CIE President Ken Stein addresses what is and what is not known about why Hamas attacked October 7, 2023, why Israel was caught off guard, and what happens after the war across the region.
January 2, 2026 A week of unrest in Iran does not guarantee a revolution even if 85-plus million Iranians are angry at the country’s autocratic, theological rulers. Iran is a security-clerical oligarchy where kleptocracy, cronyism…
Since coming to office the first time in 1996, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has met with four presidents (Clinton, Obama, Trump and Biden) on 11 occasions. Four times he has addressed Congress, each…
Professor Ken Stein spent decades working with and researching the presidency and post-presidency of Jimmy Carter and shared many of his insights with the media and fellow scholars after the 39th U.S. president died Dec….
January 9, 2025 By Dr. Kenneth Stein, Emeritus Professor, Emory University As the 39th president of the United States, James Earl Carter held office from 1977 to 1981. Carter was the longest-surviving former United States president…
By Ken Stein, October 28, 2024 When Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter became the 39th President of the United States in 1977, he had little foreign policy experience, particularly regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Despite this, he…
September 2024 By Kenneth Stein Kenneth Stein is Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Middle Eastern History, Political Science and Israel Studies at Emory University and President of the Atlanta-based Center for Israel Education. He is the author…
It is now apparent that distances between the Carter administration and Israel did not begin in earnest after Begin’s May 1977 election or over the settlements. Newly available materials show that from its outset, the Carter administration prioritized curbing Israeli influence in Washington.
Scott Abramson and Ken Stein, Center for Israel Education Common political, emotional and strategic threads are present in President Joe Biden’s speeches and comments about the brutal reality of the Hamas attacks on Israel and…
Former US President Jimmy Carter embraced Hamas as a legitimate voice of the Palestinian people. His motivations possibly stretched from intentional to misguided to malevolent. Hamas leaders who were engaged in inter-Palestinian struggles remained pleased with the recognition he gave them. American officials and Israelis were keenly perturbed by the courtship he gave them.
Enormous tension and risks taken by Egyptian and Israeli leaderships are recounted in a brief chronology of events that led to the June 1967 war, a benchmark turning point in Middle Eastern, Israeli, and Jewish history.
On January 1, 2022, I completed 43 years of teaching at Emory University. It was a great run and great fun. Along the way, I accumulated more pieces of paper than was necessary, among them…
March 26, 2025 By Ken Stein The ripe conditions that prefaced the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli treaty and might presage additional Arab-Israeli agreements are almost totally absent in 2025. Why? Today, there is an absence of political…
In August 2021, the U.S. withdrew its military from Afghanistan, ending America’s longest war. Correctly, we needed to prevent another 9/11 on our doorsteps. We still have that imperative. Our departure does not diminish America’s need for stable allies, like Israel and Arab states. The US should build an effective alliance system among them. We should have a small, substantive and selective US footprint in the region for support of friends and deterrence of foes, not for nation-building.
Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza and mastermind of the October 7 attack, repeatedly expressed his desire to destroy Israel and his gratitude for Iran’s support.
Ambassador Bandar Bin Sultan served as Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2006. From 2005 to 2015 he led the country’s National Security Council. He offers a scathing attack on Yasser Arafat’s failure to embrace multiple negotiating overtures proposed by Presidents Carter and Reagan. Additionally, he expresses his anger at the present Palestinian leadership for criticizing the UAE’s recognition of Israel in the 2020 Abraham Accords.
March 25, 2019 Kenneth Stein, the founding president of the Center for Israel Education, has taught Middle Eastern history and politics at Emory for 43 years. He spent more than half that time serving as…
Forty years ago this month, President Jimmy Carter convened the Camp David summit between Israeli and Egyptian leaders to push Arab-Israeli negotiations forward in an unprecedented and intensive manner.
In the aftermath of UNSC Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlement construction, Secretary of State John Kerry publicly blamed Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank for being the major barrier to a two-state solution to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For almost 100 years, the Declaration has represented, for the Palestinians, the political beginning of Palestine falling out of their influence and into the control of the budding Zionist movement.
In 2008 and again in 2012, President Barack Obama made lofty promises and gallant assessments about Iran and the Middle East respectively. His remarks to the annual AIPAC conference four years ago about Israel and Iran have proved to be out and out fictions. Who will hold the 45th President accountable for promises made but not kept?
In the interest of securing any deal rather than the right deal – politics over principle – the president and the diplomats he sent to negotiate seem to have forgotten or perhaps never learned why Iran must not get a nuclear weapon.
Alliances of convenience alongside alliances of conviction: when do the first become the second? Who is telling the story that we read?
Preliminary negotiations and changing political realities have catalyzed the opening of new talks, but even a two-state agreement would not guarantee an imminent end to the conflict.
