US
Aaron David Miller discusses President Obama's attempts at ‘domesticating’ Iran:
Iran’s rise represents the most consequential development in the region since the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed together with the Arab spring, they have facilitated the Persian spring. And Iran has achieved its spring under very difficult circumstances, including an increased U.S. military presence in the region and tough sanctions that have wrecked its economy. One can only imagine its capacity if Iran is freed from those constraints. To date, the U.S. has lacked both the staying power and the influence to thwart Iran’s reach. In pursuit of a nuclear deal that it believes will constrain Iran’s rise, Washington may well be enabling it further.
Robert Satloff hosts a Washington Institute (video) panel about the future of US strategy in the Middle East:
Following remarks by Vice President Joe Biden to The Washington Institute's 30th anniversary gala dinner, Intitute Executive Director Rob Satloff hosted a panel discussion with leading national and international journalists on the state and direction of U.S. Middle East policy. Judith Miller is former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times. Hisham Melhem is Washington bureau chief for Al-Arabiya, Lally Weymouth is senior associate editor for the Washington Post. Ehud Yaari is Lafer international fellow at the Institute and a commentator for Israeli TV 2
Israel
Ben Dror Yemini laments how Israel’s new government will not represent the interests of the majority of Israelis on many key issues:
The dice appears to have been cast. Israel is in for a narrow government – narrow and problematic, to be more precise.
It won't offer that “expression of the will of the people” that opponents of a national unity government have been going on about endlessly for the past month. A narrow government is not a democracy. It's a “minocracy,” in which the minority imposes its will on the majority.
Cristopher Atamian writes about Israel’s alliance with Azerbaijan and the problematic questions it raises:
In 2012 alone, Israel sold Azerbaijan $1.6 billion in weaponry that included advanced drones and anti-missile launchers. As the Israeli Holocaust scholar Yair Auron has recently characterized it in Haaretz, “The sale of weapons to a government committing genocide is like the sale of weapons to Nazi Germany during World War II.” Azerbaijan’s long time president, Ilham Aliyev, has on numerous occasions sworn to “wipe Armenia off the face of the earth.” Sound familiar?
Middle East
Emma Pearson and Katie Welsford report from Jordan, where the Syrian refugee problem is getting worse and worse:
Syria is a country that is no longer contained within its borders. Over 3.9 million of its people have been uprooted by a violent war that is devastating the country. Fleeing from the rubble under which so many others have been buried, Syrians have been forced into neighboring states such as Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Jordan. As refugees, they are weaving Syria’s story into the broader regional tapestry.
Oxford historian Eugene Rogan tells a cautionary tale about how 100 years ago the threat of Jihad drew western powers into quite a mire in the Middle East:
In a striking parallel to events a century ago, the threat of far-reaching jihad — most recently in the name of the Islamic State — continues to play on the minds of Western leaders. But it does so far beyond any evidence of wide appeal among a vast majority of the globe’s Muslims. So Western leaders can learn from the experience of a century ago. When they overreact to the threat of religious war, they concede power to the very enemies they seek to overcome, with consequences impossible to predict.
Jewish World
Ben Judah and Josh Glancy explore the strengthening ties between Britain’s Jewish community and Israel:
Ties between the Jewish community in Britain and Israel have become so close that an attack on Israel is taken by many in the community as a personal affront. Sometimes these attacks have anti-Semitic motivations, often they do not: It can be difficult to tell. But anti-Semitic or not, they are attacks on Britain’s new kind of Jewish life.
Recent Rosner’s Guest Joseph Berger writes about a new exhibition dedicated to Yiddish speaking boxers (which was, apparently, a thing):
In the 1950s and early 1960s, many Jewish men and their children were transfixed by their black-and-white television screens on nights when wrestling was televised and the featured fighter was Rafael Halperin.
After a war in which six million Jews were slaughtered, here was a Jew, sinewy and fearless, who could vanquish most of his opponents, some of whom were chosen because they looked like comic-book villains. So what if there were rumors that the fights were staged. Halperin was someone who appeared to be a genuine ethnic hero.
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