America, Israel, and the Middle East

Participants in Tikvah’s advanced institute on “War and Human Nature” were treated to a conversation on the method and meaning of statesmanship with Frederick W. Kagan. Beginning in theory and ending in practice, Kagan, a man of…

Three years ago, on the tenth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, Commentary senior editor Abe Greenwald penned an essay for Jewish Ideas Daily on the lessons of 9/11. Greenwald focuses on the realization of the world’s hatred: [T]he Obama…

Is there reason for optimism in the Middle East? One of the common reasons for optimism after Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas returned the region to the less-than-ideal status quo antebellum is that the conflict between Hamas and Israel…

Tikvah advanced institute alumnus Haviv Rettig Gur has a characteristically incisive and original analysis of the aftermath of Operation Protective Edge for The Times of Israel. Netanyahu has achieved his military objectives, Gur argues, but they…

Tikvah advanced institute alumnus David Bernstein has a thoughtful post on the spate of hand-wringing articles about how hard it has become for self-described liberal Zionists to remain both liberal and Zionist. Writing on the Volokh Conspiracy blog,…

One of the routines of Israeli political life is the postbellum tug-of-war over Israel’s efforts at Hasbara, literally “explanation.” Where did Israel succeed at explaining itself? Where did it fail? Why? Amid this debate, Avi Woolf takes…

What is the proper relationship between Jews and political power? To what extent should Jews eschew worldly power for the sake of piety? How Machiavellian can Jews allow themselves to be? Two of the Jewish world’s most esteemed…

Israel’s best friends in the Middle East face barbarians at the doorsteps. Guy Maayan of Mida interviewed some Kurdish fighters to learn about the Islamic State’s brutal way of war and how the Kurds view Israel: “They’re monsters,…

Why did Secretary of State John Kerry originally present a cease-fire plan that acceded to some of Hamas’s demands and none of Israel’s? Michael Doran of the Brookings Institution tried to answer that question in a Mosaic…

There is now an Israeli consensus on the Palestinians, a coalition comprising everyone except the very radical left. Ran Baratz, the editor of Mida, recently looked at why consensus has formed in the historically contentious world of…

Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Council issued a resolution condemning Israel for, among other libels, “the targeting of civilians.” The resolution never once mentioned “Hamas.” As is so often the case with absurd resolutions against Israel,…

George Mason University’s Jeremy Rabkin reviewed Hoover Institution Scholar Peter Berkowitz’s Israel and the Struggle Over the International Laws of War in The Jewish Review of Books‘s Summer 2012 issue. Rabkin praises Berkowitz for his cogent defense of Israel…