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Defeating Hamas is must for Israel & the world

Skeptics may question Israel’s ability to defeat Hamas yet absolute defeat is not only possible but a necessity. Even barbaric, tyrannical forces like Nazi Germany or the Islamic State, can be eliminated with the appropriate use of power. Total destruction of entities renders the idea behind it ineffective, but ideas, starting with Nasserism and ending with ISIS, can be destroyed, too.

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A specter haunting the university

That Hamas’s Oct. 7 rampage of barbaric atrocities has become a symbol of “Palestinian liberation” on campus is unsurprising. The pro-Palestinian movement and its ideology have long been a specter haunting the university.

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Jews, Muslims, and an “Origin Story” of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

The October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, and the worldwide moral outrage that that day’s savagery generated were only paralleled by a gleeful schadenfreude that overtook many European capitals and other places around the globe, from the Arab world to the United States to American university campuses outright celebrating the greatest loss in Jewish life since the Holocaust. What is the root cause of such stark, vile dichotomies when it comes to Israel, pitting on the one hand a camp of empathy and on the other one of resentment? How is it that alongside Western sympathizers there are always those depicting Israel as the eternal offender, forbidden from defending itself, even at the risk of being depicted in the most hideous of antisemitic tropes? Conversely, why is it that among Arabs and Muslims, Palestinians are consistently, uncritically, portrayed as eternal victims, beatific casualties of Israeli Apartheid who can do no wrong, and whose own brutality is the justifiable result of grievances long unheeded and a righteous legitimate expression of self-defense?

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Opinion: My grandmother was killed in a pogrom. Then my daughter was, too

“Never again!” It was never supposed to have happened. But it has, and is. We are witnessing in real time a pogrom. We thought that the most extensive pogrom — the Holocaust — would mark the end of the terrible record of violence against Jews, just because they are Jews. Not so.

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Recent African Coups: End of Françafrique, Need for US Leadership

Since 2020, six African countries have experienced a total of eight coups d’état. With the exception of Gabon, all occurred in the Sahel, the semi-arid band stretching across the continent between the Sahara Desert to the north and the tropical savannah to the south. The conventional narrative of “Africa Rising,” which had only recently replaced that of the “Hopeless Continent,” might be in need of revision or at least qualification. 

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Unraveling the origins: Examining Antisemitism within Palestinian society

“Today, antisemitism is global, not just local,” says Sacha Roytman-Dratwa, CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM). “It comes from the right, from the left, from radical Islam, and other sources.” Roytman-Dratwa explains that over the past several years, a greater understanding has emerged in countries around the world that antisemitism needs to be aggressively confronted and countered. “Antisemitism must be taken seriously. There are conversations on the subject at the United Nations. The US government, and other countries are all building strategies to combat antisemitism, and are investing a great deal of money, time, and effort. We see legislation across the board.”

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Biden's 'antisemitism strategy' harms efforts to protect Jews

After months of waiting, the Biden administration finally released its "National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism." A close look at the document gives the impression that the strategy as a whole is designed to appear to be “doing something” to combat antisemitism while not alienating the party’s intersectional base.

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The Zionist dream at 75

Israel in 1948 was a manifestation of an ideal at the time it was created. Namely, this meant Jewish self-determination in their ancient homeland, a nation-state like all others, brought about by a liberation movement that worked with and ultimately against the world’s greatest imperial power, and which was the culmination of decades of patient organizing and building, all set against the horrific backdrop of the Holocaust.

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Arab ‘anti-state’ parties present ongoing challenge for Israel

Arabs citizens today comprise 21 percent of Israel’s population, a significant minority. While their financial situation has dramatically improved over the last 50-plus years, the parties they send to the Knesset are largely “anti-state” in that they reject Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

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A Cold War Program Gets Hijacked

A Cold War-era federal program has wandered far from its national-security mission and into the woke follies that permeate much of American education. For decades, U.S. colleges and universities have received taxpayer dollars through the Education Department’s National Resource Centers, a program intended to bolster U.S. national security at the height of tension with the Soviet Union. But more recently National Resource Centers are promoting unserious academic research or causes irrelevant to national security.

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An academic mission not entirely impossible

My personal encounter with academic censorship began in the Fall of 1989 when Smith College’s newly appointed Diversity Officer summoned me to her office asking why I had included the following question on an exam in one of my courses during the second semester of the previous academic year —an action taken, she stated emphatically, at the behest of the College’s President and Provost. The question, one of several I posed on a take-home final on Middle East Politics, read: “Is Islam useful in the modern world? Describe the role of Islam in the political development of two states in the Middle East [one Arab and one non-Arab] since the end of World War II.” Opening a folder with my name, the Diversity Officer also added to her cascade of charges a complaint about mentioning slavery in the Muslim world without comparing it [favorably] to the system in America.

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Lebanon, America, and the Courage of Fouad Ajami

Reading Fouad Ajami’s posthumous memoir, When Magic Failed, was like reading my own life story. Both Ajami and I hail from Shia families who moved from a homogeneous countryside to cosmopolitan Beirut. My journey to Beirut took a bit longer—my father hailed from Iraq, and we fled the repression of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime in the 1980s to my mother’s country, Lebanon.

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Do Tyrants Heed Their Minions? A Look at Putin and Saddam

Three days before Russia's President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, he assembled his top security staff for a televised charade. At it, he quizzed each in turn if they approved of his plan to recognize two areas of eastern Ukraine as independent states. Squirming and sometimes fumbling, they dutifully all bowed to their supremo's will.

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Twin Towers and Ivory Towers, 20 Years Later

Twin Towers and Ivory Towers, 20 Years Later

In 2001, my book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America became a part of a much bigger and heated discussion over what made the United States vulnerable on 9/11. The main argument in the book was that Middle Eastern studies in America had consistently missed the most important developments in the region. One of them was the rise of very radical forms of Islamist extremism. That claim is why the book took off.

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The Islamic State’s leader died this month. What type of leader might come next?

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Former Pakistani envoy unpacks the new jihad, America’s strategic shortcomings

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Facing anti-Israel and left-wing ideology, Mideast academics chew over challenges in field

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The politics and geopolitics of the Afghan refugee crisis

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Stuck in the middle: Afghanistan between the superpowers

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At home in the Arabian Gulf, I’ve never felt unsafe as a Jew

As reports of antisemitic attacks rise throughout the West, Jewish life in the East flourishes at an unprecedented pace with an increasing number of Jews visiting and moving to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. As a Bahraini Jew, it is particularly upsetting to see the alarming reports of attacks against Jews in the United States. We don’t have an issue with that here.

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