An internationally funded NGO founded and chaired by prominent Palestinian legislator and media personality Hanan Ashrawi is struggling to regain its credibility after accusing Jews of using the blood of Christians as part of Passover rituals, then defending the blood libel, then removing the accusation, and now finally apologizing. In...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan risks destabilizing the region and alienating the United States as he scrambles to deal with “hardline domestic criticism” in the aftermath of having been diplomatically out-maneuvered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in settling on terms for restoring ties between Israel and Turkey. At...

After coming under scrutiny for de facto facilitating weapons shipments from Iran to the Bashar al-Assad regime, Iraqi officials have declared their readiness to carry out random searches of airplanes: While Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s spokesman spoke of newly tightened restrictions on Iranian flights to Syria, the head of Iraq’s...

Arabic media sources report that France is ready to add Hezbollah’s military wing to the European Union’s list of terror organizations. Al-Hayat, a pan-Arab daily based in London, describes a meeting earlier this week between French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Secretary of State John Kerry, in which Fabius informed Kerry...

Iran’s nuclear program is moving ahead at a “murderous pace,” a high-level Israeli source said in remarks printed Friday, and Tehran could have a nuclear weapon as early as July. “The Iranians aren’t messing around after North Korea. What Kim Jong-un has Ahmadinejad has,” the unnamed security source told Maariv, referring to...

The Palestinian Authority and the Fatah faction that controls it are facing mounting human rights criticism after a West Bank court upheld a one-year prison sentence for a Bethlehem journalist convicted of defaming PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Mamdouh Hamamreh posted the photo of Abbas to Facebook in 2010, alongside the image...

Gaza-based Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar lashed out earlier this week at unnamed “Palestinian security institutions” that have been transferring “fabricated information” to Egyptian media in order to undermine relations between the Iran-backed terror group and Cairo. The declaration is the latest in a series of moves by Hamas leaders, who...

Islamist elements in the Syrian opposition are increasingly at odds with more secular forces in the Free Syrian Army (FSA), setting the stage for a showdown that could happen after the Bashar al-Assad regime falls — or possibly before — but looks almost certain to happen in some form: These...

The Israeli army has completed the installation of a field hospital set up on the Israeli-Syrian border to treat injured Syrians. The humanitarian gesture comes at the risk of encouraging further efforts by Syrians to cross into Israel: Ben-Dror Yemini writes that, now that the word is out that Israel...

New census figures released today in Israel show that the Jewish state has taken its place, for the first time in modern history, as the country with the country with the largest share of global Jewry. The United States came in second with approximately 5.5 million Jews, followed by France...