Archive for the ‘Israeli-American Relations’ Category

A Critical Issue About the Iran Agreement That Has Never Been Discussed

In mid-August, I wrote a short article laying out what I thought were some genuine concerns that people should have about the recent agreement with Iran.   Normally, I would have posted the article on my blog. However, because I believed that the subject matter should be discussed urgently by a broad public, I chose […]

The Chasm Separating Israel From Europe and American Diaspora Jewry

I don’t normally like to talk about my health. But, this time, I must make an exception. You see, I’ve been getting a very sore neck lately because, after reading so many of the current news stories in print and watching videos of so many of those same news stories on television, I have been […]

Space in the Middle East

Last time, I noted with great sympathy that most people have become totally confused about the events taking place in the Middle East. Since then, that confusion has risen to unprecedented levels…not least because US jets bombed the Iraqi city of Tikrit in order to aid the Iranian-supported Shiite militias doing battle there while, at […]

A Guide to the Perplexed: Middle Eastern Time

There is an ancient Chinese curse that goes: “May you live in interesting times.”   Based on the flood of news that we have been witnessing in recent months, it would appear as though those who have cursed us have been working overtime. We have been inundated by so much news and so much spin […]

The Impact of the Likud Election Victory on the Israeli Political Landscape

Two weeks ago, I noted that the real election was between those who sought to revitalize Israel’s tattered social contract, and those who supported the current political system. I said that under the current system, the country is ruled by a federation of sectoral micro-sovereignties whose primary concern is to further their own narrow interests—even […]

The Success or Failure of the Peace Talks is not Contingent on the Outcome of the Current Election Campaign

I have been studying Israel and the Middle East and Israel in detail for almost fifty years, and I have come to one irrefutable conclusion. Modern Israel has produced almost as much as and maybe even more mythology than did ancient Greece.   In most places, myths are used to try to explain things that […]

The Israeli Budget: Yes, You Can Fool All the People All the Time

  To most people, there is nothing more boring than reading a budget or listening to a budget debate.   That is unfortunate because national budgets can be endlessly fascinating. They are probably the best objective mirror a country can produce about where it is at, what its priorities are, where it wants to go, […]

The New Diplomacy in the New Middle East

I have long preached that major economic, social, political and military events do not just happen. They are invariably the product of processes that have been underway for a very long time.   That presumption is certainly true for all the events we have been witnessing in the Middle East during the past few years. […]

The Irrelevance of the Left in Israeli Policy-Making

What ever became of the rational, activist, Jewish left? Recently, I have been reading a great many of the writings by authors who claim to be representatives of what is nowadays being euphemistically called “Progressive” or “liberal” Diaspora Jewry. By any objective measure, it is neither progressive nor liberal in its outlook. It has become […]

The Israeli-Hamas Cease-Fire Negotiations: Real-Time Middle Eastern Politicking that American can Learn From

    The political and diplomatic negotiations leading up to the announcement of each Israeli-Hamas cease-fire were among the most fascinating and revealing political exercises in recent memory.   However, to paraphrase a man much wiser than me, never in the course of human endeavour has so much nonsense, with so few insights, been said […]