As video of protests in Havana circulates on social media, many are wondering about Cuba’s future. Why now? What’s changed for everyday Cubans? And, most importantly, what do the protests mean for the island nation’s communist government and its grip on power? “The basic economic situation is what’s pushing people to go out and raise …
Continue reading “Cuba Protests Could Presage Brighter Regional Future”
It was 60 years ago this week that an uncertain new president launched an ill-conceived military venture of astonishing naivety. The scheme was straightforward and audacious: 1,400 U.S.-trained Cuban exiles would land at the Bay of Pigs and ignite a populist uprising that would topple a Soviet-backed communist revolutionary by the name of Fidel Castro. …
President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Cuba in two weeks in an oddly timed excursion that, in many ways, encapsulates all that’s wrong with the philosophy, goals, and priorities of his administration’s foreign policy. Simply put, it’s the wrong trip, to the wrong place, at the wrong time, and under the wrong circumstances. Admittedly, …
Of the new framework accord with Iran over its nuclear program, President Barack Obama said he hopes “that we can conclude this diplomatic arrangement – and that it ushers a new era in U.S.-Iranian relations – and, just as importantly, over time, a new era in Iranian relations with its neighbors.” In his weekend interview …
U.S. scholars’ mounting boycotts of Israeli academic and cultural institutions are ironic indeed, for they contradict everything that higher education is supposed to stand for – they are wholly ignorant and profoundly narrow-minded. That Israel is a perennial target on America’s college campuses is hardly breaking news. The Jewish state has long suffered from the …
Continue reading “Boycott of Israeli institutions is academically dishonest”
A gaunt man of 62, bearded and bespectacled, stares at us through sad eyes that reveal his pain. On the day in late March that Rabbi Arthur Schneier visited him in his Cuban jail, he wore a light blue shirt, a white undershirt, and a tallit over his shoulders as he and Schneier posed for …
Continue reading “Hell hole in Cuba: Raul must free Alan Gross”