By Jonathan Spyer

Hamas leaders are seeking to escalate Palestinian unrest over the supposed Israeli threat to Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. In addition to reflecting the movement’s ideological goals, this effort makes good political sense.

Hamas seeks to supplant the West Bank Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad. It knows that by returning the focus of the conflict to the explosive issue of Islamic pride and outrage over the loss of holy places, it can present itself as the natural leader of the Palestinians, and its opponents as irrelevancies or, worse, collaborators.

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By Barry Rubin

For more than four months the U.S. government has been celebrating Israel agreeing to stop construction on settlements in the West Bank while continuing building in east Jerusalem as a great step forward and Israeli concession deserving a reward. Suddenly, all of this is forgotten to say that Israel building in east Jerusalem is some kind of terrible deed which deserves punishment.

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By Barry Rubin

“War,” said General William Tecumseh Sherman, “is Hell.” He knew what he was talking about. Sherman’s march through Georgia and into South Carolina at the end of the Civil War helped end the Civil War while destroying a lot of civilian homes, farms, and towns.

His strategy was to inflict such terrible punishment on the South that it would surrender faster, thus saving lives. His men did things shocking to Americans even after such a bloody conflict, burning plantations and destroying everything in their wake. Ironically, though, even Sherman’s deeds have been exaggerated.

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By Barry Rubin

Have you heard from any of the Western mass media about the Resistance strategy of Middle East radicals? I’m sure you haven’t. Yet without understanding this powerful and widely accepted worldview how could anyone possibly comprehend events in the region?

“Resistance” is the slogan used by Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah especially but also is used by Iran’s regime, other Lebanese supporters of the Iran-Syria bloc, and assorted radicals throughout the region. While the word has echoes for any Western auditor of the French Resistance against the Nazis, this is not the origin of this Middle East usage.

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A Film By: Franco Sacchi, Kate Davis and David Heilbroner

Reviewed by Fern Sidman

In an hour and a quarter, filmmakers Franco Sacchi, Kate Davis and David Heilbroner take us through a tumultuous journey to the final scenario of the world as we know it, as they present the religious prophecies of the 50 million strong American Evangelical Christian movement in a new and powerful documentary entitled, “Waiting For Armageddon.” Riding the wave of the all pervasive eschatological (or End Times) phenomenon that has, in recent years, been highly touted in the media and in literary circles; the filmmakers provide an in depth view of what some interpret to be the Biblically mandated perspective on the final days of our universe. Told in the first person voices of mainstream Christians who subscribe to the beliefs of the evangelical church, they inform us that the end of days will occur in the Land of Israel, with the Jewish people figuring prominently in this venue.

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by Daniel Pipes and Wafa Sultan*

Can there be a truly moderate Islam compatible with liberal-democratic notions of human rights and democracy? Is “radical Islam” a modern phenomenon or is Islam itself inherently radical? Such were the questions addressed in a recent debate between Dr. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, and Dr. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born American psychiatrist. James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal moderated.

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By Barry Rubin

Of course, the Obama Administration has its defenders. They either ignore criticism of the Administration’s foreign policy or claim it is all partisan and ideological. And yet the truth is that if you watch the government’s policy on a daily basis it is truly remarkable how many dumb, avoidable mistakes are made.

I won’t supply a long list here but instead will talk about the latest one. Let’s take it step by step to see what a mess is being created.

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By Fern Sidman

Several hundred people gathered at the Ocean Avenue Jewish Center on Sunday, November 15th to pay tribute to the life and legacy of Rabbi Meir Kahane, ZTK”L, founder of the Jewish Defense League and member of the Israeli parliament. Bom in Brooklyn in 1932, Rabbi Kahane was the son of Rabbi Yechezkel Shraga HaCohen Kahane, a prominent and erudite Torah scholar. He received his rabbinical ordination at the renowned Mirrer Yeshiva and obtained a law degree from New York Law School. In 1968, he founded the Jewish Defense League; an activist organization dedicated to protecting Jewish lives throughout the world. The ideology of the movement was predicated on Torah precepts and the JDL educated young Jews to comprehend and act upon the concept of Ahavat Israel (love of Jews). Among the issues that the JDL championed was the cause of Soviet Jewry; organizing massive political demonstrations at Soviet consulates, embassies, trade offices and airlines, demanding that the Jews of the Soviet Union be allowed to emigrate to Israel.

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By Barry Rubin

The Turkey-Israel alliance is over. After two decades plus of close cooperation, the Turkish government is no longer interested in maintaining close cooperation with Israel nor is it–for all practical purposes–willing to do anything much to maintain its good relations with Israel.

The U.S.-Turkish alliance, which goes back about six decades, is also over but much less visibly so, though the two relationships are interlinked.

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By R. A. Sprinkle

What follows was first posted in 2006. It remains applicable to the current crises, if not more so. There have been some grammatical corrections and editing for clarity, but the content is essentially consistent with the original.

I believe we are living in an age [2006] of transition when the world as we know it today will see a radical change. This global transition is brought on by modernization and globalization combined with the unification and consolidation of powers. Unfortunately, although knowledge has been built upon from generation to generation, giving mankind more power than in any time in history, at the same time, mankind is reverting back morally, and tribal impulses are becoming the guiding force. These primitive impulses, although cloaked in sophistication and newly acquired knowledge, inspire ideologies that are eroding the foundation of our rights and freedoms. They also devalue individual rights and promote forced collectivism (fascism, communism, socialism, and almost all other “-isms”).

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by Daniel Pipes*

“There is no doubt he is our friend,” Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, says of Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as he accuses Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Gaza. These outrageous assertions point to the profound change of orientation by Turkey’s government, for six decades the West’s closest Muslim ally, since Erdoğan’s AK party came to power in 2002.

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The Role of Eastern Europeans in the Exploitation, Subjugation and Murder of Their Jewish Neighbors During the Holocaust

BY: Dr. Sheldon Hersh and Dr. Robert Wolf
Devora Publishing
Release Date: June 2009
ISBN: 978-1934440391
135 pages

Reviewed by: Fern Sidman

In this meticulously documented treatise of centuries old European anti-Semitism, “The Bugs Are Burning” authors Drs. Sheldon Hersh and Robert Wolf graphically depict the hellacious barbarism and heinous atrocities committed against the Jewish people before, during and after the Holocaust by those they believed to be their close neighbors and friends throughout the length and breadth of Eastern Europe.

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by Michael Rubin*

Iranians who took to the streets this summer to protest electoral fraud failed to win a new election. But they nevertheless returned concerns about the Islamic republic’s human rights record to the international stage.

On June 20, U.S. President Barack Obama declared: “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.”

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By Barry Rubin

There’s nothing written about more often — and inaccurately — than the Palestinians, yet there is curiously little interest about the politics and ideology which governs their behavior. The same situation applies to the man s slated to become that movement’s next leader, only the third to hold that post in 50 years, after Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

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by Steven Shamrak

Many people of this planet do not care or even know about Israel and Jews. They receive glimpses of information about the Arab-Israel conflict from the accidental reports they see or hear on radio, TV or newspaper headlines. Unfortunately, under bombardment from the modern media, some of them have adopted the mainstream “understanding” of the issue, but still they do not care about the factual truth behind reports. Even many members of the Jewish tribe, who are still suffering from the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) inflicted on Jewish people during two millennia of living in exile and persecution by Christians and Muslims, have become believers of these opinions, and continuously propagated by the world press and Western governments who are oblivious to danger of Islamic expansion. Strangely, the fake opinions about the Arab-Israel conflict have not been refuted by the string of Israel’s governments or the Jewish leadership of the Diaspora.

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