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Israelis see the Kurds—a moderate, pro-Western, Muslim community that eschews anti-Israel sentiment, and with whom Israel has worked quietly—as exactly the kind of element that the Middle East needs more of. They constantly press for more American support for the Kurds. Israel, against American wishes, encouraged the Kurds of northern Iraq in their ill-advised independence referendum of 2017. For Israel, the U.S. abandonment of the Kurds represents both a strategic and an emotional blow.

Obama, too, was criticized by Israelis for withdrawing troops from Iraq, for failing to strike Syria in response to chemical-weapons use, and for his perceived reluctance to use force against Iran’s nuclear program. But Trump, the gever-gever, Israelis hoped, would reverse the trend. Instead, Trump is doubling down on reducing U.S. involvement in the Middle East in an even more brutal fashion: bashing regional allies as freeloaders, demanding payment for U.S. protection, and loudly declaiming against any plausible logic for a U.S. military presence in the region. America’s friends, including Israel, feel a chill wind at such talk.

A more dominant Russia in Syria means a reinforced Assad regime. That process was happening anyway, much to the chagrin of Israeli strategists and anyone with a moral conscience. But the folding of the U.S. tent cements the outcome. Where Turkey does not wipe out the Kurds, Russian-backed Syrian forces will mop them up. The Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah weapons highway will be disrupted only by Israeli action

Other Arab states, long funders of anti-Assad opposition groups, have given up and are welcoming Syria back to the fold. Syria’s prospective invitation to the Arab League summit, the visit of Assad’s security chief to Cairo, and the reopening of the UAE embassy in Damascus mark Syria’s best week diplomatically since the war began in 2011.

Levin has said the election in the US of Donald Trump, whose administration has rarely criticised the Netanyahu government, has made the proposed legislation easier to promote.

criticised

Gvaryahu and Shaul are bullish in the face of the assault but others in the Israeli human rights community are less sanguine about what they see as its implications for freedom of speech in Israel and the ability of NGOs to operate.

Our interest is not in legal avenues but in the moral framework of 50 years of occupation,” he said. “Everything we publish has to be screened by the Israeli military censor. That is important because the censor views potential prosecution [of Israeli soldiers] as a security issue. And it is still approved.”

This time, by contrast, Sanders arguably talks about foreign policy more than any other declared candidate does. Of the four senators who launched their candidacies via video—Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Sanders—only his mentioned foreign policy

What distinguishes Sanders is the same quality that distinguished him on domestic policy in 2016: his willingness to cross red lines that have long defined the boundaries of acceptable opinion

He’s produced videos that call Gaza an “open-air prison,” he’s depicted Benjamin Netanyahu as part of the “growing worldwide movement toward authoritarianism,” and, most controversially of all, he’s suggested cutting U.S. military aid to Israel.

He’s the only presidential candidate in recent memory who regularly describes the Cold War not as a heroic American victory, but as a cautionary tale

Sanders doesn’t just warn against U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, as Warren and Gillibrand have. He warns against it while invoking the United States’ “long history of inappropriately intervening in Latin American countries.

he wants America to shun the quest for global supremacy that leads it to overthrow regimes it can’t control and to instead pursue a foreign policy based on “partnership, rather than dominance.”

He called for putting the United Nations—which he called “one of the most important organizations for promoting a vision of a different world”—near the heart of American foreign policy

Sanders challenged the domestic side of the exceptionalist creed: the belief that American capitalism—buttressed by modest regulations and welfare provisions—provides upward mobility.

Now Sanders is poised to challenge exceptionalism in foreign policy: the belief that America, as a uniquely virtuous nation, can substitute its own self-interest and moral intuition for international institutions and international law

A 2017 Pew Research poll found that Americans over the age of 30 were far more likely to say that the “U.S. stands above all other countries in the world” than to say, “There are other countries that are better than the U.S.” But among adults under 30, the latter view predominated by a margin of more than two to one.

For a presidential candidate, challenging American exceptionalism would, until recently, have seemed like a sure path to political oblivion

In 2020, Americans will learn whether there’s a market for his anti-imperial heresies too.

In a historical stroke with resonance today, American Jewish leaders gathered in Pittsburgh in 1885 to produce what is known as the Pittsburgh Platform, a new theology for an American Judaism, less focused on a Messianic return to the land of Israel and more on fixing a broken world, the concept of Tikkun Olam. Jews, the rabbi behind the platform urged, must achieve God’s purpose by “living and working in and with the world.”

For a faith that for thousands of years was insular and self-contained, its people often in mandated ghettos, praying for the Messiah to return them to the Promised Land, this was a radical notion. But for most American Jews, it is now accepted as a tenet of their religion: building a better, more equal, more tolerant world now, where they live.

