Israel

This week, Gilad Shalit, after five years of captivity deep in the recesses of the Gaza Strip without visitation from anyone, including the Red Cross, returned home to much fanfare. His family was there, his Prime Minister was there. The world was watching. Gilad of course was not the only one to return home this […]

Last week, President Obama gave a speech to the UN. In it, he spoke about keeping nuclear weapons from Iran and working with the Israelis and the Palestinians to reach peace through negotiations, not through half-measures and paperwork filed at the UN. He came out hard against Palestinian recognition of statehood in the UN General […]

  My last article theorized about the timing and reasoning behind Turkey’s complete reversal of policy towards Israel. In it, I stated that severing its relationship with Israel was stage one of its race towards regional dominance.  I predicted that stage two would likely be the strengthening of ties with other Muslim nations in the […]

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced Friday that he will be submitting his bid for Palestinian statehood to the United Nations Security Council at its upcoming meeting. In the last few days, the media has widely quoted Arab League President Nabil El-Araby’s statement that Abbas intended to bypass the Security Council and submit the statehood […]

Democrats are apparently panicking, well, at least according to several news outlets who are using this week’s congressional race as a barometer of President Obama’s popularity among Jews and the pro-Israel community. In a special election held this week to replace ousted Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) in a heavily Jewish neighborhood, Democrats lost the seat for the […]

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey would be downgrading its diplomatic relations with Israel and cutting all military ties with the state.  A few days after the announcement, he stated that there would also be an increase in Turkish ships patrolling the Eastern Mediterranean to ensure the safety of maritime navigation, implying […]

The Middle East is known for its wars. Often, Israel is at the center of the conflict, whether through being attacked by its neighbors, launching a preemptive strike to ward off an impending assault or merely subject to the verbal tirades of its opponents. Some critics of the state also argue that Israel has launched […]

It has been said that the best compromise is one that leaves all parties unhappy. If that is true, then the UN’s Palmer Report was a massive success. So why is everybody so angry? The Palmer Report says that Israel “used unreasonable force in the raid of the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara, but added that […]

  The Palestinian’s unilateral declaration of statehood at the United Nation’s in September is right around the corner, but what was initially considered by some as a shrewd maneuver to force their terms as part of the peace process is now facing a much larger uphill battle. Given that the peace process — propelled by […]

Addressing his cabinet yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu said that Israel does not want a war in Gaza.  One of Netanyahu’s aides said, “There’s a sensitive situation in the Middle East, which is one big boiling pot; there’s the international arena; [and] there’s the Palestinian move in the United Nations in September… On […]

The recent outbreak of violence along the Egyptian-Israeli border has momentarily diverted the Israeli public’s attention from the “tent” protests sweeping the country over the last few months. However, it appears that the protest movement will sustain its inertia. Although student-union led protests scheduled to occur over the weekend were cancelled, sizable protests took place […]

Israel’s periphery has rarely had a large voice in Israeli politics. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv make the noise; those in the north and the south typically just keep their heads down and try and go about their business. But today, a hundred thousand people throughout Israel’s periphery marched in solidarity with the current protests that […]