Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Wednesday that protests at U.S. universities against Israel’s war in Gaza were “horrific” and should be stopped, using his first public comments on the subject to castigate the student demonstrators and portray them as antisemitic. Mr. Netanyahu’s comments could harden division over the demonstrations. They could also […]
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After weeks of delays, negotiations and distractions, Israel appeared to hint this week that its assault of Rafah — a city teeming with displaced persons above ground and riddled with Hamas tunnels below — was all but inevitable. In what some analysts and residents of the city saw as a sign of preparations for an […]
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Israel has not provided evidence to support its allegations that many employees of the main U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees are members of terrorist organizations, according to an independent review commissioned by the United Nations that was released on Monday. The review did not address Israel’s allegation that a dozen employees of the agency, known […]
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Israel’s military operations in Gaza have weakened Hamas. Most Hamas battalions have been degraded and are scattered. Thousands of its members have been killed, and at least one senior military leader has been eliminated. Yet Israel has not achieved its primary goals of the war: freeing hostages and fully destroying Hamas. The war and the […]
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The United States is considering imposing sanctions on one or more Israeli battalions accused of human rights violations during operations in the occupied West Bank, according to a person familiar with the deliberations. Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Saturday called the possibility of the Biden administration’s placing such sanctions “the peak of […]
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President Biden’s behind-the-scenes crisis management appears to have helped stop a wider war from igniting in the Middle East — for now. But that tactical win for the administration is actually part of its much larger strategic failure in the region. Over the past two weeks, Mr. Biden has scrambled to ensure that the unprecedented […]
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After Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, pro-Israel political groups put the Democratic Party’s most outspoken critics of the Jewish state on notice: An avalanche of spending was coming to either unseat them or force them to change their posture on the Middle East. But the first expeted target of that avalanche, Representative Summer Lee […]
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Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel last October, the deadliest in Israeli history, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future has seemed bleak, with critics blaming him for the security failure and his poll ratings plummeting. But a confrontation between Israel and Iran this week — including on Friday when Israel retaliated against last weekend’s missile […]
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For more than a decade, Israel has rehearsed, time and again, bombing and missile campaigns that would take out Iran’s nuclear production capability, much of it based around the city of Isfahan and the Natanz nuclear enrichment complex 75 miles to the north. That is not what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet chose to […]
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A group of left-leaning House Democrats is urging its colleagues to oppose the $26 billion aid package for Israel expected to pass on Saturday, hoping to maximize the number of “no” votes from the party in a bid to send a warning to President Biden about the depth of discontent in his political coalition over […]
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Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’ Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music The columnist Thomas L. Friedman joined the hosts of “Matter of Opinion” this week to unpack Israel’s and Iran’s latest attacks, what they mean for Gaza and the implications for the region writ large. Below is a lightly edited transcript of […]
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During the Darfur genocide and humanitarian crisis two decades ago, then-Senator Joe Biden passionately denounced then-President George W. Bush for failing to act decisively to ease suffering. Biden expressed outrage at China for selling weapons used to kill and maim civilians, and he urged me to write columns demanding the White House end needless wretchedness. […]
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The United States and European allies joined together on Thursday to impose new sanctions on Iranian military leaders and weapon makers, seeking to punish Iran for its missile and drone attack on Israel last weekend, while imploring Israel not to retaliate so strongly as to risk a wider war. White House officials said the sanctions […]
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Israel was mere moments away from an airstrike on April 1 that killed several senior Iranian commanders at Iran’s embassy complex in Syria when it told the United States what was about to happen. Israel’s closest ally had just been caught off guard. Aides quickly alerted Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser; Jon Finer, […]
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Israel was mere moments away from an airstrike on April 1 that killed several senior Iranian commanders at Iran’s embassy complex in Syria when it told the United States what was about to happen. Israel’s closest ally had just been caught off guard. Aides quickly alerted Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser; Jon Finer, […]
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Israeli leaders on Tuesday were debating how best to respond to Iran’s unprecedented weekend airstrike, officials said, weighing a set of options calibrated to achieve different strategic outcomes: deterring a similar attack in the future, placating their American allies and avoiding all-out war. Iran’s attack on Israel, an immense barrage that included hundreds of ballistic […]
