March 24th, 20210Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s prospects for another term looked uncertain on Wednesday after partial results from a national election projected no clear path to victory.
Not even his stewardship of Israel’s world-beating COVID-19 vaccination rollout — a central pillar of his campaign — proved enough for...
March 19th, 20210BEIT DAJAN - Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian on Friday as demonstrators protesting against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank hurled rocks at soldiers, a Reuters witness said.
The man was shot in the head during a protest near the villlage of Beit Dajan, near Nablus, and was taken to a hospital where he later died,...
March 15th, 20210At a glance, it may appear that the split of Arab political parties in Israel is consistent with a typical pattern of political and ideological divisions which have afflicted the Arab body politic for many years. This time, however, the reasons behind the split are quite different.
As Israel readies for its fourth general elections...
March 5th, 20213CALIFORNIA — Palestinian activist Suhair Nafal has won a defamation lawsuit brought against her by a former Israeli soldier who claimed Nafal’s Facebook post objecting to Israeli war crimes defamed and slandered her.
The former Israeli soldier, Rebecca Rumshiskaya, sued Nafal in September over a viral Facebook post she published...
February 26th, 20210With a third COVID-19 vaccine around the corner, current vaccination efforts have already begun proving effective in curbing the pandemic in the U.S. and the world.
A peer-reviewed Israeli study of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine showed the vaccine to be highly effective in preventing symptomatic coronavirus infections under real-world...
February 16th, 20210TEL AVIV — The Biden administration and Israel seem to have embarked on an uncertain and rocky relationship, in contrast to what the country's right-wing government enjoyed with former President Trump.
More friction arose this week, with Israel throwing cold water on U.S. hopes to engage with the country on the topic of Iran and its...
February 12th, 20210WASHINGTON, D.C. — Though it took former President Trump a mere two days after his inauguration to call Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, President Biden is yet to do so.
Biden has called many world leaders in the first three weeks of his presidency, including leaders of Russia, China, France, Japan and more.
Israeli diplomats and...
February 12th, 20210WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stopped short of endorsing the Trump administration’s recognition of the occupied Golan Heights as part of Israel, instead noting that the territory was important for Israel’s security.
Former President Trump officially granted U.S. recognition of the Golan as Israeli...
February 11th, 20210Claims made by Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang in a recent op-ed in the Jewish weekly, “The Forward”, point to the prevailing ignorance that continues to dominate the U.S. discourse on Palestine and Israel.
Yang, a former Democratic presidential candidate, is vying for the Jewish vote in New York City....
February 5th, 20210AMSTERDAM - The International Criminal Court ruled on Friday that it has jurisdiction over war crimes or atrocities committed in the Palestinian Territories, paving the way for a criminal investigation, despite Israeli objections.
Judges said their decision was based on jurisdictional rules in the Hague-based court’s founding...
January 21st, 20210On Jan. 11, the Israeli Lod District Court ruled against a Palestinian film-maker, Mahmoud Bakri, ordering him to pay hefty compensation to an Israeli soldier who was accused, along with the Israeli military, of carrying out war crimes in April 2002, in the Palestinian Jenin refugee camp located in the northern occupied West Bank.
The...
January 14th, 20210Israel’s decision to exclude Palestinians from its COVID-19 vaccination campaign may have surprised many. Even by Israel’s poor humanitarian standards, denying Palestinians access to life-saving medication seems extremely callous.
Amnesty International, among many organizations, condemned the Israeli government’s decision to bar...
January 12th, 202102020 will go down in history as the year that terminated the American-sponsored “peace process.” While 2021 will not reverse the monumental change in the U.S. attitude and objectives in Palestine, Israel and the Middle East, the new year presents Palestinians with the opportunity to think outside the American box.
The previous...
January 11th, 20210JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered construction plans advanced on Monday for some 800 Jewish settler homes in the occupied West Bank, anchoring the projects in the final days of the pro-settlement Trump administration.
Palestinians condemned such construction as illegal. The timing of the move appeared to be...
December 23rd, 20200It is convenient to surmise that Israel’s current political crisis is consistent with the country’s unfailing trajectory of short-lived governments and fractious ruling coalitions. While this view is somewhat defensible, it is also hasty.
Israel is currently at the cusp of a fourth general election in less than two years. Even by...
December 8th, 20200TEHRAN — The killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist last month was carried out remotely with artificial intelligence and a machine gun equipped with a “satellite-controlled smart system”, Tasnim news agency quoted a senior commander as saying.
Iran has blamed Israel for the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was seen...
December 4th, 20200TEHRAN — Iran is unlikely to retaliate over the assassination of a prominent nuclear scientist before the inauguration of Joe Biden in case it jeopardizes any future sanctions relief, the top U.S. envoy on Iran told Reuters on Thursday.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who had little public profile in Iran, but had been named by Israel as a prime...
December 2nd, 20200Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has nothing to worry about as Antony J. Blinken, who will directly handle America’s foreign policy in the Middle East is a loyal friend of Israel. Crisis averted.
President-elect Joe Biden’s appointment of Antony J. Blinken as his secretary of state was a master stroke,...
December 1st, 20200In a few words, a close associate of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summed up the logic behind the ongoing frenzy to expand illegal Jewish settlements in Israel.
“These days are an irreplaceable opportunity to establish our hold on the Land of Israel, and I’m sure that our friend, President (Donald) Trump and Prime...
November 27th, 20200TEHRAN — An Iranian scientist long suspected by the West of masterminding a secret nuclear bomb program was killed in an ambush near Tehran on Friday that could provoke confrontation between Iran and its foes in the last weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The military adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei...
November 26th, 20200RIYADH — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman earlier this week, despite a denial of the meeting by Israeli officials.
On the discussion table was a country that has played the role of boogeyman for both Israel and its allies in the U.S. government: Iran. The two leaders talked...
November 14th, 20200“If we are going to live another four years with President Trump, God help us, God help you and God help the whole world.”
These were the words of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh during a virtual meeting with European legislators on November 3. While some may agree with Shtayyeh’s assessment, such...
November 4th, 20200Why does Israel hate Palestinian singer Mohammed Assaf?
On October 16, Avi Dichter, Israeli member of Parliament from the right-wing Likud Party, announced that Assaf’s special permit to enter the occupied Palestinian West Bank would be revoked.
Assaf, originally from Gaza, now lives with his family in the United Arab Emirates....
October 14th, 20200“International law” remains one of the most discussed terms in the context of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It is almost always present, whether the discussion pertains to the Israeli wars and siege on Gaza, the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank or the encroaching apartheid throughout Israel and the...
October 8th, 20200WASHINGTON, D.C. — Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has gained a prominent endorsement from several diplomatic and policy experts on the Middle East.
A substantial list of former ambassadors to Middle East and North African (MENA) nations, foreign policy advisors and Middle East affairs experts have signed on to a letter,...
October 1st, 20200It is abundantly clear that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has underestimated the seriousness of the challenges facing Palestine and the Palestinians.
The rushed agreement between his party, Fatah, and Hamas in Istanbul on September 24, and the Palestinian leader’s speech at the 75th session of the U.N. General...
September 23rd, 20200The polarized nature of American politics often makes it difficult to address fundamental differences between the country’s two main political rivals, Republicans and Democrats. As each side is intent on discrediting the other at every opportunity, unbiased information regarding the two parties’ actual stances on internal and...
September 18th, 20200DEARBORN — So-called “peace agreements” between two Arab countries, the UAE and Bahrain, with Israel were signed on Tuesday, in a ceremony at the White House hosted by President Trump.
The normalization efforts between governments of the two Arab countries and Israel carried little consent from the people of those nations and...
