Like many other supporters of the pro-Israel, pro-peace group J Street, I was disappointed to read last week the news that George Soros has been a major financial supporter of the group. To be clear, I wasn't disappointed that the group is receiving support from Soros, just that they...

National Review today published an editorial "Not at Ground Zero," condemning the Cordoba House Islamic Center in lower Manhattan. In addition to leveling a number of baseless smears against the Cordoba House's leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf -- most of which have already been debunked by Robert...

Cross-posted from Wonk Room.

In 1790, President George Washington wrote a letter to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island, affirming the values of tolerance and religious freedom that he saw as the bedrock of the country that he had had helped found, and done so much...

In a nice catch, Eli Clifton reports that the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), the latest neocon astroturf pro-war outfit, is based out of the same office as a previous neocon astroturf pro-war outfit, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI):

The evidence lies in a...

Picking up on Eli Clifton's reporting, Ben Smith tells us a little more about the Emergency Committee for Israel, neocon svengali Bill Kristol's latest astroturf anti-Obama effort:

The Emergency Committee for Israel's leadership unites two major strands of support for the Jewish state: The hawkish, neoconservative wing of...

In a story that's at least ten years overdue, the New York Times reports today that "many groups in the United States [are] using tax-exempt donations to help Jews establish permanence in the Israeli-occupied territories -- effectively obstructing the creation of a Palestinian state, widely seen as a necessary...

It really must be understood how ridiculous it is for Elliott Abrams -- whose incompetence bears as much responsibility as any American official's for the current sad state of affairs in Israel-Palestine -- to presume to criticize the Obama administration for its handling of the Israel-Palestine file. That's certainly not...

The Cable's Josh Rogin reports that "the National Security Council's Dennis Ross is the latest U.S. official to link the Obama administration's drive to secure peace between Israelis and Arabs to the overall goal of bringing greater stability to the region and combating the threat from Iran":

"In this...

The usual venues are raising alarm about a newly released Department of Defense report on Iranian military power that states that Iran could probably develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the U.S. by 2015 "with sufficient foreign assistance." While this is certainly worth paying attention...

Back in February 2003, just before the beginning of the U.S.-led preventive war on Iraq, Army Gen. Eric Shinseki told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. would need "several hundred thousand soldiers" to secure the country. Shinseki's estimate drew upon a substantial body of analysis that...

Even though Iraq continues to endure a level of terrorism that any other country would consider a national crisis, and even though Republican Congressman Dana Rohrbacher acknowledged recently that "everybody I know thinks it was a mistake to go in" to Iraq, you can still find people --...

Gen. David Petraeus caused quite a stir last week with his written statement (pdf) to the Senate Armed Services Committee, in which he included "insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace" as the first among "a number of cross-cutting issues that serve as major drivers of instability, inter-state...

Leaving aside his tiresome, and by now self-discrediting, reductio ad Chamberlinum argument, Alan Dershowitz's op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal is a useful reminder that his tendency toward dishonesty isn't limited to the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He's dishonest about Iran, too:

Regardless of his...

The Washington Post reports that "President Obama's advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal," reversing Attorney General Holder's plan to try him in civilian court:

Marine Col. Jeffrey Colwell, acting chief defense...

The political scene in Iraq has been roiled over the past several weeks by the controversial decision by Iraq's Accountability and Justice Commission to ban some 500 political candidates from competing in the March elections because of past ties to the Ba'athist Party. Sunnis have expressed fears that next...

During the 2008 presidential campaign, one of Sen. John "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" McCain's favorite bons mots was that "There is only one thing worse than military action [against Iran], and that is a nuclear armed Iran." As with so much else that McCain said during that campaign,...

In an article exploring the Ahmadinejad-led "purge" of Iran's intelligence service, David Ignatius relays this story:

One Iranian political figure has told a Western intermediary that the Obama administration may have unwittingly encouraged the regime's power grab by sending two letters to Khamenei before the June election. The first,...

Last week, responding to international criticism of Israeli plans to build new Jewish homes in an Arab neighborhood of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman "ordered embassies abroad to use a photo of Adolf Hitler meeting a top Palestinian cleric."

The decision to circulate a 1941 photo...

The message of Ehud Olmert's op-ed this morning is simple: Despite it's promises not to take actions that would prejudice a final outcome, for years, Israel has gotten away with building and expanding settlements on occupied Palestinian land. But now the Obama administration has called them on this....

Earlier today, President Obama delivered a speech to Moscow's New Economic School, in which he outlined his vision for the future U.S.-Russia relationship.

While there was much in the speech that was notable, I think this was a key passage:

Like President Medvedev and myself, you're...