04 Nov
2015 November-December, Opinion

Opinion // Obama’s Distorted Views on Israel

by Peter Berkowitz The president's quest for even-handedness is misguided and dangerous. Speaking at Harvard University in October, Secretary of State John Kerry asserted that “a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years” has triggered “an increase in the violence because there’s this frustration that’s growing.” In the effort to clarify Kerry’s remarks—since, in fact, the rate of construction has declined—State Department spokesman John Kirby advanced the old moral equivalence argument. “Frustration on both sides,” he said, has led to the current violence. To clarify his clarification, he added that “individuals on both sides” are “guilty of acts of terror.” The Obama administration’s formulaic reactions to the recent outbreak of terror in Israel disguise the deeper causes of Palestinian attacks while obscuring the crucial long-term steps needed to build decent relations between Israel and...

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03 Nov
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Historian Jeffrey Herf on Interpreting Iran Through Germany

by Emily Shwake Jeffrey Herf is a professor of modern European intellectual history at the University of Maryland. He has used his specialization in 20th-century Germany as a context from which to comment on contemporary issues in the Arab world and animosity toward Israel. He writes frequently for The Times of Israel and The American Interest and is an award-winning author. His study, At War with Israel: East Germany and the West German Radical Left, 1967-1989, will be published in the spring. Moment spoke with Herf about contemporary issues in the Middle East and the political denigration Jews around the world face today. What are your thoughts on the Iran deal? The Iran deal is based on a policy of hope and change: hope that the Iranian government will abide by its terms and hope that the Iranian government...

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25 Oct
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A Dispatch From the Israeli-American Conference

by George E. Johnson The conventional wisdom in American Jewish life is that the next generation of Jewish adults is less “Jewish” and essentially turned off by the establishment. They will not join—or pay for—the synagogues, communal organizations, or federated agencies of their parents, and are distancing themselves from the State of Israel. So what to make of this new national Jewish organization, seemingly rising from nowhere, full-blown—the Israeli-American Council, which held its second annual Israeli-American Conference in Washington in October? https://js.hscta.net/cta/current.js// One can be excused for approaching the goals of the group—“to encourage a culture of advocacy, giving, and connection to Israel through personal examples of leadership”—with the question, is this just another pro-Israel lobbying group? But the group’s conference, attended by some 1,300 people, many of them...

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24 Oct
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Ilan Berman’s Iran

by Emily Shwake The first thing Ilan Berman told the crowd was: “You do not want to read this book.” This introduction was a bit misleading considering that this month’s reception, hosted by the Jewish Policy Center, was for his newly published book, Iran’s Deadly Ambition: The Islamic Republic’s Quest for Global Power. Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, consults for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other governmental offices on his area of expertise: the Middle East, Russia, and Central Asia. His current work focuses more specifically on radical Islam and Iran. While Berman acknowledged that the recently approved Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—widely known as the Iran Deal—does create greater transparency and give the United States better oversight of the nuclear program,...

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12 Oct
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Q&A: Israel and the Syrian Refugee Crisis

In this Q&A, Moshe Maoz, professor emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem — an expert on Syria who has served as an advisor on Arab affairs for the Israeli government — reflects on Israel's role in the Syrian refugee crisis. What is Israel’s policy on granting refugee status?           https://js.hscta.net/cta/current.js hbspt.cta.load(272896, 'ea047e96-f91d-44c1-baf4-8f4087f6df1d'); Israel is totally against granting any refugee status, and not just for the current flow of refugees. There were quite a number of refugees in the past from East...

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