Why is the U.S. doing Special Ops exercise with Egypt and Pakistan?

by Shoshana Bryen
May 18, 2012 | American Thinker

NATO's snub of Israel -- a "major non-NATO ally" and member of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue -- in its Chicago summit this weekend was simply waved away.  "Israel is neither a participant in ISAF nor in KFOR (Afghanistan and Kosovo missions)," said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.  Israel didn't belong there, and that's that.  In the same press conference, however, Rasmussen acknowledged that thirteen other "partner" nations would attend because "[i]n today's world security challenges know no borders, and no country or alliance can deal with most of them on their own."

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Flunking the Syria Test

by Matthew RJ Brodsky
Spring/Summer 2012 | The Journal of International Security Affairs

With the Syrian uprising now past its one-year anniversary, it's long past time to take stock of the carnage. This article explains why Syria matters to the U.S. and exposes the failure of U.S. policy to deal with the "Syrian Spring." Finally, it proposes foreign policy options that can be taken independently or in conjunction with others.

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Will the young eat the revolution?

by Shoshana Bryen
May 11, 2012 | The Times of Israel

Revolutions, it is often said, eat their young; the Palestinian revolutionary movement, in all its splinters, certainly has swallowed generations of Palestinian children. A poll by the Arab World for Research & Development (AWRAD) shows signs, however, that the revolution may be in serious trouble with its own young people, who have been influenced variously by Israel and events in the wider Arab world. Oddly, the US administration just forked over $260 million to prop up the old dictatorship and try to save an increasingly out-of-touch Mahmoud Abbas. President Obama said the money was "important to the security interests of the United States."

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The Rights of Indigenous People and the Rest of Us

by Shoshana Bryen
May 11, 2012 | American Thinker

In early 2011, President Obama announced that the United States would sign the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Now the U.N. wants us to give Mt. Rushmore to the Indians. James Anaya, U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, spent twelve days in the U.S. meeting with representatives of Native Americans. Returning to Geneva, he urged the government to turn over control of lands considered sacred to the tribes, including the Mt. Rushmore site.

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The New Israeli Coalition and the Elephant in the Cabinet Room

by Shoshana Bryen
May 8, 2012 | American Thinker

Rarely do politics in a democratic country wrap up as neatly as they did for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week.  Having scheduled new parliamentary elections that he was assuredly going to win, today he announced that the coalition was expanded and reconstituted, and will last until September 2013 - the legal expiration of the current Knesset.

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Google autocomplete: Shades of IBM?

by Shoshana Bryen
May 2, 2012 | The Times of Israel

Readers of Edwin Black's chilling bestseller "IBM and the Holocaust" know that IBM was collecting data on Jews in Europe for Nazi Germany. Not just names, but whole families structures, addresses, business holdings, bank accounts, occupations, and language skills were tabulated on Hollerith machines. Beginning with census information in Weimar Germany, IBM, operating under the name Dahomag, branched out to the rest of Europe. With the Nazis rolling westward, Dahomag offices were well placed to provide everything required to round up the Jews (census tract information made it easier to figure out which streets to include in ghettos), send them efficiently to camps (Dahomag automated the train schedules), and confiscate their property. "We didn't know how they knew," was a common refrain from survivors.

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What if a Rational Iran Says, "Yes"?

by Shoshana Bryen
May 2, 2012 | Gatestone Institute

LTG Benny Ganz, Israel's Chief of Staff, turned heads when he told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz that the Iranians are rational and, in his view, have not taken a decision about moving from nuclear capability to nuclear weapons. The second is supposed to prove the first.

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Articles Archive

Al-Qaeda's Grip on Yemen

by Zachary Fisher
May 21, 2012 at 2:57 pm

A suicide bomber killed at least 101 people and wounded over 200 in an attack during a military parade rehearsal in Yemen's capital city of Sanaa on Monday. The attacker, a soldier in uniform, was taking part in a drill near Yemen's Presidential Palace when he detonated a bomb hidden underneath his clothes. The explosion erupted moments before Yemen's Defense Minister Nasser Ahmed and the Army Chief-of-Staff Ahmed al-Ashwal were expected to address the troops, leading officials to believe that the high-ranking individuals were his intended targets. The defense minister and army chief-of-staff were not harmed.

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Iran Threatens to Sue Google

by Erin Dwyer
May 18, 2012 at 3:19 pm

Iran has threatened to take legal action against Google for its decision to leave the body of water separating Iran from the Arab Peninsula nameless on its online Google Maps service. Aggravations sparked two weeks ago when Iran's deputy minister for Islamic guidance accused the search engine of stripping the Persian Gulf title from the waterway in a 'mischievous act' that Google fervently denies. Despite Google's insistence that the waterway has remained nameless for several years, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast threatened the company with "serious damages" if the name is not restored.

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Is the Taliban's Momentum 'Broke'?

by Erin Dwyer
May 17, 2012 at 5:20 pm

Taliban insurgents killed at least 11 policemen and civilians in an attack against Governor Mohammad Akram Khapalwak's office this Thursday. The alleged assassination attempt was executed by four attackers wearing suicide vests disguised as Afghan police officers in the western Farah Province, which borders Iran and has been afflicted by Taliban insurgents for more than a decade. Equipped with rocket propelled grenades, small arms, and hand grenades, only two attackers succeeded in detonating their suicide vests before being shot down by security forces.

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U.S. Commits to Increased Iron Dome Funding

by Zachary Fisher
May 16, 2012 at 4:12 pm

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is in Washington this week to accept a package of nearly $1 billion in aid from the United States for the development and building of missile defense systems in Israel. Included in the package is $680 million for developing and building Iron Dome systems and about $280 million for developing other defense systems. This new military aid package was authorized by the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee last week.

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Syria Fighting Spills Over into Lebanon

by Samara Greenberg
May 15, 2012 at 1:57 pm

Hundreds of Lebanese soldiers supported by armored vehicles deployed Tuesday inside Tripoli to end three days of deadly fighting between the rival neighborhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen -- the former's residents are mostly Sunni and oppose Syrian President Bashar al-Asad, while the latter's mostly hail from the minority Alawite sect and back the embattled leader. The fighting left at least seven people dead and nearly 100 wounded.

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Replacing the Tal Law: Israel's Democracy at Work

by Zachary Fisher
May 14, 2012 at 4:53 pm

Israeli Vice Premier Shaul Mofaz on Monday defended his choice to bring Kadima into the new governing coalition, which will concentrate on passing a new budget, changing the political system, and advancing the peace process. As part of the agenda, Mofaz added, the coalition will focus on legislative reform, specifically addressing the Tal Law.

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Moussa, Fotouh Face-Off in Egypt's First Presidential Debate

by Erin Dwyer
May 11, 2012 at 3:34 pm

Egypt's two presidential front-runners, out of 12 contenders, faced-off in an unprecedented debate Thursday night. Less than two weeks before the first presidential elections since Hosni Mubarak's ouster, the televised debate between Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh was styled after U.S. presidential debates and lasted over four hours.

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Congress Mulls New Restrictions to Egypt, PA Aid

by Samara Greenberg
May 10, 2012 at 3:14 pm

The House of Representatives' Foreign Operations Appropriations subcommittee passed a $40.1 billion budget for 2013 with new stipulations for U.S. funds that go to Egypt and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in an effort to protect U.S. interests in the midst of regional changes.

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