For decades, America’s close military, diplomatic, economic, and other ties with Israel have generated vast benefits for both sides. At a time of such hopeful change but also serious challenge across the Middle East, it’s a relationship that each should nourish carefully, avoiding the unnecessary missteps that can cause significant damage.
The news that Bahrain's foreign minister is meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel this week highlights the predicament that president elect Joe Biden faces in the Middle East: he wants to restore a U.S. approach to the region that relies on increasingly out-of-date assumptions.
The administration’s refugee policy will jeopardize America’s ability to secure the cooperation of local populations when, at some point in the future, the United States again must take military action.
"Electing these dictatorships as UN judges on human rights," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group, "is like making a gang of arsonists into the fire brigade."
This unorthodox university event reflects the moral confusion on issues of global concern that afflicts all-too-many institutions of higher learning these days. For while the university justified the event on free speech grounds, it applied the notion of free speech with striking selectivity.