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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Lessons from the Fall of Saigon
by Shoshana Bryen
April 30, 2012 | American Thinker
The 37th anniversary of the fall of Saigon today is a good time to review the utility of American security promises -- including those purchased with American blood -- to countries fighting ideologically based insurgencies.
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Consistently Inconsistent on Syria
by Matthew RJ Brodsky
April 27, 2012 | The Times of Israel
A look at some recent statements from the Obama administration on the situation in Syria illuminates just how lost American foreign policy is in the Middle East. Last week, in referring to Kofi Annan's still-born UN-sponsored plan and the failed monitor mission, an administration official with knowledge of the Syrian file told Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy's The Cable, "[t]here was a fundamental decision made at the highest level that we need a real Syria policy with more options for the president. Our allies were coming back to us and saying 'What's your next move?,' and we were forced to admit we didn't have one."
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