Middle East
November 15, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Clifford May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current is “Don’t know much about Middle Eastern history” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power Line.
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October 27, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Jeremy Stern is deputy editor of Tablet. He has written a stupendous account of the rise of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan headlined “The George Kennan who wasn’t.” It a long column that warrants a full reading. Here are a few paragraphs (links omitted) that are keyed to to Susan Glasser’s recent (laudatory, of course) New Yorker profile of Sullivan: As it happened, The New Yorker profile arrived just in
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October 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In the adjacent post, I quote President Biden regurgitating the shibboleths governing the administration’s Middle East foreign policy. To get a full view of the underlying idiocy that events have exposed, see Joe Simonson’s Free Beacon story “In Foreign Affairs Essay, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Said Biden Has ‘De-Escalated Crises in Gaza.’ Then He Erased the Evidence.” Subhead: “Foreign Affairs edited Sullivan’s piece after Hamas attacks.” Here is the
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October 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Liel Leibovitz is editor at large for Tablet. Having emigrated from Israel to New York, he draws on his experience to ask what accounts for the marches, riots, and demonstrations supporting Hamas in the urban centers of the United States. He calls it the banlieueization of American cities and college campuses in his City Journal column “American Banlieue.” As for the rioters, he observes: “Most are young, and most are
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October 19, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
Ammar Campa-Najjar, the self-described “Palestinian Mexican-American,” was previously known as Ammar Yasser Najjar after his father, an official with the Palestinian Authority in Gaza who supposedly “migrated to the United States on a student visa.” As outlined here previously, Ammar is also the grandson of Muhammad Abu Yousef al-Najjar, mastermind of the Palestinian terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The terrorists not only
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October 14, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Dan Senor’s Call Me Back podcast seeks to ascertain “What history can teach us about the current decade we’re in – the 2020s.” In the current episode with Elliott Abrams, they seek to “provide additional detail on the history of Israel-Gaza/Hamas — this time from a White House insider on U.S.-Middle East policy during a critical period in Hamas’s takeover of Gaza — what were leaders in Washington and Jerusalem
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October 10, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
“Israel’s 9/11” and “Israel’s Pearl Harbor” are common description of the Hamas invasion, but another take may be every bit as valid. This is the Islamic jihadists’ latest attempt at a “final solution,” the elimination of Israel as a nation. “Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map,” said Hossein Salami, deputy leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, in 2019. “We announce that if Israel does anything to
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October 7, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Palestinians who invaded Israel have focused on kidnapping civilians, mostly young women. This was facilitated by the fact that there was a “rave for peace” going on near Gaza that many young people attended. The Palestinians no doubt knew this, and planned to attack the event. They took a number of young women captive there. This video has been seen millions of times. There is a naked young woman
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October 7, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Who is behind the Palestinians’ attack on Israel? Iran, for one. The London Times minces no words: The British government believes that Iran is linked to the Hamas attack on Israel and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is likely to have played a role in training and the supply of weapons (Dipesh Gadher writes). A Whitehall source said: “The Revolutionary Guards have their fingerprints all over this multifaceted
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October 7, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Jerusalem Post has live updates on the Palestinians’ invasion of Israel. It is worth checking back frequently. When a country is attacked, the only appropriate course is to respond with massively disproportionate force, as we did against the Japanese in World War II. Israel should treat Gaza as the Allies treated Dresden and other German and Japanese cities to end that war. Israel made a mistake in withdrawing from
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October 7, 2023 — Steven Hayward
As I write it is the middle of the night in the U.S., but morning here in central Europe, where we are awakening to the shocking and barbaric attack Hamas has launched inside Israel from the Gaza strip. Some of the early videos and news accounts are horrific. This is no minor raid. Hamas is targeting civilians, clearly aiming at mass casualties. According to one TV report, Hamas has taken
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November 29, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Middle East Forum’s Gregg Roman sent out this message last night in advance of Giving Tuesday today. Whether or not you are considering giving to your alma mater today, the message is of interest. I am posting it below without its numerous links. Roman writes: Dear Friend: The Middle East Forum keeps a close watch on North American universities, seeking to end anti-Western, anti-Israel, and pro-Islamist biases. That keeps us
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June 19, 2022 — Steven Hayward
It is very likely the case that the next major war has started. No—I don’t mean the Russia-Ukraine War, which could yet spread to the rest of Europe if we’re unlucky. I mean the Israel-Iran War. It has been said that Israel and Iran have been at open war for some time now. (Actually, Iran and the U.S. have likewise been at war since 1979, though don’t tell John Kerry.)
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May 8, 2022 — John Hinderaker
International attention has been focused on Ukraine since Russia’s invasion of that country. Meanwhile, events in the Middle East have been depressingly true to form. In Israel, at least 19 Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians since the middle of March. The attacks appear to be mostly uncoordinated, but are being inspired and cheered on by Hamas. As a result, the London Times reports that Israel is contemplating
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April 21, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I’m slowly working up to a long piece about the parallels between the hapless Jimmy Carter Administration and the Biden Clown Show that go beyond inflation, energy market disruptions, foreign policy cluelessness, and other totems of the dismal 1970s. Carter, we tend to forget today, was the Democratic establishment’s necessary and acceptable choice to outflank George Wallace, who had a real shot of winning the Democratic nomination in 1976. In 2020,
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May 20, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Times reports that Israel has announced a cease fire in its battle against Hamas: Israel on Thursday announced a cease-fire in the bruising 11-day war against Hamas militants that caused widespread destruction in the Gaza Strip and brought life in much of Israel to a standstill. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced the cease-fire after a late-night meeting of his Security Cabinet. It said the group had unanimously
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May 16, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Trump haters at the Washington Post, the New York Times, and elsewhere portray the latest conflagration in Israel as evidence that former president Trump’s Middle East deals — the Abraham Accords — weren’t worth celebrating, after all. In my view, this line misapprehends what the Accords were about. Trump may have overstated what the Accords meant. Like many a politician, and to a greater degree than most, he oversold nearly
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