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 […]

Sinan Ciddi has written recently in the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune a multi-part analysis of Turkey in Syria (“Turkey’s Quiet Relationship with ISIS” and previous). His bottom-line argument is that Erdoğan’s Syria policy was driven largely, first, by his desire to spread and eventually lead, political Islam throughout the region, and, second, as a means to that […]

On July 31, Syrian Foreign Minister Asa’ad al-Shaibani met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, the same city where deposed President Bashar al-Asad now lives in exile. Shaibani was carrying an unexpected request. According to sources familiar with the meeting, Damascus asked Russia to resume military police patrols along Syria’s southern border with Israel. […]

With the Syrian state still in its formative stage, lacking a defined political identity, two Gulf monarchies – Qatar and Saudi Arabia – are seeking to dominate Syria. This competition will only intensify as the interim Syrian government of Ahmad al-Shara’a grapples with state-building. Qatar provided a cash infusion on August 6, when its UCC […]

“O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.”Pindar, Pythian iii If only jihadists would heed Pindar’s timeless warning. By celebrating only “this life,” the classical Greek poet understood the hazards of seeking meanings beyond the grave. Much later, a similar warning was offered by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in […]

When a microphone falls silent because a voice has been cut short, the void it leaves is not only personal grief but also a summons to conscience. Charlie Kirk’s death cannot be reduced to mourning alone. It must sharpen our collective focus on the ideas and methods that make such violence possible: the doctrine of […]

There is much to celebrate as we mark the fifth anniversary of the Abraham Accords, the historic agreements mediated by the first Trump administration and signed on September 15, 2020 by Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain, and later by the Kingdom of Morocco.  Long isolated from, and regularly vilified by, […]

Today Jerusalem is all-in on Baku. The Israeli media repeatedly publish fawning accounts by analysts who participate in Azerbaijani junkets and partake in caviar diplomacy. But what happens to Israel-Azerbaijan bilateral relations if the partnership actually succeeds in ending Iran’s Islamic Republic?  The 30-year partnership is based on a swap of arms for energy, paying […]

At the June 25 summit at The Hague, all but one of NATO’s 32 member states agreed to raise defense spending to five percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez rejected the increase, insisting that his country’s current plans to raise defense spending to two percent of GDP were […]

On June 29, 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in al-Sham (ISIS), was recorded on video speaking at the al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, Iraq. (“Al-Sham” is the traditional Arabic name for the Levant.) He declared himself to be the caliph or divinely inspired absolute ruler of an Islamic state.  ISIS had risen […]

The Lebanese government has taken the unprecedented political step of forming a committee to create a plan for disarming the militia groups in the country, starting with “the low hanging fruit” of collecting weapons from Palestinian armed groups in a Palestinian camp in Beirut. But Israeli assessments indicate the new Lebanese government and its army leadership […]

The new Lebanese president, General Joseph Aoun, says in closed-door meetings that he has no intention whatsoever of sending his military to clash with Hizbullah. He insists that implementing the Lebanese government’s agreement to disarm Hizbullah must be preceded by dialogue and solid understandings.  Aoun, as military chief before becoming president in January, instructed his […]

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 […]