Why Is Netanyahu Targeting Abbas for the Har Nof Massacre?

by Mitchell Plitnick This past Tuesday saw the latest in a horrifyingly long line of atrocities in Jerusalem. Two armed Palestinians entered a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood, killed five Israeli civilians and wounded six others before police gunned… Continue Reading

Jerusalem of Tarnished Gold

by Mitchell Plitnick Take a particularly provocative and grandstanding Israeli government and shift its focus from Hamas and Gaza to Jerusalem and you have a most explosive recipe. That potion is being stirred now, and the results could shake up the… Continue Reading

Netanyahu and Obama: Name-Calling and its Discontents

by Mitchell Plitnick The obsession in politics and diplomacy with decorum–largely a relic from the past–can easily distract people from the realities of the present. Case in point, the uproar over Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest article in the Atlantic, the headline of… Continue Reading

How Does Israel Assess the Threat Posed by ISIS?

by Derek Davison A former senior analyst for Mossad, Yossi Alpher, told an audience in Washington Thursday that Israel sees the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) as an “urgent” national security concern, but the context of his talk at the… Continue Reading

The US and a Crumbling Levant

by Emile Nakhleh The international media is currently mesmerized by the advance of Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) on the Syrian city of Kobani near the Turkish border, but Arab states and the US need to look beyond Kobani’s fate and… Continue Reading