Israel-America Renaissance Institute (I-ARI) — Page 2

Attack Iran–At All Costs

by Yoram Ettinger
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The discussion about the cost of a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities has added value only if it is intended to advance the attack and neutralize the potential response from Iran and its allies. The discussion becomes harmful, plays into Iran’s hands and threatens Israel’s existence if it reflects hesitancy, skepticism, aiming to preclude

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A Man for All Seasons

by Paul Eidelberg
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Back in 2007, two years before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state, I published an article citing a letter penned by President Theodore Roosevelt, a letter dated April 4, 1904. Pity Israel does not have a leader of Roosevelt’s caliber. Roosevelt was a man of extraordinary erudition, wisdom, and courage.

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A Return to Andalusia

by Yoram Ettinger
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The collapse of Israeli-Palestinian agreements from the 1993 Oslo Accords until today stems from the fact that both Israeli and US leaders ignore the real root of the conflict. The heart of the conflict is the denial of the existence—and not the size—of any non-Muslim entity on land that, in the eyes of Muslims, is

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Three Types of Materialism:
Germanic, Bolshevik, and Islamic

by Paul Eidelberg
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The title of this essay occurred to me while reading a superb book by Professor Will Morrisey of Hillsdale College, Michigan, The Dilemma of Progressivism: How Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson Reshaped the American Regime of Self-Government (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009). A principle of universal significance can be drawn from this book, namely, that materialism animates

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Winners & Losers

by Burt Prelutsky
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All in all, 2011 provided us with some pretty good news. For one thing, our military took care of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, God got rid of Kim Jong-Il and, for good measure, Barney Frank finally got around to announcing his retirement. It was to be expected that Jimmy Carter, who insisted on

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The War Inside Islam

by Yoram Ettinger
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At the outset of 2012, irrespective of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the “Palestinian issue,” the defining geopolitical and religious schism in the Middle East is boiling, exacerbating violent intra-Muslim fragmentation. The battle inside Islam is taking place on the religious, tribal, ideological and geographical levels. The Syrian death toll is approaching 7,000, trending toward Papa

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Taking the Offensive

by Paul Eidelberg
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If we exclude Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s Osirac nuclear reactor in 1981 and the Syrian reactor in 2007, it would not be wrong to say that Israel has pursued a defensive military strategy. Unless I am mistaken—and without forgetting the Six Day War—this has long been the normative policy of the Israel Defense Forces. Apparently,

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Why “Invent” the Palestinians?

by Robert R. Reilly
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This month, in Amman, Jordan, Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators met for their first time in 15 months to try to restart the “peace process.” Meanwhile, the Palestinian group that rules in Gaza, Hamas, has repeated its declaration: “The battle for the liberation of Jerusalem is closer than ever and, God willing, we will win.”

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The Decline of American Exceptionalism

by Paul Eidelberg
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During his first term in office, President Bill Clinton echoed Lincoln, saying, “My policy is to have no policy.” To have no policy is to have no firm political principles, no moral convictions, hence, no sense of honor. This obviously does not represent Lincoln who, as one scholar has written, meant that he, Lincoln, “would

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Journalism

by Paul Eidelberg
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Political journalism is not politically neutral or “value-free.” This may also be said of political science, pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding. The reason is this: The reporting of news, like academic discourse on politics, inevitably involves criteria of importance: some things are intrinsically more important than others. But criteria of importance are not politically neutral.

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The Dangers of Wishful Thinking in the Middle East

by Robert R. Reilly
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Projecting Western ideas onto the Arab Spring seriously underestimates the danger of Islamism. Last July Matthew Kaminski opined in the Wall Street Journal that the transition to democracy in the Middle East would be as easy as it was for the democracies that emerged after the fall of the Soviet empire. Alas, this was predictably

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