The Very Model of a Modern Muslim Brother
Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal takes a look at Khairat Al Shater, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate for president, who he says has been embraced by the Obama administration.
Mr. Shater noted that the killing of Hamas’s Ahmed Yassin was “a heinous crime corresponding to the perfidious nature of the Zionist enemy.” As for negotiating with Israel, he called it “mindless”: “The only way” to deal with the Jewish state, he insisted, “is jihad.” He faulted “the enemies of Islam” for trying to “distort and remove [jihad] from the hearts and minds and souls of Muslims.” He blasted the U.S. for preventing “the Islamic nation in its entirety” from eliminating “the usurper Zionist enemy.”
Don’t Fear a Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East
For all the bluster by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, it is unlikely that Iran’s atomic aspirations will trigger a regional rush to get the bomb, writes Steven A. Cook in Foreign Policy.
Most important to understanding why the Middle East will not be a zone of unrestrained proliferation is the significant difference between desiring nukes and the actual capacity to acquire them.
Writing for the Jewish Review of Books, Leon Wieseltier offers a less than favorable review of the New American Haggadah, translated and edited by Nathan Englander and Jonathan Safran Foer.
If there is anything innovative about the New American Haggadah, it is the introduction into the Passover literature of this voice—puerile, trivializing, supercilious, calculatingly quirky, painfully unhilarious—a punk in a yarmulke.
Mofaz’s Kadima win signals end of the land for peace era
The change of leadership in Kadima illustrates Israelis’ disillusionment with a peace process that went nowhere, writes Moshe Arens in Haaretz.
The Oslo Accords had the support of the majority of the Israeli public but are now considered to have been an abject failure, Yasir Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize having become an object of ridicule. Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s unilateral withdrawal from the south Lebanon security zone in 2000 had the support of most Israelis at the time. But when Hezbollah, in the wake of the withdrawal, assumed a dominant role in Lebanon and amassed tens of thousands of rockets, bringing on the Second Lebanon War, many Israelis began having second thoughts.
A Quiet Transformation in China’s Approach to Israel
Carice Witte of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs examines the evolution in ties between the two countries, driven by China’s growing admiration for Israel’s technological achievements and despite pressure from Arab nations.
Demands and expectations internally and externally will continue to grow and to some extent, China will be seeking out Israel, its scholars, and experts as a trusted source of information and greater understanding in order to meet the responsibilities brought by its economic success.
Some Hope for the American Jewish Future
In a sea of trials and tribulations, writes Matthew Ackerman in Commentary Magazine, there are signs that all is not lost for the Jewish community of the United States.
[A]n American Jewry with even a small portion of its young people both deeply interested in public affairs and capable of hearing about them in its people’s language is one with at least some cause for pride. May there be many more similar signs of American Jewish hope in the future.
