View ArticleGross Diplomatic Malfeasance on Turkey
Halting donations to the JNF undoubtedly ranks high on the list of unhelpful responses to Israel’s Carmel fire. But it pales beside that of Israel’s own prime minister: using the fact that Turkey was...
View ArticleMitchell’s Back: The Fool Returns to His Errand
After two years of failure, George Mitchell is back in the Middle East to resume his fruitless negotiating between Israel and the Palestinians. In theory, Mitchell might have a better chance of...
View ArticleLessons of the Peace Process: The Missing Reflection
The final chapter of Dennis Ross’s 800-page book on the Oslo Process (The Missing Peace) is entitled “Learning the Lessons of the Past and Applying Them to the Future.” Among his lessons was a warning...
View ArticleEveryone Does Not Know What Everyone Supposedly Knows
For more than a decade, the guiding principle of the peace process has been that “everyone knows” what peace will look like: a Palestinian state on roughly the 1967 lines, with land swaps for the major...
View ArticleRE: Left Shamelessly Seeks to Exploit Arizona Tragedy
Less than 24 hours after the story of the Arizona shooting first broke, Americans woke up to Responsible-Rhetoric Sunday. Every newspaper and news-analysis show piously raised questions about the...
View ArticlePolitico Swallows New White House Spin on Israel
It’s a new year and a somewhat new crew running things at the White House, what with Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod gone, so it’s to be expected that we’re now getting a new spin about the Middle East...
View ArticleHow the Guardian Helped Kill the Peace Process
As Alana noted yesterday, the extent of Palestinian concessions during peace talks, once made public, has seriously damaged PA leaders — and the State Department has weighed, noting that things are now...
View ArticleMiddle East Optimism Requires Blinders
Optimism about peace between Israel and the Palestinians has always been a matter of religious faith rather than rational analysis. Every new proof that the process begun in 1993 with the Oslo Accords...
View ArticleIranian-Funded Press TV’s British Bank Accounts Frozen
Press TV, the international news organization and propaganda arm of the Iranian government, has had its British bank account frozen, the Times of London reported today. The frozen account is thought to...
View ArticlePartial Freezes, Complete Freezes, and Eskimos
One of the most interesting “Palestine Papers” is the Minutes of a September 17, 2009, meeting between Saeb Erekat (SE), the chief Palestinian negotiator, and Dan Shapiro (DS) of the White House...
View ArticleSharansky: Reagan Right, Critics Wrong
Ronald Reagan, who would have been 100 this Sunday, had an instinctive affinity for Jews and Israel. As an actor who spent decades in the heavily Jewish environment of Hollywood and who counted scores...
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