New York City’s Arabic-language public school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, opens its doors this week, with special security, for 11- and 12-year-old students. One hopes that the prolonged public debate over the school’s Islamist proclivities will prompt it not to promote any political or religious agendas.

Count…

The question of Kirkuk’s final status remains among the touchiest issues concerning Iraq’s future. The Iraqi Kurdish political parties seek to include Kirkuk in a federal Kurdish state, an outcome at odds with Iraqi Turkoman sensitivities. The Turkomans consider Kirkuk to be their own ancestral capital and cultural center.…

When times get tough, people naturally seek psychological relief through what Sigmund Freud defined as the mechanisms of defense. That is individuals unconsciously refract their perceptions of reality through unconscious lenses that usually distort what they see. For example, if someone gets bad news from their physician, they sometimes…

The Iraq Study Group Report, cobbled together by ten individuals lacking specialized knowledge of Iraq, dredges up past failed U.S. policies in the Middle East and would enshrine them as current policy.

Most profoundly, regarding the American role in Iraq, the report…

Soldiers, sailors, and airmen once determined the outcome of warfare, but no longer. Today, television producers, columnists, preachers, and politicians have the pivotal role in deciding how well the West fights. This shift has deep implications.

In a conventional conflict like World…

The five years since 9/11, in retrospect, have been like a perpetual workshop in which Americans argue about the nature of their enemy and how to defeat him.

Along the way, they have made plenty of mistakes, ranging from former secretary of state Colin Powell's claiming that 9/11 "should…

Does the New York Police Department profile for potential terrorists — meaning, does it stop, arrest, search, or otherwise investigate a person on the assumption that his racial or ethnic identity makes him more likely to commit a certain type of crime?

The NYPD, like every Western law enforcement…

The illegal immigration of non-Western peoples, I predict, will become an all-consuming issue in every Western country.

As Western birth rates plummet, as communication and transportation networks improve, and as radical Islam increasingly rears its aggressive head, Europeans, Americans, and others worry about their economic standards and the continuity…

Quite a stir ensued at a recent American Jewish Committee symposium in Washington when Israeli novelist A.B.Yehoshua called the hosting organization's 100-year record "a great failure" and opined that Jews in the United States cannot live genuinely Jewish lives.  Only in Israel, the celebrated writer asserted, can a truly…

The signals that came out of Baghdad on April 26, when two U.S. cabinet members met with the newly elected Iraqi prime minister-designate, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, struck me as counterproductive.

The ostensible goal of the Americans' trip was, in the words of the New York Times, "to re-establish…

The great mystery of the 2003 war in Iraq - "What about the WMD?" has finally been resolved. The short answer is: Saddam Hussein's persistent record of lying meant no one believed him when he at the last moment actually removed the weapons of mass destruction.

In a riveting…

I'm going to jail.

Along with interfaith religious leaders, members of Congress and others, I am being arrested in Washington, D.C., tomorrow (April 28) outside the Embassy of Sudan in a public protest of the continuing genocide in Darfur.

The aim is to focus attention on Darfur and…

It hardly comes as news that the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) has embarked on a drive to galvanize its constituents to oppose the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The NCJW, like some others, views judicial nominees…

In 1991, the Canadian province of Ontario passed what seemed at the time to be an enlightened, multicultural piece of legislation. Called the Arbitration Act, it stipulates that if two parties agree to engage a commercial, religious, or other arbitrator to settle a civil dispute, the provincial authorities will…

Even as much of New Orleans was still submerged, dead bodies yet floating on the putrid city-turned-lake, live ones yet waving from rooftops, the accusations flew fast and furious.

The loss of life and property during the Gulf Coast destruction was the fault of! President Bush! Louisiana officials!…

Among the unquestioned assertions that have entered public discourse through sheer force of repetition is that faith and science are utterly unrelated.

It is a mantra invoked often these days, in the context of the debate over whether "Intelligent Design," a presentation of vexing problems in contemporary biological…

On Labor Day, Jews should think about empowering working poor

NEW YORK, Aug. 25 (JTA) - This Labor Day, you'll probably read about the troubles facing unions in America.

The recent split, in which several of the country's larger unions left the AFL-CIO, will dominate the headlines. It's being…

Beneath the surface of the societal debate about whether the theory of evolution should be the only approach to biology in the American public school lies the real issue of contention: whether human beings are essentially different from the other occupants of the biosphere.

There are certainly enough…

A number of Jewish groups are campaigning to ensure that only someone favoring an unfettered right to abortion fill Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Court seat. It is an effort offensive not only to many non-Jewish Americans but to many Jewish ones as well.

Some of the campaigners…

Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, congratulates the House of Representatives on its courageous vote approving The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (H.R. 810). The bill would override President Bush's August 9, 2001 executive order limiting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to stem cell lines derived…