Prioritizing Existential Risk: Israel’s Need to “Stay Focused” on Nuclear Threats
Although Israel continues to face multiple and often intersecting security threats, including terror, its core operational focus should remain on existential perils, especially nuclear attack and nuclear war.
Who is Responsible under International Law for the New Gaza Wars?
Under international law, which also happens to be part of the law of the United States, ALL Palestinian terrorists are hostes humani generis: "Common enemies of humankind."
A Palestinian State Is A Greater Threat To Israel Than An Intifada
A "Palestine” could become another Lebanon, with many different factions battling for control.
U.S. Presidential Expectations and Mideast Peace
President Obama’s core argument on a Middle East peace process is still founded on incorrect assumptions.
American Democracy as Masquerade
Once upon a time in America, every adult could recite at least some Spenglerian theory of decline.
Presidential Expectations and Mideast Peace
President Obama’s core argument is still founded on incorrect assumptions.
Israel’s Strategic Options at the Eleventh Hour (II)
Specific strategic lessons from the Bar Kokhba rebellion.
Israel’s Strategic Options at the Eleventh Hour
Still facing an effectively unhindered nuclear threat from Iran, Israel will soon need to choose between two strategic options.
Irony and Intuition: Understanding Israel’s Best Philosophy of Survival
For states, as for individuals, fear and reality go together naturally.
Physics and Politics in the Elusive Search for Mideast Peace
So much of the struggle between Israel and the Arabs continues to concern space.
After the U.S.-Iran ‘Rapprochement
An undifferentiated or across-the-board commitment to nuclear ambiguity could prove harmful to Israel's's overall security.
On Targeted Killing and International Law
It is, after all, difficult for any civilized people to acknowledge self-defense imperatives that could allow killing as remediation.
Releasing Terrorists as a ‘Gesture for Peace’
A core element of international law is the basic rule of nullum crimen sine poena, or "no crime without a punishment."
Palestinian Terrorism and Statehood
In law, one man's terrorist can never be another man's freedom fighter.
Preparing for a Primal Struggle
Within Israel's decisional boundaries, diplomatic processes that are premised on assumptions of reason and rationality may soon need to be reconsidered.
Power And Survival (Second of Two Parts)
As I noted here last week, “the situation of survival is the central situation of power. Yet, as the ‘Middle East peace process’ makes Israel's survival more and more problematic, this enterprise now effectively deprives Israel of its power. Left to proceed, the process will eventually permit Israel's enemies to enjoy a triumph that still remains cleverly concealed, the conspicuous triumph experienced by certain still-living persons, when confronted by the powerless one who is dying.”
Power And Survival (First of Two Parts)
Believing, naively, in a universal international obligation to preserve life, Jerusalem fails to understand that death is identified by its enemies as a zero-sum event.
Syria Is Only a Microcosm
In the most truly critical issues of mega-survival, we humans may now be living far more absurdly than ever before.
To Become a ‘Martyr’: Understanding Major Hasan
Again and again, we hear the nearly visceral incantations from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah: "We love death."
Syria (Today) and ‘Palestine’ (Tomorrow) II
Easily misrepresented or abused, international law can generally be manipulated to serve virtually any preferred geo-political strategy.
Syria (Today) and ‘Palestine’ (Tomorrow)
Now more than ever it is apparent – incontestable, in fact – that the Arab/Islamic world has long been preparing to destroy itself.
Switzerland And The Jews: A Realistic Assessment
My parents arrived as Austrian Jewish refugees in Switzerland almost exactly sixty years ago.
If You Liked the Arab Spring, You’ll Love ‘Palestine’
What, exactly, can we expect from 'Palestine'?
The ‘Merely Wounded’ In Terror Attacks
Back in 2009, the now infamous Goldstone Report was first released by the UN’s Human Rights Council.
France and the Jews
Many readers have probably seen the film “Sarah’s Key,” a powerful 2010 movie that reminds its viewers of overwhelming French collaboration with the Nazis. Even today it seems widely believed that France carried on more or less heroically under the German occupation, and that the 1942 roundups of Jews in occupied France must have been carried out by the SS or Gestapo directly. In fact, however, as “Sarah’s Key” instructs in understated yet utterly hideous detail, these roundups were executed, more or less enthusiastically, by the regular French police.
On Feeling the Pain of a Bombing Victim
Following the Boston Marathon bombing, one crucial point will likely remain overlooked. The most loathsome aspect of this or any other terror bombing attack on civilians will always lie in the inexpressibility of physical pain. While all decent people will abhor the idea of bombs expressly directed at the innocent, whether here or in other countries, none will ever be able to process the very deepest horrors of what has been inflicted.
Staying Alive: Israel In An Age Of ‘Martyrdom’
Everyone who reads newspapers should know at least one thing. Threats to annihilate Israel have always been unremarkable. Almost never, it seems, have Israel’s existential enemies sought any reason for concealment.
A Policy in Search of Doctrine
In the face of seemingly irrational threats from North Korea, at least one American conclusion should be obvious and prompt: Nuclear strategy is a "game" that sane world leaders must play, whether they like it, or not. President Obama can choose to play this complex game purposefully or inattentively. But, one way or another, he will have to play.
Obama’s Flawed Advice To Israel (Second of Two Parts)
A fundamental inequality is evident in all expressions of the Middle East peace process.
Obama’s Flawed Advice To Israel (First of Two Parts)
One must presume that President Obama’s most recent calls for Israeli cooperation in the Middle East peace process are balanced, fair, and well-intentioned. Why not? At the same time, unsurprisingly, these all-too-familiar calls are manifestly thin, in the sense that they lack any genuine intellectual content.
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