Last summer, when a Conservative rabbi in Haifa was hauled in for questioning by the Israeli police after he officiated at a non-Orthodox wedding, it was too much for Rabbi Steven Wernick, chief executive of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the umbrella organization of the Conservative movement in North America.

“I do not believe we can talk about a ‘gap’ between Israel and the Diaspora,” Rabbi Wernick wrote in a letter to the Israeli government. “It is now a ‘canyon.’”My rabbi in Washington, Daniel Zemel, said in despair during Kol Nidre, the Yom Kippur evening service, this fall: “For the first time in my life, I feel a genuine threat to my life in Israel. This is not an external threat. It is an internal threat from nationalists and racists.”

Moshe, according to his grandfather, wants to be a rabbi like his father, Gabi. His parents had moved to Mumbai seven years before the attack to work at Chabad House. Their life in Mumbai had revolved around Jewish people visiting the city and other parts of India.

On his first day in his new post, Mr. Grenell, 52 years old, sparked outrage in Germany with a tweet demanding German companies wind down their operations in Iran. The acrimony was compounded by his call in a Breitbart News interview for empowering conservatives across Europ

A senior member of a governing party compared Mr. Grenell to a far-right colonial officer

opposition politicians

called for the U.S. ambassador to be expelled.

Mr. Trump has often privately praised Mr. Grenell’s TV appearances and his social media presence—peppered alternately with criticism of German policy and pictures of his dog, Lola—and described the ambassador as someone who “gets it.”

Mr. Grenell “understands what his mission is—his mission is what my father gives him,” Donald Trump Jr.

Thanks to his direct access to the president, Mr. Grenell has extended his remit beyond Germany, holding meetings with conservative leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. The president views Mr. Grenell “not just as his man in Germany, but his man in Europe,

"I think the end of ISIS, the so-called Islamic State, does not really mean the end of geostrategic struggles," London School of Economics Professor Fawaz Gerges told CNN's George Howell.

"I want to tell Iran and its followers that they are losing their interferences in the Arab nation affairs. Our nation will rise just as it did before and the hands that want to harm it will be cut,"

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the remarks were a "wake-up call" to "take action" against Iran.

The missile launch was the first time the heart of the Saudi capital has been attacked.

UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd slammed US leaks on the investigation into the attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, as "irritating" on Wednesday after a string of details emerged from US law enforcement sources before they were released by British police or officials

The White House did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment on Rudd's remarks

was greeted warmly by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who showed no indication that Trump's interaction with the Russians posed a problem between the two nations.

the leaking of the suspect's name was more disruptive because it might have tipped off other suspects,"

"I will make clear to President Trump that intelligence that is shared between our law enforcement agencies must remain secure," she said following a cabinet-level security meeting.

Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to Democratic and Republican secretaries of state, who added that the leaks may reflect a lack of structure within the Trump administration itself.

"We've got a very close intelligence and defense partnership with the UK, and that news ... suggests that we have even more close allies who are questioning whether we can be trusted with vital intelligence," Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman insisted there would be no effect on the close relations between the United States and Israel due to the apparent leak

"The intel community is probably beside themselves and worried about what they can confide now, if the President is going to be as careless as he was," Miller said

"If we will assess that our sources of intelligence are in danger due to the way it will be handled by the United States, then we will have to keep the very sensitive information close to our chests," Yatom

"You are not going to have the best capabilities to defend the nation if other countries aren't going to share as much with you."

Stern words will likely be directed to the US side, he said, but "on balance, it's probably not going to change intelligence-sharing arrangements all that much."

“The police shot an Arab demonstrators in Lod,” said Ahmed Tibi, the leader of the Ta’al party and a member of Israel’s Parliament, referring to the mixed Arab-Jewish city in Israel where some of the worst clashes occurred. “We don’t want bloodshed. We want to protest.”

In one seaside suburb south of Tel Aviv, dozens of Jewish extremists took turns beating and kicking a man presumed to be Arab, even as he lay motionless on the ground. To the north, in another coastal town, an Arab mob beat a man they thought was Jewish with sticks and rocks, leaving him in a critical condition. Nearby, an Arab mob nearly stabbed to death a man believed to be Jewish.

It is the first intense round of fighting since Israel normalized relations with several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, a long-fought prize and a delicate balancing act.

The Aqsa raid might have been the spark for the current round of hostilities, but the fuel was years of anger from Israel’s Arab minority, who make up about 20 percent of the population. They have full citizenship, but rights advocates say they are victims of dozens of discriminatory regulations.

