Western views toward Israel have returned to Kafkaesque normalcy after a brief break for sanity, as the United States now argues that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is making Islamic State group recruiting easier, and Europe punishes Israel and rewards the Palestinians for their ongoing conflict. Israel’s return to normal status comes just three months after the …
Dear Mr. Secretary: I was struck by your recent observation about the Israel-Hamas conflict: “The world is watching tragic moment after tragic moment unfold and wondering when both sides are going to come to their senses.” I can only imagine your dismay, in light of the hopes that President Obama and you had placed in …
“The indiscriminate rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel are terrorist acts, for which there is no justification,” the nation’s leader said this week. “It is evident that Hamas is deliberately using human shields to further terror in the region.” He added, “Failure by the international community to condemn these reprehensible actions would encourage these terrorists …
As the parents of three Israeli teens live their worst nightmare, their sons the latest victims of terror, the drama can now follow a well-worn path of Palestinian triumphalism, Israeli revenge and global moral blindness. It is but another teaching moment – lest anyone still needs one – about why Israeli-Palestinian peace will not come …
The new Palestinian unity government of Fatah and Hamas puts the lie to fundamental assumptions on which the U.S. approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace have long rested, most prominently within the Obama administration. Washington has long assumed that a two-state solution is attainable, that “land for peace” is the formula for success, that the key remaining …
WASHINGTON — “My job as commander in chief,” an exasperated President Obama told critics this week, “is to deploy military force as a last resort, and to deploy it wisely. And, frankly, most of the foreign policy commentators that have questioned our policies would go headlong into a bunch of military adventures that the American …
Continue reading “No, Mr. President, your critics aren’t just neoconservatives”
Let’s be clear: the United States cannot single-handedly ensure the advance of freedom and democracy around the world. But, notwithstanding all too much conventional wisdom of late, America retains enormous diplomatic, economic, and other capacities to influence the course of events. So, it’s no coincidence that, as Freedom House reported late last week, freedom declined …
Continue reading “Freedom’s decline and U.S. silence move in tandem”