By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — NATO’s snub of Israel — a “major non-NATO ally” and member of NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue — in its Chicago summit this weekend was simply waved away. ”Israel is neither a participant in ISAF nor in KFOR (Afghanistan and Kosovo missions),” said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Israel didn’t [...]
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — In early 2011, President Obama announced that the United States would sign the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Now the U.N. wants us to give Mt. Rushmore to the Indians. James Anaya, U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, spent twelve days in the [...]
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rarely do politics in a democratic country wrap up as neatly as they did for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week. Having scheduled new parliamentary elections that he was assuredly going to win, today he announced that the coalition was expanded and reconstituted, and will last until September [...]
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — The 37th anniversary of the fall of Saigon today is a good time to review the utility of American security promises — including those purchased with American blood — to countries fighting ideologically based insurgencies. There were 540,000 Americans in Vietnam at the peak of the U.S. part of [...]
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — A small group gathered Sunday at nearby Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate the life and work of British Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate of blessed memory, who is interred there with the Americans with whom he was flying when his plane crashed in Burma in 1945. Israel and the Jewish [...]
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — The weekend report of a German-owned, Ukrainian-chartered ship carrying weapons to Syria should raise questions and alarm bells. Der Spiegel reported that the Atlantic Cruiser, owned by the German company Bockstiegel, had been chartered by the Ukrainian White Whale company to pick up Iranian-origin cargo in Djibouti. White Whale [...]
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — A lick of historicism would serve the Obama administration well in its much-too-friendly relationship with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and other manifestations of the Arab uprising. There is a political space between going to war with countries that do not share our democratic norms and principles, and embracing them [...]
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — When President Obama wants to impress Jewish audiences, such as AIPAC, he frequently casts U.S.-Israel relations in a military context. How much military aid Israel receives (although he had nothing to do with the level; President Bush set the level in a 10-year deal), how many exercises the two [...]
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — The sound bite went viral — the president of the United States asking the Russian president to carry a message to Putin for “space” in dealing with contentious missile defense issues until after the election so the American president would have “more flexibility.” The photos went viral as well: [...]
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — It was, it appears, a Muslim radical behind the massacre in Toulouse — a French-born petty thief who traveled in Afghanistan and Pakistan and was already under surveillance by French authorities. It was not, as first thought, French neo-Nazis. To which the question arises, “Does it matter which?” Yes, [...]
