
Commentary / World Oct 2, 2016
Shimon Peres, Israel's last founding father
Shimon Peres was an Israeli leader with a vision and a message.
For Itamar Rabinovich's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Shimon Peres was an Israeli leader with a vision and a message.
The Israeli election results represent an impressive personal comeback for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reflect the sense among Israeli voters that, more than ever, they feel threatened by numerous enemies.
Israel worries about America's gradual withdrawal from the Middle East, a policy shift that has allowed Russia to regain lost influence there. And Russian President Vladimir Putin's move on Ukraine presented a dilemma for the Netanyahu government.
he most appropriate response by the U.S. and its allies in the Syrian conflict would be to make a bigger investment in the secular opposition and to articulate clear goals.
The surprising setback suffered by the right in Israel's recent general election will have important ramifications for Israel's domestic politics and foreign policy alike, particularly its Middle Eastern diplomacy.
The crisis in the Sinai Peninsula seems to have been dwarfed by the drama in Cairo. But Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi's civilian coup, in which he dismissed General Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the leader of the army's supreme command, has not diminished the importance of ...
During World War II, Winston Churchill famously drew a distinction between "the end of the beginning" and "the beginning of the end." That distinction is equally applicable to the unfolding Syrian crisis. Recent events — the growing number of high-level defections from the regime's leadership, ...
The failure of the Obama administration, its Western allies and several Middle East regional powers to take bolder action to stop the carnage in Syria is often explained by their fear of anarchy. Given the Syrian opposition's manifest ineffectiveness and disunity, so the argument goes, ...
Syria's crisis is now a year old, with close to 10,000 people, mostly civilians, dead — and no end in sight. The country is at a stalemate: The opposition is unable to topple President Bashar Assad's regime, and Assad's forces are unable to quash ...