Will Israel find itself on the wrong side of the ‘changing’ world order?

With fighting raging in Ukraine, Israel finds itself torn between supporting independent Ukrainian sovereignty and not wishing to anger a newly belligerent world power in Russia. Read more

NSO Pegasus spyware and the emergence of Israel as a surveillance state

Recent bombshell revelations that Israel Police have been using powerful NSO Pegasus software to hack the phones of private citizens, journalists and political officials are the latest in a series of controversial movements confirming Israel as an official surveillance state. Read more

With Bennett watching, Gantz and Lapid are bringing Israel back towards a two-state paradigm

Israel may have a right-wing prime minister, but Naftali Bennett is not positioning Israel’s diplomatic priorities. Read more

Red carpet, red lines and red flags: Israel’s race to the climate change agenda

Israel sent a 140-person delegation to the 26th U.N. Climate Change Convention (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, this week led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Read more

Yair Lapid’s foreign-policy follies

When Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid received the mandate from then-President Reuven Rivlin to form a government after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was once again unable to form a parliamentary majority, he succeeded in luring right-wing stalwart Naftali Bennett away from his natural political partners. Read more

Will Bennett allow US to rollback recognition of Israel’s capital and redivide Jerusalem?

Just one month after Naftali Bennett was sworn in as prime minister, the new Israeli government is grappling with an attempt to roll back one of the most significant foreign-policy achievements of the Netanyahu era. Read more

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Former Ambassador David Friedman: ‘Trump administration would have given Israel free reign to defend itself’

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was dispatched to Israel by U.S. President Joe Biden this week in the direct aftermath of an acute conflagration highlighted by 11 days of indiscriminate rocket attacks by Hamas on Israeli population centres and pinpoint Israeli airstrikes on Hamas installations in Gaza in retaliation. Read more

10 takeaways from the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas

Over this past weekend, Arabs were shooting fireworks in the sky, supposedly in celebration of holding Israeli population centres hostage for 11 days with more than 4,000 rockets. Read more

‘AP,’ ‘Al Jazeera’ and the mainstream media are tools in Hamas’s war against Israel

Journalists are expressing their outrage that the 12-story Al-Jalaa building housing the Gaza headquarters of Associated Press and Al Jazeera was targeted during retaliatory Israeli airstrikes on Saturday. Read more

How old politics in Ramallah, Gaza, Jerusalem and Washington have set Israel ablaze

After one of the calmest extended periods in decades in the Middle East—and in Israel, in particular—the tide has suddenly turned, reverting to classic political mistakes that have all but erased the positive gains. Read more

Lapid and Bennett officially on the clock to end Netanyahu’s tenure

For the second time in a little more than a year, incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mandate to form a government has passed to his political rivals. Read more

Who’s responsible for the Meron disaster?

Israel’s largest religious festival turned into its largest peacetime tragedy late Thursday night, as 45 celebrants were crushed to death, and dozens more were injured, under the feet of fellow worshippers in a horrific stampede at Mount Meron. Read more

Netanyahu’s latest mandate is trial by fire

After the Likud secured a stunning 13-seat electoral margin over the second-largest party, Yesh Atid, an embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has received the official mandate to form a new government, following the fourth election in less than two years. Read more

In fourth consecutive campaign, Netanyahu secures largest-ever electoral lead

The fourth attempt in two years to unseat embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have failed once again, with Netanyahu securing his largest-ever electoral victory over his rivals. Exit polls show Netanyahu’s Likud receiving a strong 30 to 31 mandates. The tally is at least 12 seats higher than the next largest party: the left-wing Yesh Atid led by Yair Lapid. Read more

The differences between Israel’s 2020 and 2021 elections

Israelis will head to the polls next week for the fourth parliamentary elections in two years. Read more

The changing of the guard in US-Israel relations

Like many American policies now expected to undergo an about-face following the inauguration of 46th President Joe Biden, U.S.-Israel relations may be gearing up for a great reset. Read more

Trump’s lasting legacy will be the Abraham Accords

Mainstream media and pundits from across the political spectrum have been quick to assert that the violent riot on the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6 has permanently tarnished the Trump presidency. Read more

Could a fourth election lead to Israel’s largest-ever right-wing government?

In the beginning of March, Israel had just completed its third inconclusive election in less than 12 months, leaving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu barely shy of his preferred right-wing-majority coalition. Read more

Pompeo to JNS: ‘Trump administration will continue to be a force for good’…an exclusive interview

Under the stewardship of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the administration in Washington has taken new approaches to American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. Read more

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman: Mideast is ‘exploding with good opportunities’ under Trump

Over the past four years, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has charted a new direction towards Israel, Iran and the greater Middle East. Read more

Is a ‘New Right’ ascending in Israel?

A constant stream of political polls gives clues to the stability of Israel’s current unity government anchored by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and challenger Benny Gantz’s Blue and White Party. Read more

The great myth of Israeli annexation, Part II: De facto sovereignty

For the better part of the past year, one of the major diplomatic agenda items in the Middle East was whether or not Israel would apply its formal sovereignty over lands it controls in parts of Judea and Samaria, surrounding Jewish settlements, and along the strategic Jordan Valley. Read more

Abraham Accords are a paradigm shift of biblical proportions

The signing of normalization agreements between Israel and Muslim-majority Sunni Gulf States the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain represents the end of an era of pan-Arab belligerence towards the Jewish state, and the formal acknowledgment that it is a permanent fixture in the Middle East. Read more

Israelis are not celebrating upcoming holiday lockdown

Back in April and May, Israel halted what appeared to be the rapid trajectory of the coronavirus. A severe lockdown during the Passover holiday pushed the number of new cases per day, down from approximately 700 a few weeks earlier to less than two-dozen daily cases. At the time, many Israelis believed and hoped that the Jewish state’s bout with COVID-19 was coming to a rapid conclusion. Read more

Netanyahu, Trump and Obama doctrines on display with El Al flight to Emirates

When does a three-hour commercial flight from one nation to a neighbouring country represent a major diplomatic achievement? When the flight originates in Israel—a peace-seeking nation that has been subject to more hostility and double-standards than nearly every other nation on earth. Read more

Netanyahu’s five-point battleground to stay in power

Since fortifying Israel’s frayed political system with a victory over his political rivals and the formation of a unity coalition in April, governance for Israel’s embattled prime minister has been anything but simple. Read more

Netanyahu presumed innocent in Israel’s court of public opinion

Israeli media and their left-wing anti-Netanyahu allies have been anticipating for years the moment Benjamin Netanyahu would be dragged into a courtroom. Unable to beat Israel’s longest-serving prime minister at the polls, many have looked to a politically left-leaning legal system to get him out of office. Read more

Top 10 reasons Israel has (so far) survived coronavirus

Israelis are now once again taking to the streets in large numbers. Read more

Supreme Court validates Netanyahu government weeks after attempted putsch

On Wednesday, Israel’s Supreme Court unanimously rejected eight separate petitions filed against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the coalition agreement he signed with former challenger Benny Gantz. Read more

Netanyahu finally wins Israel’s elections, set to form large centre-right government

In a key political victory, embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured an additional 18 months in office, as challenger Benny Gantz dismantled his Blue and White Party alignment and agreed to bring his smaller Israel Resilience faction into a Netanyahu-led government. Read more

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