Arab Israel conflict
May 30, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Michael Oren is the prominent historian, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, member of Israel’s Knesset and deputy minister for public diplomacy. He recently sat for a 90-minute interview with Times of Israel editor David Horovitz (audio below). Much of the discussion is devoted to President Trump’s visit to Israel last week. Raoul Wootliff reports on the interview here with video clips. Wootliff’s account selects highlights and pulls newsworthy
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May 23, 2017 — Scott Johnson
As we take in the carnage in Manchester, words fail us. Words fail to do justice to the tragedy of the lives taken and the bodies maimed. Words fail to account for the protracted and multifaceted conflict in which we are engaged. Words fail to do justice to our impotent outrage. Words fail to express our dread knowledge of the evil on display. We almost wish to be wrong this
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May 6, 2017 — Scott Johnson
At Dartblog, Joe Asch has posted the email sent by Loren Berry Professor of Economics Alan Gustman to his faculty colleagues along with additional material of interest. In the message Professor Gustman protests the selection by President Phil Hanlon of Bruce Duthu as Dean of Faculty. Professor Gustman calls out Duthu for his support of the anti-Israel BDS movement. Frontpage has posted the message here. Below is Professor Gustman’s message,
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May 4, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Palestinian Arabs lack a civic culture that would support a healthy regime and their political culture is, not surprisingly, sick. On the one hand, we have the colleagues and descendants of Yasser Arafat in Fatah. On the other hand, we have the genocidal maniacs of Hamas. As George Wallace might have put it, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them. Although Fatah and Hamas are themselves profoundly undemocratic,
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January 13, 2017 — Scott Johnson
President Obama must have placed his betrayal of Israel at the United Nations at the top of his “rhymes with bucket list.” University of Paris Professor Guy Millière turns to the subject in a timely column full of useful links. Here are the column’s bullet points provided by the Gatestone Institute: • President Obama’s decision not to use the US veto in the UN Security Council and to let pass
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January 5, 2017 — Scott Johnson
In his column today, Victor Davis Hanson asks “Why the anti-Israel sentiment?” As the Obama administration expressly joins the jackals, it’s a good question. Let us pause in particular over Dr. Hanson’s framing of the question: Secretary of State John Kerry, echoing other policymakers in the Obama administration, blasted Israel last week in a 70-minute rant about its supposedly self-destructive policies. Why does the world — including now the U.S.
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January 4, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Dennis Prager gave the Prager U short course on the Arab-Israeli conflict in the video below in 2014. Events have overtaken and complicated the larger context of the story, but the point remains accurate: Israelis want to live in peace and are willing to accept a neighboring Palestinian state. And most Palestinians do not want Israel to exist. Dennis does not dispute the mythology of “Palestinian” Arab identity. He accepts
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January 3, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Ilan Ben Zion reports at the Times of Israel: Islamic authorities managing the Temple Mount attempted to have a veteran Israeli archaeologist ejected from the Jerusalem flashpoint holy site on Sunday for using the term “Temple Mount” in a lecture to American students. Waqf guards brought him to Israeli police at the site to complain, and the police, while saying there were no legal grounds to eject him, advised him
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January 2, 2017 — Scott Johnson
The Obama administration denied that it coordinated the introduction and passage of the infamous United Nations Security Council resolution that allocated to the Palestinian Arabs all the land taken by Israel in its defense in 1967, including the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. The Obama administration goes so far as to concede that it its abstention allowed the passage of the resolution. It hasn’t explained why it abstained rather than voted
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January 2, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is rounding into year 13 of his four-year presidential term. The Palestinian Authority is a terrorist tyranny. The last elections held in Gaza vomited forth Hamas, the genocidal terrorist organization that plainly states its goals and objectives without the pretense of good faith and fair dealing. Yet last week Secretary of State John Kerry saw fit to lecture Israel, the freest country in the neighborhood
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December 29, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Michael Ramirez (@Ramireztoons) carefully observed John Kerry’s rant against our friend and ally Israel at the State Department yesterday. President Obama’s public relations minions are on their prevarication tour to defend the betrayal of Israel by the United States in the United Nations. Kerry’s rant at State was a key stop on the tour. In his cartoon on Kerry’s rant Ramirez homes in on the Obama doctrine as applied in
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December 28, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke at what seemed like Castroite length in defense of the infamous UN Security Council resolution that passed with the abstention of the United States this past Friday. The text of Kerry’s speech is posted here. Elliott Abrams capably parses it here. Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to Kerry’s speech in Hebrew (accessible in the video posted here) and in English. The brief excerpts of Netanyahu’s
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December 28, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Michael Oren is the former Israeli ambassador to the United States during the first term of the Obama administration. We interviewed Oren about the memoir of his tenure as ambassador Ally: My Journey Across the American Israeli Divide in the Power Line podcast posted here. It is a highly illuminating memoir. Oren currently serves as Israel’s Deputy Minister for Diplomacy. He is first and foremost a prominent historian, certainly the
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December 27, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Reader Martin Karo is a Philadelphia attorney. Mr. Karo has submitted a modest if lawyerly proposal for the consideration of President-elect Donald Trump and the 115th Congress. He writes: After the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, declaring that all Israeli building and activity in any territory captured in the 1967 war (the third war imposed on the Israelis) is illegal under international law, Donald Trump immediately vowed that
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December 26, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Charles Hill is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy, Senior Lecturer in International Studies, and Senior Lecturer in Humanities at Yale, where he is one of the principal teachers and presiding spirits in the Directed Studies program for freshmen as well as the year-long course on Grand Strategy for university students. Before undertaking his career as a teacher, Professor Hill
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December 24, 2016 — Scott Johnson
The resolution adopted by the Security Council with the abstention of the United States yesterday goes beyond the usual anti-Semitic gibberish proclaimed by other United Nations bodies. It has potential legal and/or practical ramifications. Lee Smith alludes to these ramifications in his Tablet column on the Security Council vote, which I excerpted here. Elliott Abrams emphasizes the point in his Weekly Standard column denouncing what Obama has done: Does the
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December 23, 2016 — Scott Johnson
President Obama checked off another item on his “rhymes with bucket list” today in the United Nations. The United States abstained in a 14-0 vote by the UN Security Council condemning all Israeli building and activity in the West Bank as “illegal,” including building in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and Israel’s sovereign access to the Western Wall. The Security Council resolution had been put forward by New Zealand, Malaysia,
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