by Daniel Pipes*
With trumpets and drum rolls, the White House in early August released a policy paper on methods to prevent terrorism, said to have been two years in the making. Signed personally by Barack Obama and with rhetoric vaunting “the strength of communities” and the need to “enhance our understanding of the threat posed by violent extremism,” the document looks anodyne.
by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*
Amid widespread protests during this so-called “Arab Spring,” one place that has received relatively little media coverage is Iraqi Kurdistan. How does the response of the Kurdish authorities to discontent there, a region long held up by foreign observers as a freer political exception in Iraq, compare with that of other governments in the Middle East?
by Daniel Pipes*
“Do the Democrats have a double-standard for Obama?” My reply to this roundtable question follows below. For replies by Bernard A. Weisberger, Michael Lind, Kenneth W. Mack, Rick Shenkman, and Gil Troy, please go to http://hnn.us/
While it is certainly true that Democrats cut Obama slack on policies where they would slam Bush or McCain, as a fair-minded Republican I note that the reverse holds true as well: Republicans slam Obama and go easy on Bush. I will establish both points in my areas of expertise, the Middle East and Islam.
by Hilal Khashan*
Demands for democracy are unlikely to make headway in fragmented societies such as Syria and Lebanon. While Egypt and Tunisia are historically and geographically well-defined entities with fairly homogeneous populations and national attributes, Syria is dominated by a small minority sect whose fate hinges on the survival of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which will not flinch from crushing pro-reform demonstrations, even if these do not demand a systemic change. Nor is political reform conceivable in Lebanon — a country suffering from a serious sovereignty deficit resulting from deep-seated sectarian divisions.
By Fern Sidman
The hallowed halls of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut were rocked with controversy last week when it was announced that a well respected scholarly program called the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA) was scheduled to be terminated. In a statement issued by the iconic ivy league institution, Donald Green, a political science professor at Yale and Director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies said that the decision was predicated upon YIISA “generating little scholarly work that earned publication in highly regarded journals, and its courses attracted few students”. Citing the Center for the Study of Race, Inequality and Politics as another example of an “underachieving program”. Dr. Green said that “YIISA suffered the same fate because it failed to meet high standards for research and instruction”.
And so, as I feared, by the end of the first week in June, 2011, Yale University shut down the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA). They gave the initiative, which has been housed at Yale since 2006, until July to clear out.
The Palestinianization and Stalinization of the American professoriate coupled with the likely prospect of funding from the Arab world made this outcome inevitable — as did the non-stop diet of Big Lies about Israel and Jews in the mainstream media, at the United Nations, and in international human rights reports.
by Daniel Pipes*
For the first time in its exceedingly long history, Yemen now threatens the outside world. It does so in two principal ways.
First, even before the current political upheaval began there on January 15, violence emanating out of Yemen impinged on Westerners. As President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s weak government controlled only a small part of the country, violence had emerged both near to Yemen (such as attacks on American and French ships) and distant from it (Anwar al-Awlaki’s incitement to terrorism in Texas, Michigan, and New York). With Mr. Saleh’s apparent abdication on June 4, when he traveled to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, the central government’s writ will further diminish, Yemen is set to become an even greater exporter of violence.
by Ali Alfoneh*
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s sacking of foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki has opened another chapter in the ongoing power struggle between the president and the supreme leader, Ali Khamene’i. Interpersonal as it may seem, this confrontation symbolizes the struggle between the Islamic Republic’s old elites and Ahmadinejad’s burgeoning patronage network, which challenges their authority. How has the president managed to build such a formidable power base? Who are the key members of his coterie, and will they enable their benefactor to outsmart the supreme leader to become Iran’s effective ruler?
By Fern Sidman
On Friday morning, June 3rd, several dozen people gathered across the street from the Jacob Javits Center on Manhattan’s west side to voice their outrage and indignation over the decision of the board of trustees of the City University of New York to grant an honorary degree to playwright Tony Kushner. The site was selected as it was the venue of the commencement ceremonies for the 2011 class of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice; the same CUNY school that saw fit to bestow the honorary degree to the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright for his literary accomplishments.
by Ben-Dror Yemini*
On January 5, 2011, after months of heated public debate, the Israeli Knesset established a parliamentary committee of inquiry to probe foreign funding of Israeli nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the international Israel delegitimization campaign.[1] Was this a draconian, McCarthyist encroachment on the freedom of press as claimed by left-wing groups and politicians, or a legitimate attempt by a besieged democracy to fend off hostile intervention in its internal affairs as argued by the legislation’s proponents?
by Steven Shamrak
In a recent major speech at the State Department, President Obama, addressing the “democratic” revolution in the Middle East and North Africa — predictably Israel became the main point of attention again. Obama, like many of his predecessors (Carter, both Bushs, and Clinton) has made another attempt to resurrect the peace process between Israel and so-called Palestinians.
By Barry Rubin
“Please release me let me go
for I don’t love you anymore
To waste our lives would be a sin
Release me and let me love again.”
–”Please Release Me Let Me Go”
Perhaps the most important policymaking development of the last month has been President Barack Obama’s increasingly visible loss of a lot of the foreign policy elite, including considerable segments of the State and Defense departments. Why this is happening is one of the most interested-and highly neglected-stories of this period.
Consider the factors involved:
by Harsh V. Pant*
As the Afghan war enters its final and most decisive phase, India’s strategic position in the country has turned a full circle. Having maintained a close relationship with the post-Taliban government for years, New Delhi suffered a humiliating setback last January when its warning against the folly of making a distinction “between good Taliban and bad Taliban” was summarily ignored by the Afghanistan Conference in London.[1]
At a stroke, Pakistan squeezed its nemesis from the evolving security architecture by persuading the West that the time had come to incorporate the “moderate” faction of the Taliban into Afghanistan’s future state structure and to give Islamabad a key role in mediating this process.[2] Meanwhile, despite its best attempts to keep a low profile, India and its nationals have been increasingly targeted by extremist forces in Afghanistan. The Indian embassy in Kabul was struck twice over the past two years, and guest houses frequented by Indians were attacked with nine Indian nationals killed.[3]
by Daniel Pipes*
As Egypt lurches into a new era, a look at its complexities and subtleties helps to understand the country’s likely course. Some thoughts on key issues:
The spirit of Tahrir Square is real and alive but exceedingly remote from the halls of power. Revolutionary ideas – that government should serve the people, not the reverse; that rulers should be chosen by the people; and that individuals have inherent dignity and rights – have finally penetrated a substantial portion of the country, and especially the young. In the long term, these ideas can work wonders. But for now, they are dissident ideas, firmly excluded from any operational role.
By Alexander Maistrovoy
Russia is the ally of deadly enemies of Israel. Senior Russian officials have met with the political leader of Hamas, Moscow cooperates with Teheran and supplies Syria with rockets, knowing quite well that some of these weapons end up in the hands of Hezbollah and Hamas.
It is hardly possible to define the Putin-Medvedev regime as a developed democracy. It is a kind of Byzantine form of government with a democratic facade.
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