Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, is a fixture on American television screens and op-ed pages. His defense of the Netanyahu government and its military campaign in Gaza is full throated. Just 8 days after proclaiming in the Washington Post that "to guarantee peace, this war must be given a chance," […]

In their controversial 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, authors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt proposed a dramatic change in American financial aid for Israel currently amounting to $3 billion annually. "It is time to treat Israel like a normal country," they argued, "and make U.S. aid conditional on an end to […]

Last week, the Pew Research Center released the largely predictable findings of a survey measuring how Americans feel about the nation's various religious faiths. While adherents unsurprisingly gave their co-religionists high marks, one factoid stood out. White evangelical Protestants love the Jews, giving them an impressive 69 on Pew's 100 degree thermometer. Alas, that love […]

With the body count growing daily in Gaza, the conservative commentariat has predictably circled the wagons around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud government. "Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity," Charles Krauthammer declared this week and repeating Bibi's mantra about his Hamas enemies. "We're using missile defense to […]

The ugly picture in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories is rapidly getting uglier still. After the collapse of U.S. sponsored peace talks, the Netanyahu government quickly retaliated against the President Mahmoud Abbas' unity government with Hamas by announcing 1,500 new settlement units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This week, the slaughter of […]

On December 14, 2008, President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed the status of forces agreement (SOFA) under which American military forces would leave Iraq by the end of 2011. But at their press conference announcing the SOFA, an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at Bush's head, shouting "This is a […]

If conservatives are furious about the Taliban prisoner exchange that freed Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the members of Team Bush are absolutely frothing at the mouth. Writing in the Washington Post, former Bush speechwriters Michael Gerson and Marc Thiessen suggested that at best, President Obama does not have the attitude that "we will fight you as […]

They were for it before they were against it. Current and would-be GOP members of Congress tweeted their praise for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl before deleting the evidence. Among others, Arizona Senator and failed 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain declared he would be "inclined to support" the very kind of prisoner exchange […]

In December 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lectured American troops worried about vital equipment shortages plaguing U.S. combat forces in Iraq. "You go to war with the army you have," Rumsfeld pontificated, "not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." Now, Republicans are learning, Rumsfeld's condescending maxim applies to […]

Republicans are predictably foaming at the mouth over the news that the Obama administration secured the release of American soldier Bowe Bergdahl exchange for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Even more predictable, the right-wing rage is unfounded. As Lt. Col. Robert Bateman explained, throughout its history the United States has engaged in prisoner […]