Henry Kissinger, the German-born geopolitical strategist and master bureaucratic infighter, has died at 100.

Born in Furth, Germany, in 1923, Kissinger and his Jewish family escaped Hitler's antisemitic Third Reich in 1938, fleeing to America. Only a few years later, he would return to Germany with the U.S. Army, where his fluency in his native language made him a valuable asset to U.S. intelligence.

A brilliant student, Kissinger earned three degrees from Harvard. His doctoral thesis was more than 300 pages and led to Harvard's "Kissinger rule," which limited the number of pages of future theses.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Tevi Troy

Israel's growing legion of critics never tire of warning the Jewish state not to make the same mistakes in answering Hamas's savage attack that the United States made after 9/11—namely, the Bush administration's post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Those invasions, critics say, led the U.S. into a morass of "forever wars." So, too, will Israel's military effort in Gaza, they assert. As Israel contemplates whether to resume its mission of eradicating Hamas's leadership in Gaza after hostage diplomacy ends, the Biden administration's warnings not to make a similar mistake have grown more intense.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Judith Miller

Truth is a rare commodity when it comes to international organizations. This is all the more so when it comes to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the internationally funded welfare organization for Palestinians.

For decades critics have pointed to UNRWA's promotion of the Palestinian "right of return" that rejects the existence of Israel, its employment of terrorists, and the antisemitism embedded in its school curriculums. UNRWA's own employees have spoken out on these and other problems both in the media and before Congressional committees. President Trump defunded UNRWA but the flow of money was restored by the Biden Administration.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Asaf Romirowsky

In the seven weeks since Hamas invaded Israel and massacred over 1,200 people, growing international attention has been directed toward the terrorist organization's primary backers and paymasters, chief among them Iran and Qatar.

The two autocratic regimes, which have provided Hamas with various forms of support over the course of many years, both bear responsibility for the savagery that was inflicted by their Gaza-based client. Largely overlooked, however, has been the role of yet another nefarious dictatorship, one that also deserves to be held to account for the part that it played in the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Michael Freund

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres observed last month that Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israelis "did not happen in a vacuum." He's not wrong.

But what he neglected to mention are the multiple ways the U.N. encouraged Hamas's orgy of mass murder, rape, and child-stealing; the U.N.'s efforts to demonize and delegitimize Israel; and its campaign to make Israel an international scapegoat, whipping boy, and pariah.

I'd trace this campaign back to 1975, when the Soviet Union led the U.N. General Assembly to adopt a resolution calling Zionism "a form of racism."

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Clifford May

Senior administration officials recently made the case on Capitol Hill for still more funding for Ukraine. In testimonies before the Senate Appropriations Committee, both Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken argued in favor of a massive $61.4 billion to backstop Kyiv's fight against Russian aggression. The package, they made clear, is crucial in both practical and symbolic terms. As Blinken put it, the United States "must not give our friends, our rivals, or our foes any reason to doubt America's resolve." But behind the lofty rhetoric lies a sobering question: Does the White House truly want Ukraine to win? The answer is less clear cut than it appears.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Ilan Berman

Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Phillips, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, on behalf of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My testimony is built upon the premise that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is valuable to Israel and the United States but only if it functions properly. Today, with chaos in the West Bank mounting, the PA is in danger of collapse, due primarily to Iranian malign activity and corruption. These and other issues in the Palestinian arena all contribute to the challenge of curbing the deplorable Palestinian policy of rewarding terrorism through "pay-for-slay." At the conclusion of this testimony, I will offer a handful of concrete recommendations on how to tackle some of these challenges.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Jonathan Schanzer

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."

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Henry I. Miller M.D.

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.

Continue to the full blog post  |  More blog posts from Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

A new report about "anti-Muslim hostility" commissioned by the German government has faced a barrage of criticism after it was revealed that Islamist groups linked to Iran and Turkey were involved in producing the document. Unsurprisingly, the long-awaited report paints a highly distorted picture of Muslim discrimination in Germany: It brands virtually all criticism of Islam or Islamism as "anti-Muslim hostility" and reprimands German lawmakers and even reformist Muslims who oppose the spread of Islamism in Germany.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Soeren Kern