Anti-Semitism

Clash of Civilizations

The death toll in Afghanistan has passed the two-dozen mark in the riots "inspired" by Pastor Terry Jones's burning of a Quran in Florida. The grisly political theater has served its purpose.

“We Love Death”

In 2007, two years before he killed thirteen people and wounded twenty-nine at Fort Hood, Texas, Nidal Malik Hasan prepared a slide show for his fellow Army doctors on the subject of Islam. One of his last points read: "We love death more than you love life!"

Gandhi and the Jews

A new book about Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) has set off stormy protests in India for implying that the country's founding father was bisexual. That's only the beginning of it.

The Archeology War

The Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) was founded in 1979 by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). It has three basic goals. The first is to spread a Saudi version of Koranic education throughout the Islamic world. The second is to publicize Islam to the non-Islamic world. The third goal is to oppose the "Judaization of Al-Quds"—i.e., Jerusalem.

Gaza Endgame?

A March 26 meeting in Ramallah between an unofficial delegation of West Bank Hamas "parliamentarians" and Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority and leader of the Fatah party, was ostensibly about reconciling the two factions.  Actually it was about much more.

The Brothers al-Kuwaiti

Remember "Baghdad Bob," Saddam Hussein's information minister? During the Iraq war, as the cameras showed U.S. tanks rolling through Baghdad, he took to the airwaves to assure his fellow Iraqis that not a single enemy tank had penetrated the city's defenses. As it happens, "Bob," whose real name was Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, was a long-time expert in manufacturing absurd lies for domestic consumption.

Shakespeare, Much Improved?

One of the few things people think they know about Yiddish theater in America is that once upon a time there was a production, probably of King Lear, advertised as "translated and much improved." Joel Berkowitz's history, Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage (2002), quotes the line but never gives an attribution, which suggests that nobody ever actually said it. But someone might have.

The Fate of Muslim Moderates

The recent uprisings in the Middle East seemed, at least at first, to send a reassuring signal to Western observers: not only did genuinely moderate Muslims exist, and not only were they capable of finding a political voice, but there was reason to hope that, given time to organize and grow in strength, they might succeed in winning out against the voices of repression and Islamist extremism.

Toward a Pluralistic Middle East?

As the Middle East lurches through the present confusion of civil war, revolution, and mass protest, decent people everywhere wonder about the chances of a more pluralistic and democratic order emerging. One way of measuring progress in that direction will be to track the treatment of minorities like the Berbers and the Jews.

The Peace Plan Israel Needs

Israel's wobbly friends in Europe and the U.S. are renewing their pressure on Jerusalem to "do something" about the "unsustainable" stalemate in the "peace process." As German Chancellor Angela Merkel scolded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "You haven't made a single step to advance peace."