January 19, 2025

High Noon in Israel

The lone man of principle faces down a menace.  The stakes are high; the odds of success are not.  Yet, bolstered by that principle, he defeats the menace.  That motif runs through our culture, our history, and our mytholo...

May 7, 2020

Is the Trump Administration Really That Different?

Is the Trump administration really at all different?  That is a question better addressed after reading presidential historian Tevi Troy's Fight House, an illuminating account of bruising internal battles among top-level aides in the 12...

May 20, 2017

Should America Underwrite Palestinian Terror?

It is bad enough that the blood of American and Israeli victims of Palestinian terror is so cheap; it is outrageous that it is subsidized. But it is unconscionable that the shedding of American and Israeli blood through Palestinian terror is subsi...

July 4, 2016

Independence and Identity: What Israel Knows, Europe Has Forgotten, and America May Yet Remember

The Fourth of July is beautiful.  Independence Day marks arguably the most consequential positive political event in history and deserves every bit of the enthusiastic celebration with which it is observed.  Yet the day goes by insufficient...

December 19, 2013

Even Mushroom Clouds Have Silver Linings

Unless you are President Obama, John Kerry, or an Iranian theocrat, the recent Geneva nuclear agreement with Iran looks more perplexing every day.  Questions abound regarding what, if anything, the Iranians actually conceded in Geneva in ex...

October 25, 2013

Mahmoud Abbas: First Obstacle to Peace

Life is good for Mahmoud Abbas.  He is not about to mess it up by reaching a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel.   As peace negotiations slog on, Abbas will soon begin his tenth year as president of the Palestinian Author...

September 15, 2013

Barack Obama's Commitment Problem

Jeffrey Goldberg is as attuned as anyone to the thought processes of the Obama White House.  So it is worth paying attention when he writes in Bloomberg View that President Obama's lack of enforcement of his Syrian chemical "red line" does not i...

June 30, 2013

Iran: The Great Moderate Hope?

It's mystifying.  It's amusing.  But mostly, it's just dangerous.  Liberals and those on the left who pride themselves on their defense of human rights have a curious blind spot when it comes to assessing new faces of bad regimes....