US
Columbia professor Andrew Bacevich argues that whatever the outcome against ISIS, America will lose the bigger war in the Middle East (judging by its previous 13 campaigns in the region):
By inadvertently sowing instability, the United States has played directly into the hands of anti-Western radical Islamists intent on supplanting the European-imposed post-Ottoman order with something more to their liking. This is the so-called caliphate that Osama bin Laden yearned to create and that now exists in embryonic form in the portions of Iraq and Syria that Islamic State radicals control.
Stephen F. Hayes writes about “the return of the GOP hawks” (i.e. the end of GOP noninterventionalism):
The Republican flirtation with dovish noninterventionism is over. It wasn’t much of a fling.
For five years, we’ve been hearing that foreign policy and national security issues would split the Republican party. The new noninterventionists, we were told, buoyed by war-weariness and deep concern over government spending, would mount a serious challenge to the more hawkish, internationalist traditions of the Republican party.
Israel
Ben Dror Yemini has some questions and complaints for both the Israeli left and the Israeli right:
Today is the eve of Yom Kippur. A day of soul searching and self examination. We'll do our personal soul searching with our friends, but we're having a hard time with national soul searching and scrutiny. We recycle. We don't surprise. Stagnation is dangerous, the sane left charges at the right. Their claim is not wrong. But there's no stagnation. The right, mostly the right of the right, created a new reality over the past two decades. And it changes this reality year after year. The right is creating one big state here. It won't be a Jewish state, though, it'll be a bi-national state.
According to this interview with Ben Caspit, the IDF Chief of Staff thinks that the IS threat can be contained:
“Every time that IS encounters an organized military force that is determined and cohesive, and not a disintegrating system, they fail,” Gantz said. “The reality surrounding us is very unstable, but we have a clear rejoinder to IS and if they took us on, they would fail. IS exploits the political and governmental vacuum in the environs in which it operates. They understood the US principle of ‘shock and awe.’ The Americans achieved this effect through a thousand Tomahawk missiles. The Islamic State achieves this via beheadings. They are trying to create new geopolitical lines on the basis of Islam as a governmental, not only religious, concept. They are dismantling everything that was outlined by two gentlemen, Sykes and Picot, long ago in the previous century. On the other hand, I think that this threat can be contained; it can be dealt with and it can be neutralized.”
Middle East
Nicholas Kristof thinks that there are some things the West can learn from ISIS:
As we fight the Islamic State and other extremists, there’s something that President Obama and all of us can learn from them. For, in one sense, the terrorists are fighting smarter than we are.
These extremists use arms to fight their battles in the short term, but, to hold ground in the long run, they also combat Western education and women’s empowerment. They know that illiteracy, ignorance and oppression of women create the petri dish in which extremism can flourish.
Column Lynch writes about the Palestinians’ preparations for their upcoming showdown with the US:
Diplomats say they believe the Palestinians understand there will have to be substantial changes to their draft resolution in order to secure enough supporters for passage. But they would not rule out the possibility of a Security Council showdown with the United States, a clash that could set the stage for a move by the Palestinians to become a member of the International Criminal Court, and increase their chances of triggering a war-crimes investigation into alleged crimes in Gaza.
Jewish World
Stephen Weiss writes an interesting take on Professor Carmel Chiswick’s book about American Jewish life and economics (here’s a link to a recent exchange we did with professor Chiswick):
A defining characteristic of American Jewish life is that Jewish human capital is something we have to choose to acquire; there are no Cossacks waiting in a nearby village keeping us confined to our Jewish world, and no communal governing bodies to tell us how we must be as Jews. The trajectory of the Jewish community is one that points to an ever-smaller grouping of those most willing to invest in their Jewish human capital, even at exorbitant costs. The lessons of Chiswick’s economic analysis can help us examine the value in providing worthwhile Jewish experiences for those who’d otherwise walk away.
This curious piece (written by Michele Alperin) takes a look at the possible consequences of using DNA testing to find Jewish ancestry –
Slepkov says this DNA testing “has huge geopolitical consequences.”
“Doron Behar wrote in his article that DNA tests confirm the Zionist narrative of Jews once living in the historic land of Israel and going through an exile,” he says. A graph included in Behar’s article shows where different Jewish communities fit genealogically within the global population. The graph also includes the Palestinians, who have more African ancestry in their genetic data than do Ashkenazi Jews.
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