By Sarah Honig
The Jerusalem Post
May 19, 2013

Qatar’s Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani (right) in Gaza with Hamas strongman Ismail Haniyeh

The wardrobe adaptability of the Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani is very telling. The same goes for his cousin, Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani.

When it serves their purposes, Qatar’s staggeringly wealthy two most powerful players strut about in very traditional Arab garb. But when the occasion deems it expedient, they soothe subliminal western anxieties by donning tailored suits of the exceptionally elegant sort that proliferates in European Union forums. That purportedly imparts an impression of trustworthiness.

The cousins’ policy line is just as chameleon-like. There’s a yawning gap between their utterances in English and in Arabic.

By Lilach Shoval
Israel Today
May 17, 2013

Israel's readiness to deal with a chemical weapons attack is hampered by the fact that more than one-third of the population does not have gas masks.

(Photo credit: Yehoshua Yosef)

Israel is inadequately prepared for a possible chemical weapon attack, according to the Homefront Defense Ministry's recently released annual report.

“As of 2012, the readiness level of government office and state authorities for an unconventional weapon attack stands at low-medium,” the report said. It said Israel faces a high risk of a terrorist chemical attack and a medium risk of a radiological attack.

By Khaled Abu Toameh
Gatestone Institute
May 17, 2013

The Fatah activists who are threatening Palestinian teenagers for talking to Israelis and playing football with them are the same people who claim, at least in public, that they support the peace process with Israel. But how can there ever be a peace process when anyone who meets with an Israeli is immediately denounced as a traitor? It is worth noting that most of these denunciations are coming form the "moderate" Fatah, and not from Hamas.

While Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was meeting in his office in Ramallah with Shelly Yacimovich, chairwoman of Israel's opposition Labour Party, his Fatah faction was busy threatening Palestinians who meet with Israelis.

That Abbas continues to meet with Israelis on a regular basis in Ramallah does not seem to bother Fatah.

Nor does Fatah seem to be bothered that Palestinian security officers work closely together with their Israeli counterparts in the West Bank. That is called "security coordination" between the Palestinians and Israel.

By Diana West
May 15, 2013

Anniversary outside the US Embassy in London

WASHINGTON DC. Fifteen years ago, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom opened shop with a mandate from Congress to examine the state of religious freedom around the world, and issue an annual report to the President. The idea was to provide the information necessary for the U.S. government to make religious freedom a greater factor in foreign-policy-making by highlighting the world’s worst offenders. Such offenders run, as the commission’s 2013 religious freedom report tells us, from Saudi Arabia to China to Russia to Sudan to Iran to Western Europe.

Western Europe?

The 2013 report marks the first time that the region of Western Europe has made the commission’s official watch list. It doesn’t debut as a “tier-one” offender, or even “tier two”. Western Europe, however, is listed in the commission’s third category of concern along with Bahrain, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Turkey and Venezuela as a “monitored” region.

Not that the commission can claim much influence on U.S. foreign policy. After all, of the top recipients of U.S. foreign aid – Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan and Egypt – four out of the five make the commission’s religious freedom watch list, with Iraq, Pakistan and Egypt ranking as top-tier offenders. Afghanistan is deemed a second-tier offender. Israel, meanwhile, is not on the list of offenders at all. It is also the only non-Islamic nation of the five. Coincidence

By Arlene Kushner
Independent Journalist
May 15, 2013

With all that remains disturbing (and I'll get to it), there are also good things happening within the government and the Knesset. Good people who are ready to fight for Jewish rights.

Yesterday, during an AFSI reception at the Knesset, Deputy Minister of Transportation Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) shared her intentions to fight for the right of Jews to pray on Har Habayit (the Temple Mount).

While at a celebratory plenum session of the Knesset, Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein (Likud) expressed the hope that the issue of Jewish prayer on Har Habayit would be resolved by the next Yom Yerushalayim:

By Louis René Beres
May 12, 2013

“Whenever the new Muses present themselves, the masses bristle.”
– Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art

It is hard to understand at first, but Israel’s survival is linked to certain core insights of the great Spanish existentialist philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset. Although he was speaking to abstract issues of art, culture, and literature, Ortega’s insights can be extended productively to very concrete matters of world politics. More precisely, just as there must take place periodic “revolutions” in the way that we humans look at beauty (Ortega’s intended argument), there must also appear new ways of understanding national strategies.

Strategic theories, like theories of art, are essentially a “net.” In war and peace, only those who cast will catch. Moreover, this net must be constantly re-woven and refined. Without a carefully derived and markedly innovative system of theory, the IDF will be unable to conform its critical order of battle to the constantly changing and increasingly lethal correlation of forces mustering on the regional battlefield.

By Stephen F. Hayes
The Weekly Standard
May 12, 2013

The State Department, the CIA, the White House . . .

CIA director David Petraeus was surprised when he read the freshly rewritten talking points an aide had emailed him in the early afternoon of Saturday, September 15. One day earlier, analysts with the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis had drafted a set of unclassified talking points policymakers could use to discuss the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. But this new version​—​produced with input from senior Obama administration policymakers​—​was a shadow of the original.

The original CIA talking points had been blunt: The assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi was a terrorist attack conducted by a large group of Islamic extremists, including some with ties to al Qaeda.

These were strong claims. The CIA usually qualifies its assessments, providing policymakers a sense of whether the conclusions of its analysis are offered with “high confidence,” “moderate confidence,” or “low confidence.” That first draft signaled confidence, even certainty: “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.”

ABC News.com
May 10, 2013

By Jay Bushinsky
MGINews.com
May 10, 2013

JERUSALEM -- When the Syrian civil war began just over two years ago, many if not most of the pundits inside and outside of the Middle East predicted it would be over within three months and that Damascus' President Hafez Assad would go into exile along with his immediate family and his key political cohorts.

How wrong they were!

After an estimated 1,200,000 casualties and about the same number of refugees in neighboring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, Assad still is in power and his regime still is intact.

One reason for this is that they are engaged in a struggle for personal and collective survival.
If they are overthrown, they and their fellow-members of Syria's Allawite minority will pay a very heavy price.
The punishment likely to be meted out to them is likely to be horrendous. The rights and status they acquired during the Assad family's past four decades of authoritarian rule will be abolished. Prominent Allawites who rose to the top of Syria's military, economic and social ladders will be purged. And the possibility that many of them will be arrested, tried and convicted of criminal activity is quite strong.

By Sarah Honig
The Jerusalem Post
May 10, 2013

“Our protests were regarded as provocations.” The interior of Berlin¹s Fasanenstrasse Synagogue after Kristallnacht.

Years ago, when I was a young cub reporter at the Jerusalem Post, one of my esteemed veteran colleagues complained to the police about a motorcycle gang that used his apartment house parking lot for noisy nightly daredevil stunts.

The constabulary wasn’t much bothered but my colleague warned the teenage bikers that the cops know about their exploits. That put no damper on the hijinks. Quite the contrary, they increased in frequency, duration and decibels. When my colleague righteously admonished the loud louts, they threatened to kill him.