Pundicity: Informed Opinion and Review
 
Pundicity

Latest Article from Ilan Berman

Russia's Islamist Terror Threat Reemerges

March 2024  •  The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune

On March 22, Islamic militants opened fire on a concert hall in the Russian capital of Moscow, killing scores of concertgoers before setting the venue ablaze. Less than 24 hours later, the Islamic State terrorist group publicly took responsibility for the assault. The death toll currently stands at 137. While some reports link the attack to the Islamic State's regional branch in Central Asia (named "Islamic State – Khorasan Province") where the shooters are from, other analysts conclude that multiple branches of the Islamic State cooperated in the Moscow attack. Vladimir Putin has suggested that the assailants had links to Ukraine. But the Islamic State's likely "justifications" for the attack won't lie in Kyiv. Rather, the Islamic State would likely justify the attack through two causes in Russia: Russia's policies in the Middle East, and the alienation of its Muslim citizens and migrant Muslim populations living in Russia. The proximate cause for such an attack may have more to do with tactical considerations such as chances for success resulting from Russia's vulnerability.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Clifford May

Israelis will fight Hamas on their own if they must

March 27, 2024  •  The Washington Times

"Israel Alone" is the headline on the cover of the March 23rd issue of The Economist, a British weekly. The illustration shows an Israeli flag buffeted by a sandstorm.

I wonder if Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, is sitting in a tunnel under Rafah gazing at that image, and if it's brought a smile to his lips.

Perhaps, when he was planning the Oct. 7 invasion of Israel, one of his deputies advised that their fighters target only soldiers and spare Israeli civilians, at least children and babies; that they not rape women and mutilate corpses; that they conduct themselves, in short, as honorable warriors rather than barbarians.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Michael Freund

When Jews are antisemitic: Jonathan Glazer goes beyond self-hatred

March 25, 2024  •  Jerusalem Post

Nearly 130 years ago, at a clinic in Vienna, a young Jewish doctor named Sigmund Shlomo Freud fathered modern psychoanalysis, giving the world a new tool with which to heal some of its unseen wounds.

In the interim, Jews have been at the forefront of the psychological profession, with luminaries such as Alfred Adler, Viktor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, and numerous others contributing greatly to our understanding of what ails people's psyches.

And yet, despite all the advances in the field, and the intimate involvement of Jews in its development, there is one persistent ailment that has thus far escaped a cure – the age-old disorder of Jewish self-hatred.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Asaf Romirowsky

The way to address antisemitism on college campuses is to defund and deport

March 22, 2024  •  Jerusalem Post

Here's a snapshot of what it's like to be Jewish on an American college campus these days: In Tulane, a Jewish student engaging classmates who were burning the Israeli flag was assaulted and had his nose broken.

In Columbia, a verbal exchange about the war in Gaza escalated into an altercation, with a Jewish student hit forcefully on the head and sent to the hospital.

Pro-Palestinian students at Harvard marched openly through campus, calling for an armed uprising that would lead to the eradication of the world's only Jewish state. Death threats, harassment, exclusion—these are now the rule, not the exception, on the quad.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Tevi Troy

Why Party Platforms Matter

Spring 2024  •  National Affairs

A friend once told me that he turned 18 during a presidential election year and didn't know which party to support. His uncle had a novel solution: He took the Democratic and Republican platforms, tore the covers off each, and then asked his nephew to read them both and decide which one made more sense. My friend did so, and he found the Republican platform more appealing. He would eventually become a lifelong Republican and a senior official in the George W. Bush administration.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Judith Miller

Saving Sinwar

March 19, 2024  •  Tablet

The Palestinian in the clinic at one of Israel's highest security prisons near Beersheba had a persistent pain in the back of his neck. He trembled and had trouble walking. Yuval Bitton, then a 28-year-old dentist just a year out of medical school, suspected that his patient might be suffering from a C.V.A., an ischemic cerebrovascular accident, resulting from a life-threatening brain tumor. "He needs to be hospitalized, immediately," Bitton advised the prison doctors.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Jonathan Schanzer

Preventing a Ramadan Explosion in the Holy Land

February 28, 2024  •  The Liberal Patriot

The Muslim holiday of Ramadan begins on March 11 this year. How Israel handles this month-long festival of fasting by day and feasting by night will exert significant influence on the wider conflict in the Middle East—and a possible hostage deal between Israel and Hamas that yields a pause in the current war in Gaza could help mitigate the prospects of unrest. Other players may have significant roles to play, too.

First, it is important to understand the role Ramadan has played in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over recent years.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Soeren Kern

France's Half-Baked Plan to Fight Islamist Separatism

February 19, 2024  •  Focus on Western Islamism

A new ban on foreign-appointed imams in France is aimed at combating Islamist separatism, but the policy risks making matters worse by handing future decisions about hiring imams over to local groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The French move is an example of a political decision that sounds superficially positive. Unfortunately, it fails to address the complex, often unofficial processes by which Islamist ideology is currently disseminated. As such, it offers an object lesson in what not to do, worthy of close observation.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Henry I. Miller M.D.

Mask Up Again? As COVID Cases Rise, Look To Science And Not Pundits or Politicians
Politicizers and minimizers of the pandemic continue to spread disinformation about both the effectiveness and safety of masks

September 7, 2023  •  American Council on Science & Health

I can't believe we're having this discussion in September 2023, just as the fall respiratory virus season commences and we're experiencing a new wave of COVID-19, but the politicizers of COVID won't let up. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) this week introduced legislation that "would prohibit any federal official, including the President, from issuing mask mandates applying to domestic air travel, public transit systems, or primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools."

There was also the ill-timed article by John Tierney in City Journal on August 27th claiming that "maskaholics are incorrigible" and everyone should reject masks because "we're rational."

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Pundicity

Latest from Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi's Blog

The Tribal Uprising Against the Syrian Democratic Forces in Dayr al-Zur: Interview

September 4, 2023

While the ongoing protests in Syria's southern province of al-Suwayda' against the Syrian government and its policies are noteworthy, the tribal uprising in the eastern countryside of the eastern province of Dayr al-Zur against the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is arguably of greater significance, as it amounts to an actual armed revolt that has posed a serious challenge to the SDF's authority over the area- an authority that was only established because of the American-led campaign against the Islamic State. In turn the revolt raises very serious issues about U.S. policy in the region and the supposed ongoing American mission to ensure the "enduring defeat" of the Islamic State.

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