The death toll in Syrian conflict has risen to roughly 162,000 people, amid hints from White House officials and from President Barack Obama himself that Washington may be contemplating taking firmer action to influence the direction of the over three-year conflict: The death toll in the three-year Syrian conflict has risen...

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported Wednesday on the arrest of reformist journalist Saba Azarpeik – The Guardian cited “numerous sources” describing her as having been detained by regime security forces – just weeks after a new report published on World Press Freedom Day established Iran as the global leader...

Lebanon’s Daily Star on Wednesday conveyed a statement from the anti-Hezbollah March 14th coalition blasting the organization’s chief Hassan Nasrallah over a recent speech in which he had among other things doubled down on Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian conflict: The March 14 coalition Wednesday slammed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan...

A series of recent statements from top Iranian military and political figures – up to and including a fiery speech by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that included denunciations of “Satan and the satanic front” – has generated concerns among analysts that Tehran may refuse to make further concessions in...

The May 28 deadline for a Hamas-Fatah Palestinian government has been and gone and it is suggested it might still take another week before any announcement of a coalition cabinet. While Hamas remained publicly confident a deal would be brokered by May 29, representatives of Fatah, the party of Palestinian...

On Tuesday, a federal judge refused to dismiss a suit brought by a pro-Israel group against the IRS.  In her ruling, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson demanded that the agency stop “attempting to thwart this action’s advancement,”  and ordered the IRS to respond to the complaint within thirty days. The Philadelphia-based group,...

On Wednesday Ethiopian Jews commemorated the estimated 4,000 of their number who died on their way to Israel. The commemoration took place on Mt. Herzl. The Jerusalem Post reports: The annual ceremony, the “Memorial Day for Ethiopian Jews who perished on their way to Israel,” is observed annually to commemorate the...

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced a partnership with Ben-Gurion University on Tuesday. MIT, one of America’s leading universities, already has a number of programs with other Israeli institutions including a partnership with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University’s MIT Enterprise Forum Israel. The MIT Enterprise Forum Israel is one of...

Justus Reid Weiner last week published a report for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs documenting the fate of Middle Eastern Christians. Pope Francis’s recent visit to the Middle East, according to some observers, boosted the Palestinian case for a state. However, the fate of Palestinian Christians may play a role in determining the...

Various outlets and aggregators late last week carried public reports about a string of Hamas rallies in what has until recently been the Fatah-dominated West Bank, as concerns deepened that an impending unity agreement between the two traditional Palestinian rivals would allow Hamas to halt a year-long downward spiral by...