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Israel made great efforts to cultivate newly independent Africa starting with Ghana in 1957. But after most African countries succumbed to the 1973-1974 Arab oil embargo, and broke diplomatic relations with Israel, the Jewish state upgraded relations with the Pretoria regime without endorsing Apartheid which it continued to denounce. Progressive Jews like Helen Suzman and […]

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameini called nuclear talks with the U.S. “useless.” His minion, President Rouhani, has a different view. Perhaps they are playing “bad cop”/”good cop.” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to broker a truce between Aghan presidential aspirants also appears to be falling part. On Iran, see “Los Angeles Times” at […]

Barack Obama entered the presidency with millennial expectations—fed by analogies between the Great Depression and the new Great Recession—that he would be “another Lincoln” or, more often, “another FDR.” “Newsweek” even photoshopped an image of the two on its cover. I don’t think it needs much elaborating that, neither at home nor abroad, has Obama […]

Recently, the U.S. FAA broke new ground diplomatically by embargoing flights to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in a move that did more harm to the Jewish state than thousands of Hamas rockets. Now, the FAA has had to act at home by declaring “a no fly zone” over Ferguson, Missouri, to promote unfettered law enforcement […]

No, not Palestine. Hamas–recognized by the “New Republic.” See http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119064/b-yehoshua-israel-should-call-hamas-enemy-not-terrorists Hamastan–from de facto to de jure–would become the hottest new international lawyers’ IPO, i.e., a state with all the rights and none of the responsibilities of other states. The next step would be for Israel to arm Hamas–a lucrative franchise–and also an ingenious solution to […]

Everyone who hasn’t should read President Obama’s interview with Tom Friedman of the “New York Times,” See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/opinion/president-obama-thomas-l-friedman-iraq-and-world-affairs.html Here, I translate it to an alternative universe in which Israel is the superpower and the U.S. is a small ally under existential threat, and change accordingly who gives the uncensored answers: Tommy Friedman of the “New […]

George Orwell, author of “1984” (1949), was already dead for over a third of a century when the date of that sardonic classic came and went. Yet you would not know it from contemporary broadsides about the Gaza War invoking Orwell and his ideas, pro- and con-Israel. There has been a back-and-forth in the “Forward” […]