Opinion Forum

Another Middle East Crisis

March 17th, 2010

By Tom Carter The crisis of the day regarding the Middle East is that Israel has announced its intention to build more housing in East Jerusalem. It gained control of that territory at the end of the 1967 war, one of the attempts by Arab nations to destroy Israel in which the Arabs were defeated. [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Israel, negotiations, Palestinians, settlements, terrorism, terrorists
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Israel and the Holocaust

February 2nd, 2010

by Edith Shaked Israel and the Holocaust – Is there an authentic historical perspective? Jacques and Isabelle silently left the compound of Yad Vashem (YV), Israel’s official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the world center for documentation, research, and education about the Holocaust. It was noon and they went for lunch. As [...]

Articles written by Guest Author
Tags: Final Solution, Holocaust, Israel, survivors, Tunisia, USHMM, Yad Vashem
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (33) | Home

Foreign Policy

September 19th, 2009

Our country has decided to be the first in this century to desert Poland and most of eastern Europe. The Administration elected to appease Russia instead. This, of course, isn’t the first time that Poland and her neighboring countries have been betrayed for this reason. This is, however, the first betrayal in my memory of [...]

Articles written by Larry Ennis
Tags: foreign policy, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Obama, Poland
Categories: History, News, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Jimmy Carter and Israel

September 8th, 2009

On Sunday, September 6 The Washington Post published another article by former President Jimmy Carter on issues involving Israel and the Palestinians. Carter’s article reported on a trip he made to the region with several other people he referred to as “Elders,” people who in the past have shown no evenhandedness on Middle East issues. [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Elliott Abrams, Israel, Jimmy Carter, Palestine, settlements, terrorism
Categories: History, News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Palestinian Moderation

August 22nd, 2009

What Palestinian Moderation Looks Like by David Feith in The Wall Street Journal presents yet more evidence of the real nature and objectives of the Palestinians, even the so-called moderates: …the message last week from the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, where the “moderate” Fatah party held its first general congress since 1989. Fatah — founded by Yasser [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Israel, Obama, Palestinians
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (6) | Home

Will Obama Betray Israel?

July 7th, 2009

Jeff Robbins wrote an interesting review and commentary on a new book at The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal. Robbins’ comments are particularly relevant at a time when the Obama Administration, Democrats in general, and most of the media are taking a studied know-nothing approach to policy regarding Israel and problems in the Middle East. Despite [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Israel, Obama, Palestine, peace process
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (8) | Home

Obama’s Speech to Muslims

June 5th, 2009

President Obama’s Cairo speech to the Muslim world on June 4 represents a new direction in American foreign policy, but it won’t make much difference in practical terms. As Obama said, “No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust.” The New York Times published a full transcript of the speech. As I read it, I found powerful statements about America’s [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Add new tag, Arab, Israel, Middle East, Muslim, Obama
Categories: History, News, Politics | Comments (19) | Home

Selective Moral Outrage

April 26th, 2009

In Our Selective Moral Outrage in The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal, Bret Stephens asks why there is so much moral outrage directed at Israel in regard to the Palestinians and so little at Russia in regard to Chechnya. Russia’s actions have been far more aggressive and deadly than Israel’s. However, if the issue is [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Chechnya, Israel, Palestinians, Russia
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (11) | Home

The World After Daniel Pearl

February 3rd, 2009

Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was murdered by islamist terrorists seven years ago this week. His cold-blooded murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is a guest of the U.S. government at Guantanamo and the subject of humanitarian angst in some quarters. Judea Pearl, writing at Opinion Journal, wondered if his son would believe the way things have [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Israel, Palestine, terrorism
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (6) | Home

Holocaust Remembrance Day

February 1st, 2009

January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Created by the UN General Assembly by resolution in 2005, the commemoration has not been widely observed or taught and has not had any observable effect on the resurgence of anti-semitism in some quarters. To make the point, who reading this knew that International [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Auschwitz, Holocaust, Israel, Jews
Categories: History, Life, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Auschwitz and the Holocaust

