The question raised by the ouster of Egypt’s President Morsi is whether Islam is compatible with democracy or any form of government that empowers the people and limits the power of leaders to hold merely representative offices with limited terms of public service. Islam is the most recent of the Abrahamic religions to emerge on…
Whereas former President Bush and President Obama are ideologically a world apart, their policies toward Middle Eastern conflicts produced the same damning reaction. Bush’s misguided war in Iraq and its consequences, and Obama’s diffidence toward the slaughter in Syria and his excessively misplaced caution over US involvement in another Arab country, evoked similar waves of…
Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama early on in his first term was largely based on the premise that he would pursue peace and end existing violent conflicts to make the world a better and safer place for all people. The President’s efforts to end the war in Iraq and wind down the…
Although repeated polls taken in the West Bank and Gaza consistently show that a majority of Palestinians support a two-state solution, their leadership has miserably failed to capitalize on this unmistakable consensus. Instead, Fatah, Hamas and a score of other small factions have over several decades been engaged in unending infighting, political intrigue, corruption and…
I believe it is about time for the “Arab Spring” to reach the Israeli shores. It is time for the Israelis to rid themselves of the bondage of occupation and be free again. It is time to stop zealots and messianic leadership from gradually bringing Israel to the brink of national disaster. Israelis can no…
The stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and the lack of prospects for their resumption anytime soon has persuaded the Palestinian Authority (PA) to chart its own course by applying to the United Nations General Assembly (U.N.G.A.) as a non-voting member state. However uncertain the prospect of such a move may be from the PA’s perspective, there…
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be resolved without the direct and active involvement of the United States, using both inducements and coercive diplomacy to bring about a peaceful solution. If the conflict remains unresolved over the next couple of years it will most likely precipitate a massive violent conflagration to the detriment of the Israelis and…
Those who draw hasty conclusions that an Egypt led by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) will soon become an Islamic state fashioned after Saudi Arabia or the oppressive regime in Iran neither appreciates Egypt’s uniqueness nor its storied history. It is one thing to criticize the MB for their public anti-American and anti-Israeli pronouncements when they…
The flurry of reporting and analysis about the tragic death of the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans strongly suggests there is a strikingly limited understanding behind the complex underpinnings of this outrageous act of violence. The hatred and animosity toward Western powers, especially the United States, by extremist Arab Muslims…