The Right is simply more pro-Israel than the Left.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned, it seems, to direct the Middle East policy of the Obama administration.
As the Palestinian leadership never seems to pay any penalty for its words, America's seriousness about the peace process is in doubt.
The U.S. has the power to block all anti-Israel moves in the Security Council, not just some of them, and to do so without agreeing to unfair, damaging compromises.
The Assad regime has lost the consent of the governed, and it is difficult to see how a replacement Alawite regime would be able to regain this consent.
On the human rights side, administration policy has been marked by indifference. When the people of Iran flooded the streets to protest the theft of their presidential election in June 2009, President Obama was silent for 11 days.
In the spring of 2007, Israeli intelligence brought to Washington proof that the Assad regime in Syria was building a nuclear reactor along the Euphrates - with North Korean help. This reactor was a copy of the Yongbyon reactor the North Koreans had built, and was part of a Syrian nuclear weapons program.
Never fight turf on turf. Fight it on the basis of ideas.
It's time to bury the unreal, failed 'realism' of those who have long thought that dictators brought stability.
The raids on Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, the Adenauer Foundation, and other groups helping Egyptians move toward respect for democratic politics and human rights were of a piece with the practices of Hosni Mubarak - only bolder and more repressive.
The United States and its Gulf allies, some of who are actively funding rebel groups in Syria, should undertake a serious joint review of Jordan's needs and then act together to meet them.
Even today, when the Obama administration has liberalized travel to Cuba - and failed to reverse that liberalization when Alan Gross was imprisoned - there are limits.
The anchors of the Arab consensus have long been Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and both are now weakened forces in Arab politics and diplomacy.
The Sandinistas are dedicated Communists, and if they are going to make a compromise with democracy, it's going to be under pressure.
The Iranians don't want the same thing we do in Iraq, not really; they want to control Iraq... the Ayatollah hates the United States; the Iranians are enemies of the United States.
Elections matter, but how much they matter depends entirely on how free, open and fair they are.
The presence of jihadis in Syria should be no surprise.
The Egyptian military plays positive and negative roles in Egypt, but the most significant single thing it did under Mubarak was to guarantee an Islamist victory once he left the scene.
If you say to the White House, 'Obama has been very unfriendly to Israel,' they say, 'What do you mean? It's the best military-to-military relationship ever.' And that part is true.
It's not good for Israel to govern millions of Palestinians.
President Bush met repeatedly with human rights activists and freedom fighters from all over the world to give them encouragement and protection and to advance their cause.
In the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo is the daughter of Diosdado Macapagal - but his term ended in 1965, and she was elected in 2001. Hardly a hand-off.
Now in its third year in office, the Obama Administration has never championed the cause of human rights. Its slow reaction in June 2009 to the stealing of the election in Iran and the birth of the 'Green Movement' there, and its delay in backing the rebellions in Egypt, Libya, and Syria, are evidence of this problem.
If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, its influence and that of Hamas and Hezbollah are strengthened.
Tunisia is small - just ten million, no great natural resources.
While foreign competitors, French or Japanese or German, merrily bid for contracts abroad, American companies find themselves tangled in a web of legislation designed to express disapproval, block trade in certain commodities, or perhaps deny resources to disfavored or hostile regimes.
I personally would not talk to a Jew for Jesus.
Iran exports about 2.2 million barrels a day.
The intersection of religion and world politics has often been a bloody crossroads.
If you said to people you can cast a secret ballot on whether to turn back the clock and have Morsi in power again, I don't think very many people in Washington would turn back that clock.
A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy.
The Arab monarchies, especially Jordan and Morocco, are more legitimate than the false republics, with their stolen elections, regime-dominated courts and rubber-stamp parliaments.
The conflict between secular Zionism and the settler movement did not appear overnight following Israel's conquests in the 1967 war, for there was an argument that bridged the gap: security.
In the Bill Clinton years, the foreign leader who visited the White House most often was Yasser Arafat - 13 times.
I just don't understand how Kerry or Obama or anybody else thought Assad was going to change.
We need to understand that an open society and free speech and press... really are the best weapons against al Qaeda and extremism.
The Arab view that someone should bomb Iran and stop it from developing nuclear weapons is familiar to anyone who meets privately with Arab leaders, especially in the Gulf.
The fake republics are goners; the monarchies have a fighting chance. That's my conclusion after a short visit to the Middle East and discussions with officials and analysts there.
The truce brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas depends, above all, on the borders between Egypt, Gaza and Israel.
If a Jewish group sat down with a Christian conservative group, and there was a so-called Messianic Jew at the table, that would be the end of the meeting.
In public, an admission of technological inadequacy would be too embarrassing.
The attack on the British embassy in Tehran came just days after the Iranian 'parliament' voted to expel the British ambassador, and therefore reeks of official complicity.
Evangelicals too often fall short in their actual teachings about Judaism.
I grew up in Queens, in New York City, in a middle class Jewish family. My mother was a public school teacher, my father was a lawyer. They were Democrats - kind of middle-of-the-road democrats.
Obama isn't good off the cuff, especially when challenged; he is far better with a prepared speech.
The failure to set standards for Palestinian conduct hurts the cause of peace.
It was simply impossible to support Carter for reelection in 1980 and easy for me to support Reagan. The Reagan campaign was happy to have Democratic support, and the Reagan administration was happy to have Democrats in it; they took the view that, after all, Reagan himself had been a Democrat, so it was not a strike against you.
American power remains today what it was in the Second World War and the Cold War: the greatest force for freedom in the world.
