Archive for 'Israel And The Mideast'

Over the past 18 months, Americans have been bombarded with images comparing rock-throwing young Arabs with the Israelite David who confronted Goliath in biblical days. Images of kaffiyeh-bedecked youths hurling rocks and boulders at Israeli soldiers have occupied network television news footage and newspaper telephotos.

On the surface, their actions seem parallel to the ancient David’s. Both threw rocks.

But David did not hijack wagons. And David did not murder children. And David did not endanger bystanders. He specificly attacked Goliath, ...

With all the talk about peripheral issues arising from the War in Iraq, it is useful to remember that, one day comparatively soon, America will depart from that jungle. By contrast, Israel has no such option. Americabrought down the Taliban and Saddam, and we all are grateful to see them gone. But America also encountered more than she planned for in post-Saddam Iraq.

Regardless of how one views the War, virtually all Americans are agreed that we are glad the Taliban and Saddam are out of ...

Not all Jews, even the Torah-observant Jews among us, even Chassidic Jews, count themselves as Chabad Jews. There are doctrinal differences, sometimes very significant, that individuate Chabad from the larger normative Orthodox community. Particularly, there are real issues of profound halakhic significance concerning the place of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in the constellation of great Torah leaders of the past generation. For an overwhelming majority of Orthodox Jews, particularly in communities where yeshivas proliferate and Torah learning dominates Orthodoxy, the roles of ...

George Shultz was right when he barred PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat from entering the United States to address the U.N. General Assembly, and he is equally on target now that he has opened a dialogue with the same PLO. The Israelis, who lauded the first decision but are lamenting the second, can blame only themselves for recent developments.

Israel has militarily occupied Judea, Samaria and Gaza since 1967, yet has taken no steps to assert its claim to the territories. ...

No one in my family was directly touched by the Nazi Holocaust. Nor did any of my friends lose any relatives to Hitler. While that unspeakable tragedy has deeply affected the psyche of every Jew born in the past half century, not many of us directly experienced what it was like to be a Jew in that era.

Until now.

Since Thursday night, when the first Iraqi Scud missiles landed in Tel Aviv and Haifa, I have been emotionally spent. Although I ...

Disagreements should be settled with words, not deadly weapons.

That’s a basic rule of civilized society, and it defines the parameters of the Free Marketplace of Ideas that highlights American civil discourse.  It is a rule that applies equally to plumbers, to auto mechanics, to locksmiths – and, as should go without saying, to members of the academic community, including college professors.  At least, that is what they taught me during my undergraduate days at Columbia University.

And ...