It’s official. This summer, Russian president Vladimir Putin will be taking a trip to Israel, his first since 2005. It’s the consummation of a relationship that has been fostered by Israel’s Moldovan-born foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who also recently described Israeli-Russian relations — after 20 years of diplomatic contact — as “very positive.” That may…
As if Barbara Walters’s exclusive soft-ball interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last December wasn’t bad enough, now there is word that the 82-year-old host of “The View” has inappropriately used her influence to further the career of one of the brutal dictator’s closest aides. The Telegraph reports that Walters tried to help Sheherazad Jaafari,…
Of all of Syria’s neighbors, Israel is the least involved in the revolutionary events there, and wisely so. Turkey is arming and training an opposition army; Lebanon is the main avenue for smuggling weapons to the rebels; Jordan is sheltering refugees and may be supplying arms to the opposition; Iraqi Sunnis are helping Syria’s Sunni…
This past year was a historic one for the Arab world. The regional security order that has been in place for decades has been upended, and there is great uncertainty as to the new political, economic and security dynamics taking shape. The near future will be complex and volatile, and nowhere more so than in…
Crossposted from Haaretz Hundreds of emails from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s office were leaked on Monday after an attack by the hacker group Anonymous. One of the email files, which Haaretz has obtained, was a document preparing Assad for his December 2011 interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters. The attack took place overnight Sunday and the…
Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, has a few questions about the Free Gaza flotilla that he wishes the journalists on the scene would find time to ask. Most of the speculation so far has been to do with methods and intentions, allowing for many avowals about peaceful tactics and so forth, but this is soft-centered…
The fate of the Middle East, over which recent events in both Gaza and Lebanon cast a foreboding shadow, is dependent on five weak leaders. The nominal world leader, American President George Bush, has reached the nadir of his political standing at home and is very much afraid of the loss of his Republican majority…
In the wake of the Lebanon war, influential policy makers in Washington and Jerusalem have begun pushing for a major diplomatic opening to Syria. Four members of the Israeli Cabinet, including Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, have called publicly in recent days for negotiations with Syria, which is seen by…
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