US
Samuel Oakford and Peter Salisbury see Yemen as ”the graveyard for the Obama doctrine” :
Obama has said little about the war in Yemen. With mere months left in his presidency, there is scarce indication that he will. Increasingly skeptical of America’s ability to shape events on the ground in the Middle East, Obama sees little incentive to overturn the status quo, even if that means supporting the apparently reckless military forays of a government he disdains.
Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul shows why Trump is nothing like Reagan when it comes to foreign policy:
In the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections, Reagan won electoral support from “Reagan Democrats.” Though difficult to generalize about the reasons for their affinity for Reagan, one segment of this voting bloc — blue-collar workers of Eastern European heritage — did not allow traditional class affinities to determine their votes, but instead were attracted to Reagan in large measure because of his national security agenda. A vital question in the current presidential election is whether these Reagan Democrats will support Trump. If foreign policy still matters to them, the answer should be no.
Israel
Bernard Avishai discusses the Netanyahu-Obama meeting and the M.O.U deal:
There is no hint from the Administration that, when it speaks of two states, it has devoted much thought to the integration that the states would have to cultivate along with their national homes. Obama has repeatedly said that he wants to provide a sense of hope to both Palestinians and Israelis at the end of his Presidency, as at the beginning. Yet perhaps it is best for Obama to take satisfaction in his diplomatic victories and leave peace parameters to a new Administration. We still have the Clinton parameters, after all. A new Clinton in the White House would know how, as well as anyone, to make the most of them.
Mazal Mualem writes about the end of the shaky Netanyahu-Obama relationship:
For the many Israelis, including Likud supporters, who continue to believe in a two-state solution, the tepid final encounter between Obama and Netanyahu a little more than seven years after their relationship began signifies a lost opportunity of enormous proportions. They were lost years that only delayed any chance of achieving the terms necessary to reach an agreement. They did, however, lead to the weakening of one partner, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, result in a third intifada and intensify the sense of desperation shared by Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Middle East
Joshua Keating asks if President Obama is giving up on Syria to destroy ISIS:
Much to the irritation of the Obama administration, it’s been clear for a while that Turkey’s priorities in Syria are containing the Kurds, helping the anti-Assad rebels, and fighting ISIS, in that order. When the administration was still holding out hope of restoring some semblance of peace and stability to Syria, it was necessary to placate Turkey, one of the most important backers of the anti-Assad opposition. Now that Obama seems to have decided that the cruder and simpler goal of routing ISIS from its territory will take precedence during his final year in office, keeping Turkey happy is less important.
Ahead of tomorrow’s big debate, The Washington Institute made a nice compendium of Trump and Clinton’s statements on every key Middle-East issue:
As the first presidential debate approaches, here is a collection of quotations by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Republican candidate Donald Trump, and their respective party platforms on key Middle East policy issues.
Jewish Journal
Jane Eisner talks to Deborah Lipstadt about her trial against holocaust denier David Irving, now the subject of a Hollywood movie:
“The decision not to call survivors was the right one. It just allowed too much of a variable,” Lipstadt told me. “I carry around a green moleskin, writing little things to remind me, because memory is fickle. That’s one of the reasons we didn’t build a case on one memory, on one person’s story. Not that it’s not true, but because you can’t do that. What came out so strongly in the trial is the triangulation — documents, memories of prisoners, testimonies of perpetrators. We built an airtight case.”
John M. Efron discusses Sephardic neo-Moorish synagogue architecture in Germany:
Though none of the synagogues built in the neo-Moorish style bore any resemblance to synagogues that had existed in medieval Spain they were nonetheless just one element of a much larger cultural project undertaken by German Jews, wherein they sought to honor and emulate Sephardic Jewry as part of a transformative process that would see them form a new kind of Ashkenazic Jewish culture. Doing so led to a highly romanticized depiction of Sephardic Jewry, one where they were seen as superior to Ashkenazim in nearly every way—a curious, if not troubling, Ashkenazic assertion if there ever was one. Long after the tragic demise of Spanish Jewry, the rays of its so-called Golden Age continued to shine across the Jewish world but without doubt it was in modern Germany that those rays enjoyed their greatest luminosity.
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