By Barry Rubin

Not only is there no good solution to the Gaza problem, there’s no “solution” at all. But in the Middle East, solutions are rare; what’s needed is the best, imperfect, option among five alternatives.

Current policy. Israel absorbs damage and casualties in Sderot and some other places. Few are affected; almost all the country functions normally. International pressure and casualties are limited. Israel hits rocket launchers, terrorist bases, and leading terrorists periodically. Eventually, there will be an anti-rocket defense.

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By Phyllis Chesler

A friend calls to tell me that suddenly, a completely burqa-ed (or abaya-ed) woman seems to have moved into the legendary apartment building for artists-only in Greenwich Village that my friend calls home. She says: “This woman also wears dark sun glasses so you can’t even see her eyes.”

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By Barry Rubin

Comparing contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis is increasingly commonplace.

–U.S. State Department report on antisemitism, 2007.

Let’s talk about the Nazis. There should have already been more than enough discussion about this in the more than half-century since Adolf Hitler’s bunker fell in 1945. There have been hundreds and thousands of books, articles, speeches, and so on about what is commonly known as the Holocaust.

But apparently it hasn’t been enough, or well enough understood.

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by Michael Rubin*

While the United States has focused its attention on Iranian activities in the greater Middle East, Iran has worked assiduously to expand its influence in Latin America and Africa. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s outreach in both areas has been deliberate and generously funded. He has made significant strides in Latin America, helping to embolden the anti-American bloc of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. In Africa, he is forging strong ties as well. The United States ignores these developments at its peril, and efforts need to be undertaken to reverse Iran’s recent gains.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Texas-born Patricia (”Tissie”) Said, formerly of the Owens family, is the mother who lured her two teenage daughters, Sarah and Amina, to their deaths at the hands of their own father this past New Years Day in Dallas. How can a mother do such a thing? Even if her own life was threatened, even if her husband Yasser had literally held a gun to her head and told her to trick her daughters into returning, isn’t a mother supposed to sacrifice herself for her children? Or at least to protect them? What can explain such a perversion of maternal instinct and of the life force itself?

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by Daniel Pipes*

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, and Barack Obama’s pastor since 1988, told his congregation in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001 that U.S. terrorism had precipitated Al-Qaeda’s attack. “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards.” Wright concluded that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

That last phrase has a history.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Barack Obama only today felt the need to condemn “a sermon on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001″ in which his church’s pastor “suggested the United States brought on the [911] attacks?” Only today? Sounds like a lie to me. Oh, but wait, Obama “said [Pastor] Wright’s controversial statements first came to his attention at the beginning of his presidential campaign last year, and he condemned them.” Uh, huh. Obama’s church also adores Louis Farrakhan, a racist, homophobe, and anti-Semite, who has called Judaism a “gutter religion.” [1] Obama has been a member of this “church” for 20 years, and calls his America-hating pastor an “uncle.” This Trinity United Church of Christ, led by old uncle Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., declares itself to be “Unashamedly Black” with a philosophy based on “‘Black Power and Black Theology.” Is this identity- and race-based philosophy “liberal?” Is Obama a suitable presidential candidate for a country as diverse as the United States? Here’s what Obama’s “uncle” thinks of our nation:

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by Jonathan Schanzer*

From the Egyptian border breach to indiscriminate rocket fire at Israel, the Gaza Strip currently poses serious threats to regional security. The Hamas terrorist organization controls this territory because it defeated the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in a six-day Palestinian civil war in June 2007. But a cursory review of history shows that the Hamas-PLO rivalry has been brewing since 1988, when Hamas first emerged on the scene. Despite clear signs of impending conflict, nearly every professor of Middle Eastern studies in America failed to see it coming.

Why did so few experts write about the internecine Palestinian war? Hundreds of Arabic-speaking professors and researchers have trekked through the West Bank and Gaza over the years, funded by U.S. research dollars.

