The Truth About the Mideast Fourteen fundamental facts about Israel and Palestine. (NR)
The population of the Jewish state — a state envisaged in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate, and confirmed by the U.N.'s 1947 decision — is now roughly 6,500,000, of whom roughly 20 percent are Arabs (120,000 Christians), Druze, and Bedouin citizens of Israel. Of the more than five million Jewish citizens, about one-half are those Jewish refugees from Arab countries, and their descendants, who fled or left their ancient homeland when massacres, arrests, and ostracism made life impossible (a further 300,000 emigrated to Europe and the Americas, where they number over a million).

Today, a tiny, vulnerable Jewish remnant — scarcely 5,000 persons — remains in all the Arab world, less than half of one percent from the near million who were there in 1948 (this does not include the 50,000 in Turkey and Iran, left of about 200,000 in 1945). These are the forgotten Jewish refugees from Arab lands, from countries that will soon be totally judenrein just as Jordan has been since 1922.

The 22 Arab League countries cover a global surface of over six million square miles, over ten percent of the land surface on earth. Israel, by contrast, covers barely 8,000 sq. miles.

Sandstorm (Martin Kramer)
Offering an alternative reading of the history and politics of the Middle East.

The Genocidal Hamas Charter Yasser Arafat & co. (NR)
The 1988 Hamas charter (an acronym for "Islamic Resistance Movement" in Arabic) is both political and genocidal — yet the United Nations has never denounced it. It claims to be a wing of the International Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded in Egypt in 1922. Hamas is against any Middle East peace process: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors" (Article 13).

Why Invade? The truth about Iraq. (NR)
et me tell you the truth about our reasons for invading Iraq. We are not invading Iraq to protect the credibility of the United Nations. We are not invading Iraq to bring democracy to the Arab world. We are not invading Iraq to save the Iraqi people from poverty and oppression. The reason we are invading Iraq is to prevent Saddam Hussein from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Ray of Hope? The future for Palestinian reform. (NR)
The PLO is a conglomerate of terrorist organizations. Its core, Fatah, monopolizes the claim to represent Palestinian national aspirations. Even after the Oslo agreements were signed in 1993 — in essence establishing a government, the Palestinian Authority (PA) — the PLO was not dissolved. In fact, the PA remains subordinate to the more powerful PLO.

The PLO is an unelected body governed by primary documents enshrining violence and the destruction of Israel. One man, Yasser Arafat, is both the president of the P.A. and the chairman of the PLO. The role of the PLO in Palestinian politics mirrors the distorted condition of the Soviet Union, where state institutions were subordinate to an omnipotent Communist Party. Arafat's extra-constitutional role could be compared to the role of powerful party chairmen for whom the law was a mere tool.

The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (Book)
"One of the most important books on American foreign policy in years. There is no greater strategic challenge than Iraq, and nobody better qualified to tackle it than Kenneth Pollack. To have such comprehensive, high-quality professional analysis available publicly and in real time is simply extraordinary. From now on, all serious debate over how to handle Saddam starts here."
-Gideon Rose, Managing Editor, Foreign Affairs