America, Israel, and the Middle East

Historically vulnerable, what has been the Jewish view of power? How should Jews view power? Should Jews be ambivalent toward and uncomfortable with power? Should they be more hard-headed? What about power’s tendency to corrupt? And how can Jews…

Tikvah was privileged to have several wise and experienced foreign-policy professionals as instructors for the advanced institute, “War and Human Nature.” Two of them, Frederick W. Kagan and Eric Edelman, sat down during the institute to discuss the subject…

Participants in Tikvah’s advanced institute on “War and Human Nature” were treated to a conversation on the method and meaning of statesmanship with Frederick W. Kagan. Beginning in theory and ending in practice, Kagan, a man of…

Three years ago, on the tenth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, Commentary senior editor Abe Greenwald penned an essay for Jewish Ideas Daily on the lessons of 9/11. Greenwald focuses on the realization of the world’s hatred: [T]he Obama White…

Is there reason for optimism in the Middle East? One of the common reasons for optimism after Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas returned the region to the less-than-ideal status quo antebellum is that the conflict between Hamas and Israel…

As part of Tikvah’s advanced institute “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews,” Ran Baratz, the founding editor of Mida, argued that Israel is overly obsessed with exercising power cleanly. War is never as clean as we design. Hoover Institution scholar…

Tikvah advanced institute alumnus Haviv Rettig Gur has a characteristically incisive and original analysis of the aftermath of Operation Protective Edge for The Times of Israel. Netanyahu has achieved his military objectives, Gur argues, but they were…

Tikvah advanced institute alumnus David Bernstein has a thoughtful post on the spate of hand-wringing articles about how hard it has become for self-described liberal Zionists to remain both liberal and Zionist. Writing on the Volokh Conspiracy blog,…

One of the routines of Israeli political life is the postbellum tug-of-war over Israel’s efforts at Hasbara, literally “explanation.” Where did Israel succeed at explaining itself? Where did it fail? Why? Amid this debate, Avi Woolf takes a…

What is the proper relationship between Jews and political power? To what extent should Jews eschew worldly power for the sake of piety? How Machiavellian can Jews allow themselves to be? Two of the Jewish world’s most esteemed…

Israel’s best friends in the Middle East face barbarians at the doorsteps. Guy Maayan of Mida interviewed some Kurdish fighters to learn about the Islamic State’s brutal way of war and how the Kurds view Israel: “They’re monsters, you…

Why did Secretary of State John Kerry originally present a cease-fire plan that acceded to some of Hamas’s demands and none of Israel’s? Michael Doran of the Brookings Institution tried to answer that question in a Mosaic article…