The New Republic

It's no surprise that Zbig Brzezinski is visiting Damascus. First of all, Bashar Assad would be delighted to see him, as he has seen other marginal players in U.S. foreign policy. Secondly, Zbig is a fan of Assad's, as is the ex-president for whom he pondered heavy matters, Jimmy Carter, a really big fan. READ MORE >>

Israel didn't do this.  Israel didn't do that.  Didn't remove checkpoints.  Didn't stop building its protection barrier.  Didn't free Palestinian murderers from prison (actually it did).  All of which, had it done them, would have brought...well, nothing by way of peace to the land of blood and honey.In the meantime, it did withdraw completely from Gaza nearly three years ago and it brought down on itself a daily storm of missiles and rockets.  They fell even when Fatah was in charge in the Strip.  But now that it is not and Hamas is, the torrents are more frequent and more accurate.  Daily READ MORE >>

You may recall when, in 1997, the prime minister of Malaysia condemned George Soros as a Jew who trashed Malaysia's currency and was guilty of other infamies.  Now, another Muslim government has stigmatized poor Soros, identified first as a "Jewish tycoon," as the "mastermind of modern colonialism."  What can the man do to convince these folk that he really is a Palestinian nationalist? READ MORE >>

This was once a truism.  But in 1936, when Maine (and Vermont) went for Alf Landon against FDR who won every other state, it was no longer an axiom.  Maybe this is the year for the authority of Maine to be restored. READ MORE >>

Hebron is the first Hebrew settlement in history, established four millennia ago.  It is where the patriarch Abraham purchased land and where there has been a more-or-less continuous Jewish presence until 1929 when an Arab massacre took the lives of 67 Jews, one third of whom were Yeshiva students.  David Ben Gurion, who opposed an Israeli presence in the West Bank after the Six Days War, believed nonetheless that Hebron merited settlement.  This is, after all, where the Jewish covenant began. READ MORE >>

I don't know much about the inner politics of the Clinton campaign.  There is one top manager there whom I like and respect very much.  But I wouldn't--for his sake--mention his name.  And I can't estimate the political fall-out that's going to result from Hillary displacing Patti Solis Doyle, a Hispanic woman, with Maggie Williams, also a woman but a black woman.  I do know that all of this was predicted in Michelle Cottle's fast-paced but scrupulous account of the hair-pulling in t READ MORE >>

The chief American correspondent of Ha'aretz, Shmuel Rosner, whose report that Barack Obama won the Jewish vote in Massachusetts and Connecticut I posted about last week has now looked more closely at how his fellow Jews voted in the California primary on Tuesday.  Hillary Clinton did not win that cohort, as he had reported initially.  It was Obama who did, by a margin of 49 percent to 47 p READ MORE >>

Yes, Steve Emerson may be a nudnik.  But he deserves a national medal for his pursuit of Middle Eastern terrorists in the United States.  What's more he has been diligent, more than diligent is searching out American friends of terrorism.  There are more than you imagine.  The FBI and the CIA are certainly not among them.  But, so desperate for staff are they, that they recruit in places that are effectively fronts for violent enemies of America and its friends.  READ MORE >>

Mrs. Clinton lost the Louisiana primary and the caucuses in Nebraska and Washington, and lost them by wide margins.  Or, as the New York Times put it five minutes ago  in its web headline, "Obama Defeats Clinton in 3-State Sweep."  Some people say that Obama is an infatuation.  Maybe, yes; maybe, no.  I think not.  But the self-evident fact is that Democrats who are not voting for Hillary also don't like her.  Many despise her. READ MORE >>

Yes, I do believe that the moral achievements of Western culture are under siege.  And that they are under siege from the extremists of contemporary Islam who are helped by the cowardly moderates of contemporary Islam.  In northern and western Europe, for example, once bastions of intolerance, there have emerged patterns of social inclusion of once historically marginal groups.  These people are now so integrated into the community that many of them had actually achieved leadership positions in them, and the community itself has the distinctive character of openness and non-doctrinaire libe READ MORE >>