The 19th Maccabiah kicked off last Thursday evening with a raucous opening ceremony for 30,000 spectators in Jerusalem. The presidents of Israel and the United States were among the dignitaries welcoming the more than 9,000 participants from 70 countries. The games are the largest in the eight-decade history of the...

Iranian President-elect Hassan Rouhani’s incoming administration will make a point of reinforcing revolutionary ideology, including enforcing aspirations aimed at Israel and Jerusalem. That, at least, is the assessment from the Representative of the Supreme Leader in the Central Province:   Representative of the Supreme Leader in the Central Province said...

After months in which Israeli officials had been calling on their Palestinian counterparts to return to negotiations without preconditions – and had been rebuffed – Secretary of State John Kerry announced a breakthrough this afternoon. The language of the announcement – which did not set a date for talks to resume – seemed carefully...

During reconfirmation hearing this week, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey was asked this week to evaluate the current prospects of the Syrian opposition seeking the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. His response was  grim: Dempsey acknowledged in response to a question from Sen. Lindsey Graham,...

Egypt is preparing to launch a large-scale operation to dislodge jihadist elements in the Sinai Peninsula. The announcement comes after weeks of consistent attacks by gunmen on security checkpoints, police stations, and government buildings, and there may be as many as 30,000 Egyptian troops already deployed in the territory. The identities of the gunmen...

Two national security experts took to the Huffington Post yesterday to brush aside complaints from Muslim Brotherhood supporters regarding the removal from power of Egypt’s former Brotherhood-linked president Mohammed Morsi. James Farwell and Darby Arakelian, who specialize in among other things communication and persuasion, sought to be explicit about who’s...

Iranian President-elect Hassan Rouhani this week pledged support for the embattled regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and for the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah. The Iranian proxies were celebrated by the Iranian official, who many had hoped would emerge as a moderate and a reformer, because of their willingness to...

Reported progress on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process stalled this afternoon after Palestinians announced a delay in their response to a peace initiative being pushed by Secretary of State John Kerry. Reports of a meeting between Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and various Palestinian factions are not encouraging: Palestinian Authority...

Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s nominee to be the U.S.’s next ambassador to the United Nations, was asked during her Senate hearings to describe the U.N.’s stance regarding the Syrian conflict. She was not kind: Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told a Senate...

Creeping insecurity in the Sinai Peninsula punctuated by spectacular attacks had generated months of tension between the Egyptian army and the Muslim Brotherhood-linked government of then-president President Mohammed Morsi, according to a new report by the Associated Press. Citing numerous interviews describing the thinking of the military in genereral, and the country’s military...