(with permission) “Don’t repeat our mistakes—we can do it ourselves.” This line occurred to me as I listened to discussions of “the day after” in Gaza. Plans and ideas need to address the detailed problems…
The Israel Defense Forces “failed in its mission to protect the residents of Kibbutz Be’eri,” with those failures ranging from planning and communication to command and control, when Hamas overwhelmed the Negev kibbutz on Oct….
Posted by the Moshe Dayan Center in March 2024 and shared with MDC permission, this collection of seven essays plus an extensive introduction examines Arab views of the war across the Middle East and North…
Nearly six months into the Gaza war, Israel has come to the realization that the pre-October 7 status quo in south Lebanon is no longer tenable. Whether a new status quo is established through negotiation…
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…
February 13, 2024 — Dr. Kenneth Stein and Pastor Dr. Armando Alducin, Israel y el Medio Oriente Entrevista (Israel and the Middle East) with Mauricio Friedman, (75 minutes in English and Spanish) Five points stressed in…
February 2024 Washington Institute for Near East Policy Since the Hamas-led attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has made five public appearances to address the group’s own confrontation with Israel…
Since the June 1967 war, Anti-Israeli sentiment on US campuses has grown to extraordinary proportions merging with previously evolved anti-Zionism into sporadic mention to regular embrace.
Read the terrorist organization’s own words about its mission to eliminate Israel and Jews everywhere, as well as analyses explaining how Hamas works.
Paul Rivlin, “The Ukraine War, Rising Prices and Food Insecurity in the Middle East,” Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University The war in Ukraine is causing severe food price inflation in the Middle East and…
From 1898 to 1948, Zionism evolved from an idea to a concrete reality: the actual establishment of the Jewish state, Israel. Slowly, a few immigrating Jews created facts by linking people to the land. For half a century, fortuity and fortitude made the Zionist undertaking a reality. They exhibited pragmatism and gradually constructed a nucleus for a state. Through perseverance Zionists empowered themselves.
(By posting a guest’s views, CIE does not take a position on the contents, nor verify the facts nor the assumptions presented.) It is hard to believe, truly inconceivable, that equality is not an entrenched…
2013 Kenneth W. Stein, “Evolving a Diplomatic Legacy From the October War: The US, Egyptian, and Israeli Triangle,” in Asaf Siniver (ed.), The October 1973 War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Legacy, London: Hurst and Co., 2013,…
Examination of the mobilization of society for the Israeli War of Independence effort enables one to present a more extended process that began in October 1947 — some two months prior to the outbreak of the war — and ended, from the standpoint of mobilization of personnel, at the beginning of 1949, when demobilization of the first draftees from the wartime army took place, and from an economic standpoint in April 1949, when an Austerity system was declared in the State of Israel.
Notwithstanding the signing of the Abraham Accords (1920) and the growing prominence of the cooperation between Israel and the Arab Gulf states, including on security matters, the road toward its establishment increasingly rests with American involvement or leadership. Will this be a Biden priority when he visits the region over the summer?
On Jan. 29, 2019, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: “We do not believe Iran is currently undertaking the key activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device.” However, experience helps us realize that the American intelligence community has a very problematic track record in revealing, on time, nuclear weaponization efforts of many countries (e.g., North Korea, India, Pakistan, Syria, and Iraq) including Iran itself, so one has to be very humble about this kind of assessment.
Despite WWII in Europe, and the British White Paper, Ben-Gurion outlines in 1941 a pragmatic policy for Jews to pursue in building a state: educate Jews world-wide, embrace the Arab communityin Palestine as neighbors, build an…
Former Israeli Ambassador to Washington Simcha Dinitz recalls the October 1973 War and his discussions with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. America did not want the Egyptian army devastated nor have Israel win a resounding victory. Sadat was weary of the Palestinians.
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.
The ability of Israeli society to stay resilient at a time of national emergency – specifically in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic – has direct strategic and security implications, insofar as Israel demonstrates that it is capable of facing adversity. in addition, despite the huge budgetary hit engendered by Corona, it is vital to sustain Israeli investment in advanced military capabilities, and retain an untouchable budget reserve for this purpose.
A seminar at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) on political and security implications of the corona crisis underscored the prevalent uncertainty regarding the situation, but also highlighted several instructive points. The biggest threat to the global (and Israeli) economy derives from the slowdown or negative growth in the United States, and at the current stage, the American ability to meet the crisis effectively is not clear. As for Israel, the risks of escalation in the northern arena and the Gaza Strip have decreased in the short term, but toughening the restrictions on the border crossings with the Palestinian Authority could lead to its economic collapse.
At the core of the strategic assessment for 2020 stands the tension between Israel’s evident strength and its success in various fields, and the possibility that this positive state of affairs will prove temporary and fragile. This tension stems from a series of factors that in the coming year could lead to a large-scale conflict and even to war, and involves Israel’s approach to a series of substantive national security challenges. The strategic assessment is comprised of seven chapters along with an introduction and conclusion.
The discharge of men inducted into the IDF from July 2015 began in March 2018, after 32 months of compulsory service (compared with 36 months until then). A law stipulating a further shortening of compulsory service for men is supposed to apply to those drafted from July 2020, such that they will serve 30 months. However, according to media reports, the past year has heard dissenting voices within the military against adopting this shortened service, in view of the increasing security challenges.
Anti-Israel mobilization and rhetoric have always been a prominent feature of official Arab discourse, regardless of political orientation. Islamist, nationalist, and secular parties have all seen vocal hatred of Israel as a cornerstone for rallying support and a vehicle to spread unrelated political messages to achieve related objectives, with unrelated acts being framed as forms of ‘resistance’ against Israel. However, the Syrian civil war has slowly shifted the dynamic of who is considered ‘enemy’ in the Arab world.
