Guess which of President Obama's uninvited gala guests is a big wig on the board of the American Task Force on Palestine -- the Palestinian lobby? None other than the male half of the social climbing phonies who crashed the White House state dinner the other night: Tareq Salahi.
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Now here's a suggestion for Osama bin Laden. Shave your beard, get a good haircut, rent a tux and show up at a White House State Dinner with a tall, elegant blonde in a very chi-chi evening gown. Make believe your names should be on the official guest list, slip...

Few whirls of the Mideast maelstrom are more confusing than Israel's Arab population - those 1.7 million urban and rural Arabs whose forebears wisely chose to remain in the newborn State of Israel rather than flee and become Palestinian refugees.

Today, Israeli Arabs (or "Palestinian Israelis" as some now...

The history of the Holocaust runs fathomless with tales of personal tragedy. Yet few remain more dramatic - or more contentious - than the story of Reszo Kasztner, the heroic Hungarian Jew who tried to negotiate directly with the Nazis to save a half million of his people from the...

Like all Julia Child fans, I eagerly await Nora Ephron's new film "Julie & Julia" which stars Meryl Streep as the great lady herself.
So, with the August 7th release date less than a week away, I thought it might be fun to resurrect what I consider one of...

Here's a good question. Why do the majority of American Christians remain so oblivious to the increasingly bitter fate of their fellow Christians in the Islamic world? These ancient communities -- many descended from the very earliest followers of Jesus himself -- are under growing siege.

From the Middle...

Maybe it's time to inscribe it high on the walls of Jerusalem. I'm talking about that old Abba Eban line :"The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity".

Here's Israel's right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, admittedly responding to pressure from Washington but finally admitting in public that he...

A few thoughts after the Cairo Address.

I don't know about you, but I am increasingly weary of our national leader trying to win friends and influence enemies by fancy word-work mixed with apologies for America's past sins -- real or imaginary. Yes, the presidential speech in Cairo could have...

A Frenchman, a German and a Jew walk into a bar.
"I'm tired and thirsty," says the Frenchman."I must have wine."
"I'm tired and thirsty," says the German. "I must have beer."
"I'm tired and thirsty," says the Jew. "I must have diabetes."

I have...

Analysts are comparing Monday's White House meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to a new couple's first dance. The duo went out of its way to avoid stepping on each other's toes and walked off the floor smiling broadly to the public. But O & N...

Now for something completely different: good news from the Middle East!

In the midst of continuing rancor with its Palestinian neighbors and nuclear threats from Iran, Israel - which marks the 61st anniversary of its birth today - has managed to carve out a booming technological...

I went to hear a reading of acclaimed British playwright Caryl Churchill's hyper-controversial "Seven Jewish Children - a play for Gaza". It was presented by the ever adventurous New York Theatre Workshop at its cavernous East 4th Street theater. The actual reading - which lasted barely eight minutes - was...

Attention all those folks who voted for Obama not only because he promised America vital change, but because he swore to sustain foreign policy support for America's long standing democratic allies - notably the State of Israel.

Take a close look at who's just been appointed Chairman of his National...

Ever notice how often the reputedly astute prove amazingly naïve if not downright dumb? Take the New York Times much lauded op-ed columnist Roger Cohen.

In a long rambling piece datelined Esfahan, Iran, wandering analyst Cohen recently told his global readers that the remnant of Iran's...

There's an old Borsht Belt joke about a shipwrecked Jew found alone after 10 years on a desert island. He shows his rescuers the crude shelter he built from driftwood and palms, then points to two other shacks. "Those are the synagogues" he says.

Israel's birth 60 years ago produced two refugee problems that still haunt us. One we all know about: the flight of some 650,000 Palestinian Arabs from what is now the Jewish state. Most fled out of fear of war, others because they were urged to make way for "victorious" Arab...

I've never much liked Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - at least not personally. I had my own private run ins with his notorious arrogance back in the 1970s, when he was a young Knesset member and offered me some bad legal advice.

Still,in 2006, when Olmert slipped into the...