And I would worry about something else as well: As Hamas makes itself the vanguard of the Palestinian cause — and becomes its face — more and more progressives will come to understand what Hamas is — an Islamo-fascist movement that came to power in Gaza by a 2007 coup against the Palestinian Authority, during which, among other things, it threw a rival P.A. official off a 15-story rooftop.

This is not a “progressive” organization — and Hamas will not enjoy indefinitely the free pass it has gotten from the left because it is fighting Netanyahu

Indeed, what Kissinger began in 1973 and Jimmy Carter completed at Camp David was only possible because all these leaders actually agreed to ignore the core problem

So, my message to Biden would be this: You may be interested in China, but the Middle East is still interested in you. You deftly helped to engineer the cease-fire from the sidelines. Do you want to, do you dare to, dive into the middle of this new Kissingerian moment?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deployed Border Police forces Wednesday, saying that Israel will "stop the anarchy and restore governance to the cities of Israel, with an iron fist if needed, with all forces needed and all authorities required."

Already today, noted Ben-David, half of Israel’s adult population is so poor that they do not pay any income tax at all. In 2017, just 20 percent of the adult population supplied 92 percent of all income tax revenue, he said.

President Biden has spoken to Mr. Netanyahu and repeated the usual formula about Israel’s right to self-defense. The American leader also dispatched an experienced diplomat, the deputy assistant secretary of state Hady Amr, to urge de-escalation on both sides.

In Washington, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, when asked about American objections to a Security Council meeting, told reporters on Thursday that “we are open to and supportive of a discussion, an open discussion, at the United Nations,” but wanted to wait until early next week.

“This, I hope, will give some time for the diplomacy to have some effect and to see if indeed we get a real de-escalation,” Mr. Blinken said.

The grainy video that Mr. Gendelman shared on Twitter on Wednesday, which purportedly showed Palestinian militants launching rocket attacks at Israelis, was removed on Thursday after Twitter labeled it “misleading content.” Mr. Gendelman’s office did not respond to a request for commen

Another study, out of the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, showed the vaccine to be 98 percent effective among 102 medical workers who had received both shots and suggested that recipients of the double dose are unlikely to become carriers of the virus. “There is definitely reason for optimism,

But Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science found that a single dose of Pfizer’s vaccine was significantly less effective than had been indicated by the company’s clinical study.

epidemiologists said Israel might be able to achieve 80 percent immunity among its highest-risk groups by February and 95 percent of that population by March.

Netanyahu said Israel could be a “world laboratory for herd immunity.”

“When anti-vaccine citizens of other countries will look at us and say, all right, Israel has vaccinated and then started to have parties, to go back to life, they’ll want in, too. This will have a positive impact for all of humanity.”

Hundreds of forces that were partnering with the United States to fight ISIS are now relocating and refocusing to fight Turkey and defend themselves. The Washington Post reports that the pace of Kurdish operations against ISIS has "significantly tapered off," as the Kurds have had to deprioritize their battle against the Islamic State because they've lost our support -- and because they have to focus on protecting themselves from Erdogan.

What's more, the United States' withdrawal from Syria will hurt our ability to gather intelligence there, as we lose eyes and ears on the ground and direct access to human intelligence networks. Our mission against ISIS in Syria was not over, and our withdrawal has only increased the risks posed by the thousands of ISIS members still on the loose in Syria.

Trump's reckless decision will impede our future ability to persuade partners to work with us on counterterrorism missions around the world.

Putin has hosted summits with key players in Syria before -- including one last February in Sochi between Russia, Iran, Turkey and Syria. Putin is scheduled to meet again with Erdogan this week and will probably try to trump the Trump administration's efforts to negotiate a "pause" in Turkey's military operations.

With Russian and Syrian forces now occupying former US bases in northeastern Syria and former US allied forces turning to both Assad and Russia for protection, we may have to rely on one of our biggest enemies -- Russia -- to work with Turkey to ensure the bloodshed stops.

Trump says he doesn't care if Russia (or China, or Napoleon Bonaparte) ends up protecting the Kurds, but he probably doesn't understand what Russia stepping in to fill our shoes means longer-term, as more countries turn to Putin, instead of to the United States, for support.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Israel last week to try to assuage Israeli officials' concerns about what a US withdrawal would mean for Iran's ability to operate in Syria. US support for Israel has been a central piece of US foreign policy for decades, and President Trump likes to paint himself as the best friend Israel has ever had. Concurrently, he's also made countering Iran one of the pillars of his foreign policy approach.Yet even though Trump is leaving a contingent of US troops at the al-Tanf base in south-central Syria to deter Iran, the downgrade in US troop presence in Syria, and Trump's tweets about how Syria isn't a US problem, are likely causing Israeli officials to question how serious Trump is about protecting Israel from Iranian attacks from within Syria.

