December 30, 2023

Israel’s Opium Addiction

How addicted is Jerusalem to Washington’s military aid? Israel’s planned preemptive strike against Hezbollah on October 11 was narrowly averted after Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stand down, according to a r...

September 26, 2019

The unbearable cost of a unity government

Ever since Israel's snap election drew to a close on September 17, the country's chattering class has ginned up its campaign to convince Israelis that what they really want is a national unity government.  To drive home their point,...

September 12, 2019

Israel and India targeted by phony 'human rights' critics

What's striking about the international community's reaction to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent pledge to apply sovereignty to Jewish communities in the West Bank and the government of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi's ...

September 5, 2019

The curious case of Israel's invisible election

With the great election redo of 2019 less than two weeks away, Israelis across the political spectrum are meeting up in living rooms, pubs and coffee shops around the country to discuss the great issues of the day...not. The political fatigue is p...

August 14, 2019

Ocasio-Cortez positions herself as a 'useful idiot'

Freshman Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently revealed her true feelings about Israel.  During a radio interview on the Ebro in the Morning program that was aired on July 30, Ocasio-Cortez concurred wholehear...

July 28, 2019

Face full of flies

“You listen to the language, it’s got that sing songy quality. It’s the language, Jerry, the language.” --Seinfeld, ‘The Opera’   My wife approves of my keeping one mistress. She happily walks in on m...

June 30, 2019

Tolerance Museums: A Failing Franchise?

The monumental $250-million building for the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem (MOTJ) is scheduled to open sometime in 2020. Spread out over 180,000 square feet, MOTJ will house two permanent exhibition spaces, a conference center, a theater, an educatio...

June 16, 2019

Life on the run

Jogging for a good, hard 35-minutes around my neighborhood in southeastern Jerusalem is no different than dropping acid, except for the hallucinations, flashbacks and induced schizophrenia. Running simplifies life as it clarifies thought, dousing eve...

May 23, 2019

Rethinking restitution: A case for Jewish dignity

Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently asserted that his government would never agree to pay restitution for properties stolen from Jews during the Holocaust.  This is in stark contrast to other former Soviet members of the Europ...

May 16, 2019

Why apologize? The danger of driving anti-Semitism underground

The Harvard Lampoon student-run humor magazine recently published a Photoshopped image of Anne Frank's face on the body of a woman wearing a bikini.  The caption reads: "Gone Before Her Time: Virtual Aging Technology Shows Us What ...

June 26, 2017

Au revoir, Paris agreement: Biblical perspectives on climate change

On June 1, President Trump announced that the United States is pulling out of the Paris climate accord.  While environmental scientists claim that the consequences could be catastrophic for the planet, many religious Americans are taking the new...

June 14, 2017

Israel: Confronting fake news, one camera at a time

While today's widespread use of the term "fake news" can be traced to Donald Trump's first press conference as president-elect, Israel has long had to grapple with the phenomenon of media outlets bending the truth for political...

May 28, 2017

Confessions of an American Zionist in Israel

The Jewish Agency, Nefesh B'Nefesh, Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and other organizations charged with convincing world Jewry that its destiny is intertwined with that of Israel fail to mention, on their glossy websites and in their s...

May 17, 2017

Israel's first-world problems

Israel's much touted economic miracle, given official sanction when the country joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2010, has brought a slew of first-world injuries.  Similar to the unfortunate phe...

May 14, 2017

What Israel and Palestine Can Learn from Trump's The Art of the Deal

Two-state solution advocates recently received a boost when President Donald Trump hosted Palestinian Authority (P.A.) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas at the White House. Abbas's urging of Trump to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from the offer m...

April 26, 2017

Let Sarsour spew: The case for allowing hate speech on campus

The City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health is stirring up a bit of controversy with its decision to invite sharia advocate Linda Sarsour to serve as the school's commencement speaker.  New York assemblyman Dov Hi...

April 2, 2017

The Folly of Biblical Quote-Mining vs. the Good Things about Archaeological Fact-Finding

What gets lost in the din of competing narratives between Jewish and Arab claims to the land known as Israel is the historicity of the holy books these groups cite as evidence that God is on their side.   To this point, Israel's Comm...

March 19, 2017

Jerusalem, Los Angeles...You're 18 Only Twice

It’s akin to déjà vu on acid, being a 43-year-old driver’s ed. student. The last time I sat through a lesson on defensive driving, the Los Angeles Police Department was caught on video behaving badly – firing a taser i...

March 12, 2017

Jewish Halloween: On Dressing in Drag in the Holy Land

Should you suddenly find yourself surrounded by a bunch of young girls dressed up like Catwoman during the month of March, you may well have stumbled into a Purim street party. The Jewish version of Halloween, Purim is a minor Jewish holiday that com...

March 5, 2017

Terrorism Lessons: The High Price of Israel's Segregated Educational System

On Feb. 23, Israel's Education Ministry, Jerusalem District Police and Shin Bet security agency closed down a Hamas-operated school in east Jerusalem for teaching a violent, anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli curriculum. Which begs the question: Ho...

February 21, 2017

Why American campuses have fallen to the angry snowflakes

Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election has set off a wave of hysteria across American college campuses.  From The West Wing levels of righteous indignation before Election Day, the zeitgeist settings at...

February 14, 2017

Reality setting in as Netanyahu visit to Trump this week approaches

There is much anticipation in Israel over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with President Donald Trump this week.  The White House talks will take place following eight years of backbiting between President Barack Obama and the Is...

December 19, 2016

‪ Remember the Time Obama Tried to Oust a Foreign Leader from Power?‬

With all zeal of a convert, in the waning days of his presidency Barack Obama has abandoned the Russian reset policy and reprised the Cold War rhetoric that he mocked back in 2009, when he said: "…great powers do not show strength by...

December 5, 2016

Scrap international opinion, build national consensus: The key to ending the Israeli settlement debate

If you missed the news about the Israeli Air force's alleged bombing of an arms convoy belonging to Hezb’allah and a Syrian Army site in Damascus, you're not alone.  There is a glaring lack of media coverage dedicated to Israel...

November 28, 2016

Why Israel has no use for American Jewish organizations

How does Israel benefit from its continued association with American Jewish organizations that are mainstreaming anti-Semitism by minimizing it, and arguing that people who hate Israel are not anti-Semites? Case in point: The Anti-Defamation Leagu...

January 26, 2016

France would be speaking German today if human rights groups had existed during World War II

Since the outbreak of attacks and attempted attacks against Israeli citizens that began in October 2015, human rights groups such as B'Tselem have been rushing to the defense of Palestinian residents, who are allegedly being subjected to collecti...