Several days ago Clemens Heni accused some German pro-Israel groups and intellectuals of spreading "anti-Jewish feelings". His statement, "Imagine! Anti-circumcision, ‘pro-Israel' Germans," appeared in the San Diego Jewish World, which the SPME-homepage also posted: The journal Bahamas "urged (!) their readers and followers [sic.] in a short statement on...

Getting rid of the repressive Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip would be good for most Palestinians as well as Israelis. But it should not be Israel's job alone to overthrow Hamas. Rather, it Is the Palestinians who need to wake up and realize that Hamas is actually causing them huge damage. They need to see that Hamas has brought them nothing but bloodshed, violence and poverty. Following the...

August 14, 2011 TEL AVIV (JTA) -- Amid global events of the past few years that are changing the world -- the rising power of the BRICs economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the global economic crisis, the rise of social networks and, most recently, the popular uprisings in the Middle East -- Israel and the Jewish world are facing a uniquely difficult challenge with the ongoing assault...

In Syria, the story is the emergence of social groups from the periphery and their struggle to gain access to power and take over the center. The emergence of the Baath party and the Assad dynasty in the 1960s involved a coalition of peripheral forces led by the Alawites, but many others joined who came from the periphery. Now, because of socioeconomic reasons, the periphery has turned against...

What a difference three decades make. In April 1982, I was assigned to be the Beirut correspondent for The Times. Before I arrived, word had filtered back to Lebanon about an uprising in February in the Syrian town of Hama - famed for its water wheels on the Orontes River. Rumor had it that then President Hafez al-Assad had put down a Sunni Muslim rebellion in Hama by shelling the neighborhoods...