Israel
February 16, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Palestinian Authority is a fundamentally disordered political regime. Earlier this year PA President Mahmoud Abbas, age 85, entered the fifteenth seventeenth year of his four-year term. Abbas recently made news of a kind. He issued a decree calling for new parliamentary and presidential elections within the next several months. Barak Ravid has a brief Axios item with relevant background here (or here via Yahoo News). Aaron Boxerman’s Times of
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February 10, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Spectator USA has published the mind-blowing column by Jake Wallis Simons “Revealed: how Mossad eliminated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.” The column is based on Simons’s detailed Jewish Chronicle article linked in the column. Who isn’t a fan of successful undercover operations performed by the good guys, especially one with the abject humiliation of the wrongdoers thrown in for good measure? If Simons has the story right, this is one for the ages.
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February 4, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Joe Biden is loading the State Department with officials who loathe Israel. Yesterday, I wrote about one of them, Hady Amr, the Hamas-supporting new Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine. I wrote about another, Robert Malley, the new envoy to Iran and longtime foe of Israel, here. The latest addition is expected to be Matt Duss, a former foreign-policy adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders. According to Jewish News Syndicate:
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February 3, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Joe Biden has selected Hady Amr to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine. A more accurate title would be Deputy Assistant Secretary of State against Israel and for Palestine. . .and for Hamas. Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine, shows why. He points to the following dots that hardly need to be connected: Item: In 2002, discussing his work as the national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice
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January 31, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Joe Biden has selected Robert Malley to be his envoy to Iran. There could no clearer sign that Biden’s foreign policy (or that of whoever is running the show) will be pro-appeasing the mullahs and anti-Israel. We have written about Malley from time to time. This post (via Ed Lasky) collected some of Malley’s greatest anti-Israel hits (most of which apparently are no longer available on the internet): Playing Into
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January 4, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
According to this report, Israel has given coronavirus doses to more than 10 percent of its population of 9.2 million since it began administering Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine on December 19. On a per capita basis it has administered doses to almost four times as many people as Bahrain, which comes in second. The United Kingdom, which got a head start, comes in third. Israel has given doses to approximately eight times
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December 23, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the Iranian nuclear scientist, was assassinated in late November. Israel is believed to have executed the killing. Iran certainly believes it did. As far as I know, Iran hasn’t taken any major punitive action against Israel in response to the assassination of Fakhrizadeh. However, the regime continues to talk publicly about retaliating. Is this a bluff? Is Iran waiting for President Trump’s departure before acting? Who knows? Israel
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December 14, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Anne Gearan has an article in today’s Washington Post about Joe Biden and his likely approach to Israel and Saudi Arabia. I classify it as mostly good news, if true. I’m thinking, for example, of this passage: Biden has welcomed diplomatic deals among Israel and three Arab neighbors that Trump helped midwife and that are bitterly opposed by the Palestinian Authority. Biden also has said he will not revisit the
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December 3, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Doran interviewed Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu live on YouTube. This is an incredible — incredibly rich and and educational — discussion. Listen and learn. I hope readers will find it of interest and share it with friends and students with a mind open to the great subjects touched on by Netanyahu in the course of the interview. I will make sure that the whole
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November 22, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Last month, in a guest post for Power Line, Stephen Silbiger wrote about a 1982 confrontation between Joe Biden and Menachem Begin, Israel’s prime minister at the time. When Biden threatened to cut off aid to Israel, Begin looked directly at the young Senator and responded, in part: Don’t threaten us with cutting off aid to Israel. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. Tevi
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November 17, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
In August of this year, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, also known as Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was shot and killed by motorcycle-riding Israeli agents on the streets of an upscale Tehran suburb. Al-Masri was one of the masterminds behind the deadly 1998 attacks on American embassies in Africa, and was on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorist” list. He was considered al Qaeda’s number two man. Also killed in the attack was al-Masri’s
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October 31, 2020 — Scott Johnson
I sought out former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman for lunch this week in St. Paul. Before his service in the Senate (2003-2009), Norm was the best mayor St. Paul ever had (1993-1998). I won’t revisit the voter fraud behind his painful defeat by Al Franken in 2008 post-election proceedings. I will only add that Franken himself proved a disposable commodity to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Thus we now contend
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October 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
YouGov conducted an interesting survey, asking Americans their opinions of various countries. Among other things, the survey identifies differences between Republicans and Democrats in their views of nations, including the United States. This chart shows the countries with the greatest and least partisan divides with respect to the percentage having a positive view: Two things jump out at an observer. The first is the parties’ radically different opinions of Israel.
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October 19, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Joe Biden, like his mentor Barack Obama, seems to get off on talking tough to Israeli leaders. In this guest post, Stephen Silbiger recalls an early instance of such behavior. He goes on to call out American Jewish leaders for their self-interested disregard of what a Biden administration would mean for Israel and its supporters. Stephen Silbiger was the chief legislative aide to Congressman Stephen J. Solarz of Brooklyn. He
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September 16, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Israel’s peace agreement with the UAE and Bahrain, signed yesterday at the White House, is historic. It hasn’t happened before, nor has Israel entered into such a deal since 1994 (with Jordan). The extent to which the deal is historically significant can be debated (but won’t be in this post). However, for those who wish Israel well (and who don’t have an ax to grind with Donald Trump or Benjamin
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September 8, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Clarion Project reports that Harvard University has selected Saeb Erekat — who serves as secretary general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — to be a fellow at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Erekat’s duties will include mentoring students and giving seminars in the school’s “The Future of Diplomacy Project.” Erekat is rabidly anti-Israel, as one would expect from a
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August 14, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
In a deal brokered by the Trump administration, Israel and the United Arab Emirates have agreed to normalize relations. In exchange for normalized relations, Israel agreed to suspend its West Bank annexation plans. The two sentences above point to an obvious problem with the deal. Normalized relations between two states are normal, and usually benefit both states. Why should one — and only one — of the two states have
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