Newt Gingrich’s December 9 Declaration of Palestinian Inventedness (“we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs”) caused a bit of a stir at the Saturday night GOP debate. Both Mitt Romney and Ron Paul condemned the remark as, in Paul’s words, “just stirrin’ up trouble.” Interestingly, though, both agreed that Gingrich’s point…
Israelis warned of a “diplomatic tsunami,” Palestinians promised a game changer that would reshape Middle East peacemaking, and the White House and Congress geared up for an all-out battle inside and beyond the United Nations. But on November 11, the Palestinians’ initiative to gain statehood recognition from the U.N. Security Council ended finally not with…
Like Vladimir Putin, who can just don a wetsuit and emerge from a deep sea dive holding two sixth-century artifacts, there is apparently nothing Benjamin Netanyahu can’t do. Just read the seventh paragraph of this New York Times story, about the opening of the Metropolitan Museum’s new Islamic art galleries. It mentions a visit that…
Apparently, all it took was a speech. After Barack Obama’s address to the United Nations last week, in which he spent approximately two minutes telling the Israeli narrative in a way that satisfied certain Jewish ears (and, of course, opposing Palestinian statehood), he is suddenly in the good graces of the Israeli population for really…
The Palestinians’ United Nations statehood ploy has drawn an array of responses around the world, from enthusiasm in Turkey to anxiety to Washington and panic in Jerusalem. And one prominent Israeli center-left politician, Isaac Herzog, proposes a counter-intuitive Israeli gambit of voting for the statehood bid—under certain conditions (as I’ll explain below). Nothing, however, quite…
Despite the furor among Jews surrounding the Palestinians’ plan to push for statehood recognition at the United Nations, the Jewish establishment has no plans to protest when the U.N. General Assembly convenes in mid-September. For mainstream Jewish groups, that is a significant shift from recent years. Moved by the threat to Israel that they see…
“Overall, the [Israeli] personnel acted professionally in the face of extensive and unanticipated violence.” This is the verdict of Israel’s inquiry into the May 31, 2010, raid on the Mavi Marmara, part of the flotilla seeking to bring aid to Gaza. And this is what the international panel appointed by the United Nations had to…
September is here. Hanging over the head of world diplomacy like the Sword of Damocles, the month has taken on a new and foreboding meaning this year: It’s the time when the Palestinians plan to ask the United Nations to, in one form or another, elevate their national aspirations. Even many Palestinians think this is…
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