Op-Eds

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) proved again this week that while she’s gotten some competition lately from her friend Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the Queens congresswoman is still the country’s most unavoidable political personality. AOC’s latest headline concerns her reaction to Israel’s election. When asked on a Yahoo News podcast whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election should affect U.S. policy toward the...

Misusing protected persons in war presents real and present challenges in the Middle East Remember Saddam Hussein’s use of human shields during the Persian Gulf War? His illegal and contemptible movement of innocent civilians to military bases and other strategic locations was intended to deter the international coalition. In that instance, the Iraqi ploy had negligible effect on the outcome of...

Now that the actual elections (though not the coalition-building process) are behind us we can stop and think about what we have all just been through here in Israel, and what awaits us in the near future. Apparently this election campaign was the nastiest in living memory, which isn’t saying very much as these inevitably tend not to be filled...

Smell stands in the middle of the five senses in terms of the degree of immediacy to humans.  We can see things far away as a result of the transmission of electromagnetic waves.  Sound is also transmitted through waves and can also be heard far away, although not as far as the things we see.  We can see the...

The Middle East is vast, and within it Israel is no more than a speck, a shard, a sliver clinging to the easternmost shore of the Mediterranean Sea. At present, it is the only nation in the region that is free and democratic, guaranteeing the rights of all its citizens, including its significant Arab and Muslim minorities. Saying this...

The last time the outcome of a U.S. presidential election was as decisive as the vote held last week in Israel, Americans were pretty much unanimous as to what to call it. The word was landslide. And that’s why those American groups and denominations that wasted no time in not merely denouncing a newly re-elected Benjamin Netanyahu, but called...

Had the leaders of Israel’s political parties with seats in the next Knesset been committed to the good of the country and all its citizens – rather than their own interests and the advancement of their party – they’d recommend to the president a government led by the two major parties, Likudand Blue and White. Smaller parties would be welcome to join but...

The election is over, but we’re still a way from the new government. Official results look like a Likud victory, but it’s close, and the winning side is loaded with small parties that will be difficult to meld into a government. So far we’re hearing of competing demands for the positions of Defense, Justice, and Education. There’s also argument about the...

This week, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin will begin a round of consultations with representatives of the various parties before assigning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the responsibility of forming the next government. The prevailing belief is that at least in the early stages of the process, Netanyahu will prefer a narrow coalition of 65 Knesset members to cooperating with other parties. If...

When the fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange first holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London seven years ago, “Brexit” was an unknown word, Donald Trump was still hosting “The Apprentice,” and the Iran nuclear deal was just a twinkle in the eye of U.S. President Barack Obama. So when, last week, British police officers carried a horizontal Assange...