1) It's been more than 20 years  Jonathan Tobin writes in The Day the War on America Began: Exactly 20 years ago on this date, a terrorist attack at the World Trade Center took the lives of six people and injured more than a thousand others. The tragedy shocked the nation but, as with other al-Qaeda attacks in the years that followed, the WTC bombing did not alter the country’s basic approach to Islamist terrorism. For the next eight and a half years, the United States carried on with a … [Read more...]

1) Why are they staying away?  Yesterday the New York Times reported Syrian Opposition’s Complaints Shadow Kerry’s First Official Trip: Mr. Kerry and foreign ministers from Europe and the Middle East are scheduled to meet in Rome on Thursday with opponents of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, including Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, who leads the opposition. But they are threatening to boycott the conference to protest what they see as fainthearted international support. To try to rescue … [Read more...]

Intifada: then and now In response to a recent news program in Israel, Col. Jonathan D. Halevi wrote The Palestinian Authority’s Responsibility for the Outbreak of the Second Intifada: Its Own Damning Testimony for the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs. Even now, as Halevi writes: More than ten years after the outbreak of the Second Intifada, there are still journalists, former security officials, and pundits who raise questions about the role of the Palestinian Authority in the … [Read more...]

1) The Push for Peace Walter Russell Mead argues in As Israel goes deeper into Syria and Opportunity for Obama arises: With Al-Qaeda linked jihadis in the opposition, and Iran and Hezbollah supporting the government, Israel has much to fear and little to hope as the Syria war grinds on. In some ways, Syria is turning into Israel’s ultimate nightmare: WMDs, terrorists and arch-enemy Iran are all mixed up in it together, and there is not much Israel can do to shape events. President Obama … [Read more...]

A few weeks ago, the New York Times reported Pro Palestinian speakers attract protests outside. The event at Brooklyn college was a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) event focused on delegitimizing Israel. To read the New York Times account, one doesn't get a sense of what was controversial about the event: Controversy had grown over the past week at the Midwood college, where nearly a fifth of the undergraduate population is Jewish, over the event organized by a student group, Students for … [Read more...]

1) The Obama administration vs. Hezbollah Today's New York Times features an op-ed, Hezbollah unmasked by President Obama's national security adviser, Thomas Donilon. After providing the details of Hezbollah's blood drenched history, (similar to a case made recently by Ambassador Michael Oren) Donilon concludes: Now that Bulgarian authorities have exposed Hezbollah’s global terrorist agenda, European governments must respond swiftly. They must disrupt its operational networks, stop flows … [Read more...]