Those of us who have written about Islamism and its connection to the terrorist attacks of the past decade have always gone to great effort to define this tradition as an extremist interpretation of the traditions of Islam. We have distinguished between Islam and Islamism, but we have also insisted that it is naïve to assume that when terrorists say they act in the name of Islam that their actions have nothing at all to do with their interpretation of the religion. To criticize Islamism is not a sublimation of hostility to Islam. It is the result of an interpretation of widely known facts about one extremist interpretation of that religion.
Achcar is a man at war with what he has written in his own book. It is Achcar, not us supposed Islamophobes and anti-Arab racists, who documents the tradition of Pan-Islamism and the fusion of Nazism and Islamic fundamentalism that was a key chapter in its history. The same author who traced this tradition from Rida to Husseini now writes as if the terms “Islamism” and “Islamofascism” are the product of anti-Islamic bigotry. Isn’t it possible, and even likely, that those he denounces for criticizing Islamism in recent years have arrived at conclusions similar to his own regarding the Islamists of the 1930s and 1940s because they, like him, concluded that there was good evidence in both cases to do so?
From a fine review by Professor Jeffrey Herf of Gilbert Achcar’s new book, The Arabs and The Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. Read the whole article at The New Republic.
Landing at Beirut’s international airport, Ahmadinejad’s motorcade passed near the site where Hizbullah murdered 241 American marines and 58 French soldiers in dual suicide truck bombings in September 1982. These peacekeeping forces had been dispatched to monitor the exit of Yasser Arafat and the PLO, following the Israel-Lebanon war, and to assist in restoring peace to this small, battered country.
But the void left by the PLO departure, and subsequent withdrawal of American and French forces, was quickly filled by Hizbullah, born during that war. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, emboldened by the shah’s overthrow and eager to export their ideology across the Middle East, seized an opportunity to plant revolutionary seeds. Lebanon, a nation torn by civil war, was particularly vulnerable to outsider machinations, especially any seeking allies intent on Israel’s eradication as part of the larger crusade to spread radical Islam across the region.
From my op-ed in today’s Jerusalem Post, examining the ramifications of Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Lebanon.
Throughout the Arab-Israeli peace process over the years two key elements have been constant and remain critical today as Israelis and Palestinians gather again around the same table. First, recognition that direct talks between Israel and credible Arab partners can achieve durable peace accords. Second, the critical role of the United States in facilitating the direct talks and sealing the peace deal.
From my latest column on Fox News.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) representatives visited Sudan this week to discuss the African nation’s plans to build at least one nuclear reactor by 2020. The ambitious scheme, which oil-producing Sudan claims would be purely for civil use to produce electricity, is the latest in Arab nuclear initiatives, paralleling Iran’s highly controversial program.
Continue reading ‘Sudan’s Nuclear Ambitions’
Now, with active prodding by President Obama, including individual White House meetings with Abbas and Netanyahu in July, the Palestinian leader found that he could no longer remain unresponsive to the West’s entreaties to accept Israel’s continual overtures to return to direct talks, lest the Palestinians be perceived, correctly, as the obstacle to peace.
Mahmoud Abbas, however, may be able to salvage his strategy. The one-year timeline the U.S. set to conclude direct talks creates an aura of expectation, but also conveys to Abbas that he has more time to be indecisive, with all the perils that entails.
From my latest op-ed on Fox News, here.
Abbas is not only avoiding direct talks, but seems reluctant even to continue proximity talks, turning again for cover to his Fatah Party leadership, to the PLO and even to the Arab League. Not difficult: Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa recently called the proximity talks “a comprehensive failure.”
So, only two months after Mitchell began his shuttle diplomacy, Abbas is upping the ante. In addition to demanding a total Jewish construction freeze in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, Abbas now wants the U.S. to obtain from Israel written guarantees on the final borders for a Palestinian state.
From my latest column on Townhall, here.
With great sadness, we report that David Twersky, one of the top American Jewish journalists, passed away last night, succumbing to cancer. When I was Managing Editor of JTA, the global Jewish newswire service, regular phone calls with David, then editor-in-chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, always revealed insights into stories we were working on or should tackle, as well as his tenacity to follow leads and sources, and a commitment to produce a solid journalistic product. In his work at the Forward, and later at the New York Sun, as he moved between journalism and public relations stints at the American Jewish Congress, David’s impact was using the power of the pen and computer keyboard to fulfill his dedication to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. We will miss you.
Read this detailed obit from the New York Sun.
Zichrono livracha.
Instant universal condemnation of Israel, with no criticism of Hamas, after the flotilla clash with Israel’s navy, has not helped those who truly seek peace. Rather, the world has further emboldened Hamas in its rejectionist stance. “May 31 was and will be a turning point,” Haniyeh declared. “It marks the beginning of the delegitimization of the Zionist project in our country.” The Hamas leader, for sure, was not speaking only of Gaza.
A flavor of my op-ed for Fox News, which you can read in full here.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who lost authority over Gaza three years ago this month in the very bloody Hamas coup, is suddenly asserting responsibility for the 1.5 million Palestinians living there. His nemesis, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, already was way ahead in feeling the world love as European governments, in the wake of the May 31 flotilla clash, joined with the ranks of traditional Hamas backers in the Arab and Islamic worlds in calling for lifting the blockade of Gaza. President Obama, meeting with Abbas, put icing on the Hamas cake by calling the situation in Gaza “unsustainable.”
Continue reading ‘Abbas Feebly Tries to Reclaim Gaza’
