Another terror summer comes to Israel (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic RosenthalSummer Weather Comes to IsraelThe weather has finally turned warm here. It seems like we skipped spring and went straight to summer. Along with the heat and the haze come incitement and terrorism, which will very likely develop – as it did last year at this time – into war and insurrection.Last month saw three high-profile terror attacks inside...

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How to Survive in the Middle East (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal Last week, after a terrorist attack in Beer Sheva that took four lives, I (rhetorically) asked our leadership if they had a plan to deal with Arab terrorism, something more long-range than beefing up the police presence over Ramadan. Since then, there have been two more attacks, one in Hadera and one in Bnei Brak, bringing the total number...

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What's the plan to stop terror attacks in Israel? (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal What’s the Plan? If you live in Israel, you know what happened in Beer Sheva on Tuesday. You know that a terrorist who was an Israeli citizen from one of the larger Bedouin towns that sprawl over Israel’s Negev desert, a former teacher (!) who spent four years in prison for his activities on behalf of ISIS, brutally murdered two women...

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The Czechoslovakian Option (Vic Rosenthal)

Photoshop by Judah RosenthalVic Rosenthal's weekly columnThe negotiations between Iran and the West are free to continue after the hiccup caused by a Russian demand for a “right to free and full trade, economic and investment cooperation and military-technical cooperation.” Either the Russians got what they wanted, or they decided to accept something less; but in...

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Who’s Intolerant? (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic RosenthalWho’s Intolerant?The refugee crisis in Ukraine has illuminated a deep moral divide among Israelis, which I think reflects a similar division in the moral consciousness of humans everywhere. On one side we have Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, who announced yesterday that Israel would accept all Jewish refugees – that is, all of those,...

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Obama’s Third Term (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic RosenthalWhile our attention here in Israel is on Ukraine, the US and Iran are preparing to come to some kind of nuclear agreement. Or not. I’ve been wrong about a number of things lately – I never thought Putin would do more than lop off the Donbas region from Ukraine – and I might be wrong about this too, but the Biden Administration’s desire to have...

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Sun Tzu, Putin, and the Iran Deal (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic RosenthalThe supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.Sun Tzu, The Art of WarAs I write, there are Russian tanks in Donbas. Does that...

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Some hard facts (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic RosenthalSome Hard FactsThere are such things as hard facts. A hard fact is something that is true, not dependent on point of view, ideology, culture, religious belief, or politics. I know there is a post-modern trend to deny that they exist, but frankly it is insane, and anyone who thinks that way will not survive very long.The laws of physics are hard...

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