The relationship between Jordan and Israel came under renewed strain after a terrorist attack on September 18. A Jordanian truck driver arrived at the Allenby Bridge Border Crossing, ostensibly carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, and shot and stabbed two Israeli soldiers before being shot dead. Hamas praised the attack, and Israel has shut the border […]

In Syria, the southwestern governorate of al-Suwayda is collapsing under shortages of food, water, and fuel. The Druze, who follow a heterodox religion which is an offshoot of Islam, are the majority in al-Suwayda, with smaller communities of Sunni Muslim Bedouin and Christians. Traditionally the area was known as Jabal al-Druze (Druze Mountain). Al-Suwayda is […]

The key to success of President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan is to remove Hamas from power, permanently. A key to achieving that is to take away Hamas’s profit centers in Gaza, which allow it to pay fighters and smuggle in weapons. Hamas currently makes money by taxing and exercising control over critical humanitarian supplies in […]

In the Oval Office, power breathes in gestures as much as decrees. President Donald Trump, re-cast by history as a peacemaker, governs in broad strokes — intuitive, dynamic, and commanding. Beside him, yet never overshadowing him, stands Vice President J.D. Vance: younger, disciplined, and disarmingly direct. The chemistry between them has become one of the […]

Congressman Seth Moulton is one of the most highly respected members of the House Armed Services Committee. The Massachusetts Democrat and retired Marine has a record of working both sides of the aisle. He and Jim Banks, a conservative Republican from Indiana, co-chaired the Future of Defense Task Force; their 2020 report garnered considerable attention […]

The relief that swept across Israel this past week was profound. Twenty living hostages returned home from Gaza captivity. Families who had braced themselves for permanent loss suddenly found themselves whole again. For a few days, the streets filled with tears of joy. Mothers embraced sons they thought they’d never see again. In a country […]

The fight against narcoterrorism has returned to the vocabulary of American policymakers. The Trump administration has deployed Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps assets to the Caribbean and destroyed several drug-carrying vessels, just the beginning of a campaign according to the President. This time the US effort is centered on Venezuela, but it is nevertheless […]

Israel’s attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, on September 9 jarred the region and spurred a new outburst of skepticism about the value of US security commitments. The US has long sought a stable regional environment in which American partners do not attack one another, which the Doha attack obviously disrupted. Nevertheless, the Middle East simply has […]

President Donald Trump’s visit to Sharm el-Sheikh demonstrated the joint convening power of the US and Egypt, gathering at short notice the leaders of Europe and the Middle East to support the Trump Peace Plan. Having helped broker the ceasefire, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi now faces the far harder challenge of shaping what comes next. […]

In September 2025, France and Great Britain together with several other states recognized a State of Palestine, bringing the total number of UN members that recognize Palestine to 157. But these declarations of recognition do not confer legal sovereignty. Under the international Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (Montvideo Convention of 1933), statehood is […]

Four years have passed since the United States withdrew in chaos from Afghanistan, abandoning important projects, leaving behind billions of dollars of equipment and handing the Taliban many other assets in that country. The Taliban still rule Afghanistan. They face a mountain of unresolved problems yet are ready to employ as much force as necessary […]

Walter Benjamin once observed, “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” His insight points to the violent and bloody foundations upon which modern civilization was built: great monuments, cities, palaces, and fortifications often rose on the backs of slave labor, wars, and exploitation. Today, we […]

On September 24, Syrian President Ahmad al-Shara’a addressed the UN General Assembly in New York, where he is still on the UN sanctions list for his leadership of an al-Qa’ida affiliate (though he is likely to be de-listed soon). The transformation of al-Shara’a from wanted terrorist into respected statesman has taken place with remarkable speed. […]

“We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past and look to the future.”Winston Churchill, September 19, 1946, Zurich  Germany and Poland are European Union and NATO members, neighbors committed to the fight against an expansionist Russia with a combined massive economic might. They should be the closest of natural allies, but […]

Gaza City, one of the last two Hamas strongholds, is the target of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in an ongoing operation. It is a large metropolitan area stretching from Shati, the historic refugee camp on the beach, through the wealthy neighborhood of Rimal, around to Zeitoun and the old quarter of historic Gaza. In […]

2015 marked a change in the Syria policy of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He began to walk back his initial goal of toppling the Asad regime and turned towards Syria’s surging Kurdish forces. Specifically, he wanted to prevent the emergence of a Kurdish-controlled enclave along Turkey’s border with Syria that could affect Turkey’s own […]

On September 13, British activist Tommy Robinson organized a march called “Unite the Kingdom.” It attracted about 110,000 people who listened to the French essayist and politician Eric Zemmour warn that “the great replacement of our European people by people coming from the south and of Muslim culture” was taking place. They heard tech entrepreneur […]

Once lauded for confronting Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu now faces doubt in Arab capitals as the Palestinian question returns to center stage. Not long ago, he was treated across the region as Israel’s central address. For rulers in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Cairo, Netanyahu was the indispensable partner who could open doors in Washington and stand […]

Robert Silverman: You are an American Jew who moved to Israel, with your wife, as a young couple shortly after the Six-Day War. Then you wrote a book in the 1970s that influenced a whole generation of American Jews. It was called Letters to an American Jewish Friend. And you were talking to your counterparts […]

Yossi Klein Halevi: In terms of my personal journey, it’s framed by my evolving, understanding of the Holocaust, my relationship to the Holocaust and my generation’s experience as opposed to my father’s experience. My father was a survivor from Hungary.  I grew up in a very charged Holocaust environment in Brooklyn, in the 1960s, which […]

Gadi Taub: I believed in Oslo [the 1990s Palestinian-Israeli peace process] because I imagined the Palestinians to be like us. I imagined their national liberation movement to be a national liberation movement just like ours. Then reality just exploded outside my window. Tel Aviv is small. So from where I lived back then, when a […]