Terrorism Myths Infect Our Foreign Policy

Myths die hard in the underpinnings of U.S. foreign policy, whether they involve the reach of the Islamic State group or obstacles to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and they impede effective policymaking. From the shocking slaughter in Paris to the drip-by-drip agony in Israel, the question for Washington is the same: Will policymakers from …

Sowing the Seeds of More Mayhem

The global response to recent Palestinian terror in Israel highlights the world’s appallingly exceptional treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one that infantilizes both sides and only encourages more terror. For starters, President Barack Obama mouths the timeworn U.S. position that Israel “has a right” to defend itself, which no president ever feels compelled to articulate …

An Ugly Double Standard for Israel

President Barack Obama’s vow to reassess U.S.-Israeli relations after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign remarks about a Palestinian state showcases his badly skewed views of Israel, its conflict with the Palestinians, its Arab neighbors and the true sources of regional instability. “We take him at his word,” Obama said of Netanyahu’s promise, which he walked …

Don’t Be Fooled by the Hamas-Fatah Union

The new Palestinian unity government of Fatah and Hamas puts the lie to fundamental assumptions on which the U.S. approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace have long rested, most prominently within the Obama administration. Washington has long assumed that a two-state solution is attainable, that “land for peace” is the formula for success, that the key remaining …

One-sided tactics show contempt for Israel

WASHINGTON – Recent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks raise questions as to why Washington invested so much in such a misbegotten venture, but they brought one salutary result – they laid bare the Obama Administration’s hostility to the Jewish state. Evidence of anti-Israel one-sidedness mounted as the talks predictably went nowhere and President Obama and Secretary of …

No, Mr. President, your critics aren’t just neoconservatives

WASHINGTON — “My job as commander in chief,” an exasperated President Obama told critics this week, “is to deploy military force as a last resort, and to deploy it wisely. And, frankly, most of the foreign policy commentators that have questioned our policies would go headlong into a bunch of military adventures that the American …