Israel
March 12, 2018 — Scott Johnson
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman also spoke at the AIPAC policy conference last week (video below, text here). My friends who attended the conference and commended Ambassador Haley’s speech to me also commended Friedmans’s. They declared his speech, if not the best, at least a close contender. Like Ambassador Haley, Friedman warmed up with a contrast between then and now: “Now, the events that I just noted are not
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March 11, 2018 — Scott Johnson
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley addressed the multitude assembled at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington this past Monday (video below, text here). I am reliably informed by my friends who were there that, with the possible exception of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech, Ambassador Haley’s remarks constituted the highlight of the event. They also emphasized to me that you had to have been there to understand why.
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February 11, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Herb Keinon, writing in the Jerusalem Post, argues that Russia could be a big loser if, as seems increasingly likely, Israel is drawn into a fight with Iran in Syria. He explains: Russia moved forces into Syria in 2015 with one purpose in mind: Save Syrian President Bashar Assad. And since then, Moscow has spent billions of rubles and spilled Russian blood to do just that: Help the Assad regain
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February 11, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, as Omri Ceren reported, the Israeli air force struck in Syria after Iran sent a drone into Israel. The Israelis lost a fighter jet, the first time in 30 years an Israeli jet has been lost in combat. On the plus side, Israel reportedly inflicted serious damage on multiple air defense batteries and four Iranian positions in Syria including the mobile command center from which the Iranian drone was
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February 10, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Omri Ceren writes from The Israel Project with this backgrounder for journalists. He has folded information derived from wide variety of sources — I have omitted his 24 alphabetized footnotes — into the message. I would add only that the New York Times has just reported: “Later Saturday morning, clashes appeared to be continuing. There were new Israeli airstrikes around the capital, Damascus, according to Syrian state media and Damascus
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January 28, 2018 — Steven Hayward
From the archives of Yes, Prime Minister, a timeless exposition of how the foreign affairs bureaucracy regards Israel. Amazing how little changes over the years, and reminder that the State Department under Tillerson and Haley (and Trump) deserve supreme credit for the embassy announcement. As usual, this clip tells the effectual truth about things, such as Sir Humphrey noting that “the UN is the accepted forum for the expression of
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January 23, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I think it was Milton Himmelfarb (but I’m only 40% sure of this, so happy to be corrected) who quipped that “Jews live like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans.” I haven’t checked the exit poll crosstabs, but I suspect that Hillary Clinton got around 90 percent of the Jewish vote in 2016. There have been some important deviations from this pattern, such as the 1980 election, when Ronaldus Magnus
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January 23, 2018 — Scott Johnson
The Israeli Knesset held a special session yesterday to welcome Vice President Pence. Pence was the first American vice president to address the Knesset. He spoke to a packed room. Among those welcoming the vice president were the Israeli president, the Israeli prime minister, and the Israeli leader of the opposition. Roughly all of Israel’s political establishment turned out. The United States embassy in Tel Aviv, soon to be in
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January 17, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday I noted the speech of Palestinian Authority President for Life Mahmoud Abbas, referring readers to the Times of Israel account of the speech and Times of Israel editor David Horovitz’s column on it. Abbas had given his speech this past Sunday to the PLO Central Council. My post, however, lacked the text of the speech. Now the invaluable MEMRI provides us a 17-minute video of excerpts posted here and
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January 2, 2018 — Scott Johnson
According to NBC News, the most significant protests in eight years are rocking Iran, with state media reporting Tuesday that the death toll from clashes between demonstrators and security forces had reached at least 21. By contrast with the protests eight years ago, the protests that have swept across Iran seek the displacement of the murderous mullahcracy that took control in 1979. The idiot cretins of the Obama administration counsel
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December 29, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
I’ve been meaning to write about a debate between Alan Dershowitz and Cornel West over the BDS movement. Dershowitz beats me to it with this article for the Gatestone Institute. The resolution Dershowitz and West debated was: “The boycott, divestiture and sanctions (BDS) movement will help bring about the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Naturally, the debate ended up being more about that conflict than about BDS per se. However,
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December 28, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Israel’s minister of transportation has announced that a planned train station in Jerusalem will be named for President Trump to honor his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. So reports Ken Klukowski of Breitbart. “Trump station” won’t be just any old stop. It will be near the Western Wall, the holiest place in the world for Jews: [The government] is planning to extend a rail system from
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December 24, 2017 — Scott Johnson
In the video below the ebullient Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wishes Israel’s Christian citizens and Israel’s Christians friends around the world a merry Christmas from Jerusalem (“the capital of Israel”). Compare the news from Jerusalem presented by Netanyahu with the news from the Muslim world presented by John here. The prime minister concludes with “a proposition for our Christian friends.” I thought readers might want to check it out. Merry
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December 22, 2017 — Scott Johnson
The Weekly Standard publishes Ambassador’s Haley’s remarks in the General Assembly yesterday in the editorials of its new issue here. The text is posted by our mission to the United Nations here. The Standard’s editorial introduction notes that the resolution before the U.N. chastised the United States for its decision on December 6 to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and demanded the rescission of that policy. After Haley’s
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December 21, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Nikki Haley has defended President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital with vigor and enthusiasm in the United Nations. In doing so she has at all points sought to distinguish our course under President Trump from the blasted days of Barack Obama when the United States prostrated itself before the murderous regimes that throw their weight around in that desiccated body. Earlier this week she let it be
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December 11, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Over the weekend the IDF announced the second recent discovery and destruction of a terror tunnel penetrating Israel from Gaza, this one courtesy of Hamas (the first was a product of Islamic Jihad). I have embedded a tweet below with the IDF video regarding the tunnel. You can see to what use the Arabs of Gaza put the concrete and funds they import. Apart from advances in the techniques of
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December 7, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
That’s the headline of an article in the New York Times. To which I say, “ya think.” The point is so obvious that it took three Times reporters — Anne Barnard, Ben Hubbard, and Declan Walsh — to make it. They write: [A]s Arab and Muslim leaders raised their voices to condemn [Trump’s decision on Jerusalem], many across the Middle East wondered if so much had changed in recent years
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