Trump's policy, then, is to gamble on some shady characters to keep Iran in check. That's a dangerous game to play based on Iran's history of attacking Israel from anywhere it can.

Foreign policy on the fly is Trump's calling card. Other leaders are probably banking on the fact that speaking with him alone -- without experts around -- is a sure way to get what they want out of him. Now that Erdogan's gotten Trump to go against his own experts' advice during one-on-one phone calls at least twice, the President is scrambling to come up with some semblance of a strategy. He's outsourcing our security to Erdogan, Putin and maybe even Assad to take care of what should be key US missions.

Sanders said Israel must sit down with the Palestinians and negotiate peace. And, in a direct assault on Israel’s current extremist government, he said the $3.8 billion of aid the US gives to Israel annually should be made conditional on it respecting human rights and democracy.

We believe in democracy. We will not accept authoritarianism or racism and we demand that the Israel government sit down with the Palestinian people and negotiate an agreement that works for all parties

3.8 billion is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government, or for that matter to any government at all. We have a right to demand respect for human rights and democracy.

He said that Israel needs “a radical intercession in Gaza to allow for economic development, a better environment and to give people hope there.”

absolutely inhumane. It is unacceptable. It is unsustainable.”

All of the candidates spoke in favor of peace, but Sanders was the most explicit and clear in supporting Palestinian rights and holding Israel’s government accountable for its policies that have undermined the peace process.

Both South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren also suggested leveraging US aid to push Israel toward peace with the Palestinians, but not in explicit terms.

, Sanders is helping to redefine more accurately the tenor of the debate over Israel’s policies. Many politicians and activists who have challenged Israeli policies or criticized the actions of the Israeli government have been denounced as being “anti-Semitic.” Sanders, however, is Jewish. “I think being Jewish may be helpful in that regard. It is going to be very hard for anybody to call me, whose father’s family was wiped out by Hitler and who spent time in Israel, an anti-Semite,” Sanders said.

What J Street, Sanders and the Palestinians who attended this week’s convention are doing is significantly altering the substance of the debate that is taking place in America over Israel’s policies.

It is very possible that a new, more moderate political party led by Benny Gantz will soon take over in Israel. While many note that Gantz is not moderate enough, the fact is that, despite his rhetoric, he is moving away from Netanyahu’s extremism to a more moderate agenda.

If Sanders were to be elected president in 2020, we would be assured of a substantive change in US foreign policy toward Israel.

His approach would be more action than empty rhetoric, which was the case during the Obama administration.

Win or lose in 2020, Sanders will have contributed significantly to redefining the debate over Israel and Palestine to one that is more accurate, realistic and fair.

Some political artists view the Times’s decision to end daily political cartoons as a repudiation of the art form.

“It is their clarity and pointedness, the sharpness of their satire, that make them such powerful vehicles for expressing opinion,”

“There is no ‘on the other hand’ in an editorial cartoon,” the AAEC continued. “This power, understandably, makes editors nervous, but to completely discontinue their use is letting anxiety slide into cowardice.”

“The collapsing space for political cartoons and satirical commentary because editors don’t have the spine to stand up to social-media outrage campaigns is bad for free speech, and bad because political debate benefits from a little humor now and again."

“By choosing not to print editorial cartoons in the future, the Times can be sure that their editors will never again make a poor cartoon choice,” Cagle said. “Editors at the Times have also made poor choices of words in the past. I would suggest that the Times should also choose not to print words in the future — just to be on the safe side.”

a single strong, focused disagreement can be enough to turn a voter against liberalism, especially if liberals seem uncompromising on that issue.

None of this needs to spell doom for liberals; it just requires them to prioritize and compromise.

nstead of recognizing populism as a motley coalition united primarily by opposition to liberalism’s rule, liberals want to believe they’re facing a unitary enemy — a revanchist patriarchal white supremacy, infecting every branch and tributary of the right.

in the long run, the global trend suggests that a liberalism that remains inflexible in the face of variegated resistance is the ideology more likely to be crushed.

President Xi Jinping ended term limits on China's leaders in 2018. You don't even have to mention Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia or any other authoritarian government to see how, all over the world, leaders left and right wing just hold on to power

Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan took power as prime minister in 2003 — was elected president in 2014, then established an "executive presidency" in 2017. He has suppressed a free press and arrested political opponents and academics.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the Israeli parliament to give him immunity from prosecution on bribery and fraud before Israel's next elections in March.

This week, there may have been a message in all the American messiness.

Elections count.

Even an imperfect democracy can give dissident voices the chance to be heard and keep open chances for change.