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Iran’s missile and drone attack on Israel over the weekend was a game-changing escalation that requires some game-changing rethinking on the part of Israel and its most important ally, the United States. I call it “the three-state solution.” It begins with the recognition that there is probably zero hope for any resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian […]
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It was so close. Had just one missile or drone gotten through and killed a lot of Israelis, American officials feared, the region could have gone up in flames. So when Israeli and U.S. forces, with help from Arab allies, managed a near-perfect defense against last weekend’s aerial barrage from Iran, it represented not only […]
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Until Iran’s barrage of missiles and drones against Israel, the two countries had avoided open military intrusions into each other’s territory. Tehran most often acted through proxies, and Jerusalem via bombing runs and unacknowledged assassinations in the region. Iran’s unprecedented attack this weekend, which failed to kill a single Israeli, has perhaps now opened the […]
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As Israel’s leaders continued on Monday to mull a possible response to the massive Iranian aerial attack over the weekend, they faced several choices, all of which carry their own risks. In the past, Israel has hit back hard when its enemies attacked, hoping to discourage further hostilities. A cross-border raid in 2006 by Hezbollah, […]
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An uneasy calm Investors are breathing a sigh of relief on Monday. Global stocks are in the green and oil prices have retreated from last week’s gains after Iran’s unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel was mostly neutralized in the skies. But the calm could be short lived, as world leaders and markets focus […]
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Within moments of Israel and its allies shooting down a fusillade of Iranian missiles and drones this weekend, many began wondering what the latest exchange between Israel and Iran would mean for the war in the Gaza Strip. The Iranian attack was retaliation for what was widely believed to be an Israeli strike this month […]
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In a deeply divided Israel, even the dramatic scene above the country’s skies on Sunday is open to political interpretation. For supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s display of defensive technology against an Iranian salvo that included hundreds of drones and missiles proves Mr. Netanyahu has long been right to warn about the threat […]
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It would be easy to be dazzled by the way Israeli, American and other allied militaries shot down virtually every Iranian drone, cruise missile and ballistic missile launched at Israel on Saturday and conclude that Iran had made its point — retaliating for Israel’s allegedly killing a top Iranian commander operating against Israel from Syria […]
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After several days during which Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei repeatedly vowed that “the evil Zionist regime” would be punished for its April 1 attack on Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus that killed seven Iranian military advisers, including three top commanders, the Islamic Republic struck. More than 300 drones and missiles launched from Iranian soil took […]
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Iran’s missile attack on Israel has ended, for now, and virtually none of the missiles reached their targets. Iran last night launched more than 300 drones and missiles in retaliation for an apparent Israeli strike on an Iranian embassy two weeks ago. Iran’s attacks caused minor damage at one military base, and shrapnel seriously injured […]
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President Biden and his team, hoping to avoid further escalation leading to a wider war in the Middle East, are advising Israel that its successful defense against Iranian airstrikes constituted a major strategic victory that might not require another round of retaliation, U.S. officials said. The interception of nearly all of the more than 300 […]
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The suffering of civilians in Gaza — tens of thousands dead, many of them children; hundreds of thousands homeless, many at risk of starvation — has become more than a growing number of Americans can abide. And yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his ultranationalist allies in government have defied American calls for […]
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American intelligence analysts and officials said on Friday that they expected Iran to strike multiple targets inside Israel within the next few days in retaliation for an Israeli bombing in the Syrian capital on April 1 that killed several senior Iranian commanders. The United States, Israel’s pre-eminent ally, has military forces in several places across […]
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The United States dispatched its top military commander for the Middle East to Israel on Thursday, after President Biden stated that, despite recent friction, American support for Israel “is ironclad” in the event of an attack by Iran. Iran’s leaders have repeatedly vowed to punish Israel for an April 1 strike in Syria that killed […]
Read More The United States dispatched its top military commander for the Middle East to Israel on Thursday, after President Biden stated that, despite recent friction, American support for Israel “is ironclad” in the event of an attack by Iran. Iran’s leaders have repeatedly vowed to punish Israel for an April 1 strike in Syria that killed […]
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