January 28th, 2009

The Auschwitz complex consisted of three camps. One was mostly administrative, another was a slave labor camp supporting an I.G. Farben industrial enterprise, and Auschwitz-Birkenau was the death camp. Well over a million people were murdered at Auschwitz, about 90 percent of them Jews. Some Nazi victims at Auschwitz were from Poland, but many were deported to Auschwitz from [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Auschwitz, Holocaust, Israel, Jews
Categories: History, Life, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Remembering the Holocaust

January 27th, 2009

The Auschwitz concentration camp was formally liberated by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945. In the 64 years since, Auschwitz has come to symbolize the Holocaust. However, Auschwitz (where about 1,200,000 people died) was only one, albeit the most efficient, of six specialized “death camps,” all of them in Poland. The other five were Treblinka [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Auschwitz, Holocaust, Israel, Jews
Categories: History, Life, Politics | Comments (8) | Home

The NYT and Qaddafi

January 23rd, 2009

The New York Times doesn’t have much respect left, but they just lost some more. On January 21 they published a column attributed to Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator with a history of supporting terrorism. Qaddafi proposes a “one-state” solution for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Beneath a thin veneer of moderate statements [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Israel, Palestine, terrorism
Categories: History, Media, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

If Only Israel Had a Partner

January 17th, 2009

Before I begin, let’s all agree on this: the current conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas is stupid. As with all wars, this conflict could have and should have been avoided. We should not be seeing terrible images of blown up buildings, mangled bodies and the up to the minute counts of Palestinians killed. [...]

Articles written by Trevor Dane
Tags: Gaza, Israel, Palestinians
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

Religion and Conflict

January 9th, 2009

Comparative Religion is an academic field of study that’s particularly relevant to issues the world is struggling with today. In the broadest sense, it’s an attempt to understand religion by comparing beliefs, practices, histories, political and economic factors, and formal and informal structures. I’ve been at it for many years, mostly informally and self-directed. Everyone comes to the [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Israel, Palestine, religion, terrorism
Categories: History, Life, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Analysis of Israeli Action

January 8th, 2009

Time magazine published an interesting article today about the Israeli assault on Gaza and broader issues Israel faces, to include inevitable demographic pressures. Time’s analysis isn’t pro-Israel, but it’s more objective than might be expected. The article includes one statement that I strongly agree with: …there’s something tragic, too, in Israel’s predicament: in any confrontation with its [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Arab, Israel, Palestine
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (5) | Home

Israel-Palestine Videos

January 6th, 2009

The conflict in Gaza has widened the divide between people who support Israel and those who support the Palestinians. Others who try to remain in the middle are finding that where survival is concerned, there is no viable middle ground. Based on objective history and current reality, I find it impossible to accept moral equivalence arguments which hold that both sides are equally at fault [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Israel, Palestine, terrorism
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (5) | Home

Reality in Gaza

January 3rd, 2009

There are three items in the press that should be read by anyone interested in understanding the reality of the conflict now raging in Gaza. Alan Dershowitz has written an article in the Christian Science Monitor, ”Israel, Hamas, and Moral Idiocy.” Charles Krauthammer’s column in The Washington Post is headlined “Moral Clarity in Gaza.” The Boston Globe has published a [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Israel, Palestine, terrorism
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (14) | Home

Israeli Attacks in Gaza

December 28th, 2008

Palestinian terrorists, members of Hamas, fired about 300 rockets into Israel in little more than a week. Israeli citizens in the areas being attacked have been forced to live under constant threat. Israel did what any other country would have done. They defended themselves. Israeli ground attack fighters and attack helicopters struck targets in Gaza associated with [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Israel, terrorism
Categories: Media, Military, Politics | Comments (15) | Home

Heroic Terrorist

December 20th, 2008

Ami Pedazhur, a professor at the University of Texas in Austin, wrote an interesting article on terrorism and its methods over the years in The New York Times on December 20. He relates that in 1979, Samir Kuntar led a group of terrorists to the beach of Nahariya and shot a police officer and a civilian, [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: islamist, Israel, press, terrorism
Categories: Media, News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home