Israel
March 6, 2013 — Scott Johnson
At Defining Ideas, Kori Schake has an excellent summary of “The view from Tehran.” Schake makes the case that the mullahs believe they are achieving their aims in their long confrontation with the United States. One of the data points in Schake’s assessment is the retirement of General Mattis ahead of schedule. From Obama’s perspective, Mattis was an inconvenient fellow “because he irritatingly kept insisting that political guidance from the
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March 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Vice President Biden gave a long speech at the annual AIPAC Policy conference yesterday (complete text here). The speech is worth reading in its entirety. Drawing on his long public career, Biden shows a natural ability to connect with his audience despite the complications of the past four years. Much of the speech is difficult to square with the tenor of the Obama administration’s approach to Israel and the Middle
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March 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In his Impromptus column yesterday, Jay Nordlinger wrote: Something that happened last week caused a flashback in me. Let me explain: Speaking at a U.N. event in Vienna, the Turkish leader Erdogan blasted Zionism as “a crime against humanity.” Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general, sat on the stage with him, silent. Erdogan and Ban Ki-moon shared a stage in Davos, in 2009. Ban blasted Israel, though in indirect terms. Erdogan
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March 4, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Reading accounts (such as this one) of John Kerry’s whirlwind trip to the Middle East has got me thinking about the Obama administration’s top foreign policy/national security team of Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and, if confirmed as DCIA (which I hope he isn’t), John Brennan. Don’t they deserve some kind of a nickname? I’m thinking of something along the lines of Axis of Stupid. It probably doesn’t work, because the obtuseness
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March 1, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In his most recent verbal assault against Israel, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has characterized Zionism as a crime against humanity along with anti-Semitism, fascism, and, of course, Islamophobia. Isn’t leaving homophobia off such a list itself a crime against humanity? Prime Minister Netanyahu has issued this concise response: “This is a dark and mendacious statement the likes of which we thought had passed from the world.” Netanyahu is constrained by
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February 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In my last video with Ronald Radosh, I asked him about his most recent book, written with Allis Radosh: A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel. It is an excellent, moving, highly recommended (by me) book. Walter Russell Mead’s note on the book in Foreign Affairs agrees.
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February 20, 2013 — John Hinderaker
First it was the official Marco Rubio water bottle, which you can get if you contribute to Rubio’s Reclaim America PAC. Thousands have been given away: Now Marco is in Israel, his visit a pointed contrast with the lengths Barack Obama and John Kerry have gone to in order to avoid visiting that country. Today his office circulated this photo of Rubio and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doing a water
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February 19, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Alana Goodman at the Washington Free Beacon reports that Chuck Hagel said Israel is on its way to becoming an apartheid state, according to a contemporaneous account of an appearance by Hagel at Rutgers University on April 9, 2010. Hagel also accused Israel of violating U.N. resolutions, called for U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hamas to be included in any peace negotiations, and described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “radical,”
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February 19, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Office of the Israeli Prime Minister has posted Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency. It is an interesting speech at whose heart lies the question of Iran: I think that the development of nuclear weapons by Iran will be a pivot of history, will change the balance of power irrevocably in the world. When people with unlimited ambitions of aggression get unlimited weapons,
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February 16, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Seven Syrians wounded in fighting in that country’s civil war entered Israel today and received medical treatment. The seven were wounded when Syrian troops bombarded the demilitarized zone near Israel on Saturday in reprisal for rebel action nearby. They arrived at the Syrian-Israeli border fence, where IDF soldiers administered first aid on the spot. The seven were then rushed to Ziv Medical Center in Safed in Northern Israel for additional
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February 16, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Elliott Abrams is the Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His CFR blog is Pressure Points. He served, most recently, on the staff of the National Security Council staff during the Bush administration commencing in June 2001, first as a deputy assistant to the president and later as deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy. We recently featured a column by Abrams based
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February 15, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Politico runs a piece called “Why Obama went all-in on Chuck Hagel.” The article eventually provides an answer: “because he’s unafraid of sacred cows. . . .” The “sacred cows” aren’t named, but they don’t have to be. Obama nominated Hagel to stick it publicly to Israel and what he and Hagel consider “the Jewish lobby.” Actually, the “pro-Israel lobby” probably could have killed the Hagel nomination, and would have
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February 14, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
In a March 2007 speech at Rutgers University, Chuck Hagel said that the U.S. Department of State was an adjunct of the Israeli foreign minister’s office, according to a contemporaneous report of the event. The contemporaneous report consists of notes by Republican political consultant and Hagel supporter George Ajjan, who wrote about the speech on his website the following day. As a Hagel supporter — then (Hagel was testing the
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February 11, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Unnamed sources tell Israel’s Army Radio that the main purpose of President Obama’s upcoming visit to Israel is to warn Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu against attacking Iran. Netanyahu has flagged the spring of 2013 as a significant time in the context of the Iranian nuclear threat. And having recently been re-elected, he can now form a more hawkish security cabinet [note: at least according to the Jerusalem Post]. According to
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February 11, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Having read Suzanne Garment’s column “With words we govern men,” inspired by Gil Troy’s new book on Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the American opposition to the UN’s 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution, I invited Professor Troy to write something for us following up on his book. He has graciously obliged with a column that highlights the local Minnesota connection to the story. Professor Troy writes: With President Obama’s announcement that
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February 10, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Suzanne Garment’s excellent column “With words we govern men” alerted me to Gil Troy’s new book, Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism As Racism. Moynihan’s moment was his moment of greatness at the United Nations opposing the adoption of the Soviet-inspired “Zionism is racism” resolution by the General Assembly in 1975. The damage lives on, but the resolution was undone at the insistence of the United States in the administration
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February 8, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Elliott Abrams is the Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His CFR blog is Pressure Points. He served, most recently, on the staff of the National Security Council staff during the Bush administration commencing in June 2001, first as a deputy assistant to the president and later as deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy. He is also the author of Tested By
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