October 9, 2012

[additional-authors]

Shmuel Rosner

October 9, 2012

In-depth

Writing for Arab News, Abdullatif Almulhim bemoans the lives and resources the Arab world has wasted fighting Israel, to its own detriment.

The Arab world has many enemies and Israel should have been at the bottom of the list. The real enemies of the Arab world are corruption, lack of good education, lack of good health care, lack of freedom, lack of respect for the human lives and finally, the Arab world had many dictators who used the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress their own people. These dictators’ atrocities against their own people are far worse than all the full-scale Arab-Israeli wars.

'Assad Poses No Threat to the Middle East'

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi talks to Der Spiegel about his country's nuclear program, prospects of an Israeli attack, and the Syrian conflict.

If the Israelis had wanted to attack us, and if they could have done so, they would have done so long ago. In 1981, they destroyed an Iraqi reactor without warning. But they have been threatening us for years, on every occasion and publicly. They know what would happen if they attacked. We don't want war, but we will defend ourselves. Aggressors will pay a high price.

Wanted: A Truly Credible Military Threat to Iran

Israel and the U.S. seem to be nearing agreement on a surgical military action that would thwart Iran's nuclear aspirations – and Romney's attacks on Obama, writes David Rothkopf in Foreign Policy.

The strike might take only “a couple of hours” in the best case and only would involve a “day or two” overall, the source said, and would be conducted by air, using primarily bombers and drone support. Advocates for this approach argue that not only is it likely to be more politically palatable in the United States but, were it to be successful — meaning knocking out enrichment facilities, setting the Iranian nuclear program back many years, and doing so without civilian casualties — it would have regionwide benefits.

“Nones” on the Rise

A new poll by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that one in five Americans have no religious affiliation.

The growth in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans – sometimes called the rise of the “nones” – is largely driven by generational replacement, the gradual supplanting of older generations by newer ones.4 A third of adults under 30 have no religious affiliation (32%), compared with just one-in-ten who are 65 and older (9%). And young adults today are much more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at a similar stage in their lives.

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