When President Barack Obama announced his trip to Israel, there was widespread speculation for the motivations. I thought it was a grab-bag of reasons, including for domestic political purposes, to connect (finally) with the Jewish-Israeli public, to improve personal relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to talk...

The Syrian civil war has now really spilled over into Israel, if in small doses. This weekend, a Syrian shell fell very close to an Israel Defense Forces outpost. This, after a stray bullet from Syria struck an Israeli jeep on the Heights on November 5,...

In The New York Times, Pankaj Mishra considers the "inevitable retreat" of the U.S. from the Middle East. Certainly the argument is important to debate, but the article itself contains too many assumptions and problematic comparisons.

Mishra is correct that there are similarities in current conditions to the...

John Podhoretz has an op-ed in the New York Post in which he defends Mitt Romney's comments on culture being determinative of economic development. To make his case, he lists the bad decisions Palestinians have made (corruption, kleptocracy, violence over negotiation). He then contends that "the...

It took a few days to write down my thoughts on the Levy Committee's recommendations that Israel adopt the legal position that the West Bank is not "occupied" and instead legalize most existing settlements there. In part this is because I just don't see this as a dramatically...

Like other Israel-watchers, after the bombshell news that Benjamin Netanyahu suddenly crafted a new coalition government to avoid early elections, I now have to change what I originally intended to write about Israeli politics.

But I'm going to continue with the broad theme -- that of the dysfunctional...

Popular commentary in the U.S. in recent weeks has drawn attention to the very public bickering in Israel between former security/military leaders and civilian politicians. Many seem surprised at such a development: Daniel Drezner argues that "it's a sign that there's a problem with Israeli democracy"...

It is to be expected that in the highly-charged atmosphere of election year politics, both parties will seek to appeal to specific emotive issues. It's also to be expected that groups will select specific facts over others to bolster their arguments. This is normal as far as it goes, and...

Observers have refused to let go of the question of how much of the Jewish vote the Republican nominee for 2012 can get. Despite the evidence to the contrary, Republicans and some journalists insist that large numbers of Jewish voters will leave their traditional home in the Democratic Party and...

Emulating Jeremy Pressman's succinct summary of policy toward Iran, here's a summary of how American Jews feel about President Barack Obama and how they will vote in 2012:

American Jews don't like Obama because they don't feel him in their kishkes.

Jews always vote...

It's very difficult to have a conversation about Israel these days, particularly if you're an analyst of the country or if you are involved in some way in the diasporic Jewish community. Individuals and institutions are tagged as being either of the left or of the right; and once that...

Students of international relations spend much time and energy studying leaders of countries, in order to be able to understand, explain, and if possible anticipate their foreign policies. Some of these leaders, though, confound our best efforts by alternating between what seem to be careful reasoned policy and then veering...

At first glance, it appears that the Arab Spring has had an isolating effect on Israel, and damaged its regional position and strategic calculus. But this is only impressionistic, because the Arab Spring has coincided with changed domestic politics in Israel: a right-wing government more or less supportive of illiberal...

Spencer Ackerman's piece on the power of Christian Zionism to replace or supplement American Jewry's advocacy on Israel has received much attention. But the argument is incomplete; what's missing is the second part of the story.

Christian Zionists are certainly a potent political force to be reckoned with...

Let's hope it's a sign that the American Jewish community is coming together on the issue of Israel: Jeffrey Goldberg actively agrees with Peter Beinart on the only logical outcomes of the current trajectory of Israeli occupation and settlement-building in the West Bank (I suspect they've shared that...

The storm over the Israeli government's video messages to ex-pat Israelis in the U.S. to return to the proper Jewish fold appears to be over: Jeffrey Goldberg first reported that Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren assured him the Netanyahu government has taken account of U.S. Jewry's...

The warnings are dire: Israeli democracy is greatly endangered, and those who will suffer will be the Palestinians, the secular, the foreign workers, the leftists; in short, everyone who isn't haredi, secular nationalist, or religious nationalist. There are plenty of examples of this trend toward the shutting down...

On Nov. 10, Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird announced that Canada had changed its vote at the United Nations, where every year the General Assembly addresses a package of votes on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Arguing that "this series of resolutions against Israel is generally one-sided, unbalanced and does...

I attended the most recent J14 demonstration, this one at Rabin Square on October 29. Although I arrived late to it, there were still lots of people there -- singles, gay couples, straight couples, families. There were some fiery speeches focusing on the high cost of living and the cruel...

It's become an axiom to highlight the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident as the breaking point in Turkish-Israeli relations. But a closer examination reveals that beginning in the early 2000s, broader changes in the Middle East combined with political, social, and economic changes within both countries made a break in the...