Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia on Saturday denied a report in the London Times that it had given Israel “clear skies” to attack Iran.

Stephen Kinzer is a journalist of a certain cheeky fearlessnes and exquisite timing. In his new book he's ahead of the game again.

"This is language that we have not heard since the time of Gamal Abdul Nasser." Thus wrote the influential chief editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, referring to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's fiery response to the Israeli assault on the Gaza flotilla -- adding that such "manly" positions and rhetoric had "disappeared from the dictionaries of our Arab leaders (since the demise of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser)." He lamented, "Arab regimes now represent the only friends left to Israel." (From the CSM,

"I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow mine own advice," says Portia in Merchant of Venice.
She's the cool non-lawyer in lawyer's garb. She delivers the most beautiful tribute to forgiveness - "the quality of mercy is not strained" - and minutes later, shows no mercy whatsoever.
"It is a good divine that follows his own instructions." Again, the hypocrite Portia.

It's official. There is no longer any serious "cost" for defying the United States in the global arena. Unable to win wars or deliver diplomatic coups - and struggling to maintain our economic equilibrium - Washington has lost the fundamental tools for global leadership. And no place does this impotence manifest more vividly than the modern Middle East.

Of George W. Bush's infamous axis of evil, Iraq simmers, North Korea waxes and wanes, only Iran remains firmly in Obama's crosshairs. Two of his closest allies, Israel and India, are now on the outs with Obama. In 1907, erstwhile adversaries England, France, and Russia formed the Triple Entente, generating enduring peace between them and claiming the twentieth century for the West. At the dawn of the twenty-first, India, Iran, and Israel have the opportunity to come together and transform it to an Asian one.

Extreme polemics are anti-peace and they further a cycle of violence. Rabbi Lerner's San Francisco home was defaced by political posters permanently glued on by whom he suspects to be right wing Zionists critical of him and Richard Goldstone, who led a 2009 fact finding mission and authored a U.N. report detailing humanitarian law violations during the Gaza war. Rabbi Lerner is the spiritual head of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue of San Francisco and the editor of Tikkun, a Jewish and interfaith magazine in Berkeley, California.