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By Fern Sidman

Jewish Press Op-Ed contributor, Dr. Phyllis Chesler was the recipient of the 2008 Kehillah Award for Distinguished Public Service, bestowed upon her by The Academy For Jewish Religion at their gala dinner on Monday evening, March 10th. The resounding message of this year’s dinner was the call to continue to create an atmosphere of respect and unity amongst all branches of Judaism and was aptly entitled, “Embracing All Voices”. The dinner which took place at Manhattan’s elegant Harmonie Club was attended by several hundred people.

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Interview by MEF*

Mohamed Sifaoui was born on July 4, 1967, and spent most of his childhood in Algeria. He holds a master’s degree in political science and studied theology for two years at the University of Algiers and for two additional years at Zeitouna University’s Institute of Theology in Tunis. In 1994, he began work for the Algerian daily Le Soir and survived a February 11, 1996 bomb attack at Le Soir’s headquarters at the Maison de la Presse. In 1999, the French government granted him political asylum after he received death threats both from Algerian Islamists and the military. In Paris, Sifaoui works at the French weekly Marianne. Between October 2002 and January 2003, he infiltrated an Al-Qaeda cell in France in order to research his book, Mes frères assassins: Comment j’ai infiltré une cellule d’Al-Qaïda. (My assassin brothers: How I infiltrated an Al-Qaeda cell).[1]

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By Phyllis Chesler

“I have been warned to shut up. But when Yasser Abdul Said killed those girls he did not just spill Muslim blood on American soil. He shed my blood. I am not going to be quiet. I made a promise at their funerals that I would speak out.”

I am talking to Gail Gartrell, the great-aunt of Amina and Sarah Said who were honor-murdered by their father, Yasser Said, on New Year’s Day, 2008. (I have written about this tragic case before for Pajamas Media HERE.)

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By Barry Rubin

Radical forces in the Middle East have rewritten the international rulebook in a way designed so “they can’t lose.” That is, there’s no easy response to their behavior and strategies.

What’s even more worrisome is the widespread failure in the West even to realize this is happening. Hamas and Hizballah fire from among civilians and use civilian homes for military purposes; Syria or Iran deploy disinformation, radical regimes pretend moderation, and there are plenty of suckers to take the bait.

Extremism makes many believe that kind words and concessions can transform them; intransigence produces a response that if they won’t give up we must do so.

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By Phyllis Chesler

There was a time when feminist groups did high concept performance art/political theatre as a way of shocking, enlightening, and entertaining us all. That time has not passed. In the past, the late, great art critic, Arlene Raven, kept me apprised of whatever Suzanne Lacey and others were doing—and they did great things.

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By Barry Rubin

The deliberate murder of eight and the wounding of nine Israeli rabbinical students in Jerusalem only highlights the fact that Hamas is at war with Israel. It is, from Hamas’s view, a war that will never end until Israel is exterminated and its citizens killed or expelled. No other analysis is accurate or can explain what is happening.

First, the fact that it is a war must be understood. The Gaza Strip is technically not a state, yet is functioning as one. The Gaza government of the radical Islamist Hamas has declared war on Israel. The war’s purpose is not to free Gaza from occupation, nor is it a defensive war in response to Israeli attacks.

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by Irwin J. Mansdorf and Mordechai Kedar*

U.S. military lawyers acknowledge that “civilians may not be used … to render an area immune from military operations… [or] to shield a defensive position, to hide military objectives, or to screen an attack. Neither may they be forced to leave their homes or shelters in order to disrupt the movement of an adversary.”[1] Such restraint is not unique to the United States but also extends to Europe, Israel, and in the post-World War II era, many Asian countries as well. Increasingly, though, Israel’s Arab foes and Islamist groups discount such constraints in order to seek psychological advantage against technologically superior foes. Western governments are challenged today by an enemy whose behavior is inspired by theological doctrines that not only disregard the Western concept of ethical combat but for whom the killing of civilians—on both sides of a conflict—also serves a vital purpose.

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