With the defeat of the Axis Power in 1945, the United States emerged as the strongest military, economic and cultural power on earth. Rather than emulate hegemons of the past, American leaders envisioned a new and different world order.

Their goal was to organize an "international community," establish "universal human rights," and a growing body of "international law." This project required new institutions, in particular the United Nations. President Harry Truman predicted that the U.N. would become "the means of preserving the international peace and of creating conditions of mutual trust and economic and social well-being among all peoples of the world."

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Clifford May

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: "The struggle for Palestine" has long been an axiomatic slogan in the Arab-Palestinian narrative and continues to be used to this day to galvanize the masses—but as the Middle East changes, the power of the phrase may be diminishing.

In his 1974 book Palestinians and Israel, the late Yehoshafat Harkabi wrote that following the Six-Day War,

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Asaf Romirowsky

Litigation surrounding the 2020 presidential election is set to continue for a while, as state legislatures will not report official results until December. Assuming nothing changes, Biden will enter the White House in January. When he does, he will inherit a Middle East policy shaped by his predecessor's most important achievement: the Abraham Accords. The peace agreement between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel can help inform the policies of the incoming Biden administration in a number of key areas.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Jonathan Schanzer

Terror attacks in France just keep on coming. In late September, two people were seriously wounded in a knife attack by a young Pakistani refugee outside the former office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had just republished cartoon caricatures of Muhammad. In 2015, the initial publication of the images sparked an attack that outraged much of the West—the massacre of 12 people at the magazine's newsroom. In mid-October, an 18-year-old Chechen Russian refugee who had grown up in France beheaded Samuel Paty, a teacher, for having shown the cartoons in a civics class devoted to free speech. Paty was slaughtered for "blasphemy" just outside his school in the Paris suburb of Yvelines. The country was still reeling from his brutal murder when, less than two weeks later, a 21-year-old Tunisian killed three people and injured many more at Notre Dame Basilica in the southern city of Nice. The assailant, who had been in the country less than a month, slit the church sacristan's throat, cut a woman's neck so deeply that the police described it as an attempt to decapitate her, and stabbed a third victim multiple times; she died after staggering out of the neo-Gothic church. Only four years earlier in that same city, another Tunisian had driven a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on July 14, killing 86 people.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Judith Miller

Joe Biden and his team are preparing for the herculean task of taking over the enormous federal government. Any president-elect needs to develop a substantive plan of action, which derives from but is far more detailed than a platitude-filled campaign agenda. They do this via the presidential transition, a two-month sprint to get the new team ready. Over the years, transitions have changed, leading to misconceptions about how they work.

Myth No. 1

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Tevi Troy

Will they or won't they? Since the start of the "normalization" wave this summer, speculation has abounded as to whether other regional nations would follow the lead of the UAE and Bahrain (and now Sudan) and establish full diplomatic relations with Israel. President Trump has expressed confidence that quite a few countries will do so in coming weeks.   The Kingdom of Morocco ranks prominently on the list of prospective peace partners. At first blush, the North African nation seems like a natural candidate for "normalization" with Israel. The two countries share major civilizational links – some 10 percent of Israel's population of 9.1 million is estimated to be of Moroccan descent, and many travel back to the Kingdom regularly. Moreover, the Moroccan government has established a vibrant political dialogue with the Jewish state in recent decades, albeit unofficially. As part of that alignment, Morocco has taken a leading role in promoting education about the Holocaust in the Arab World, and trade between the two countries has flourished.   Yet the Kingdom's calculus is complicated by a number of considerations.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Ilan Berman

One hundred years ago this week, an unsung champion of the Zionist cause who has not received his due won a landslide victory in the race for the White House. And since his important contribution to the eventual establishment of the modern State of Israel has largely been overlooked, now would seem to be a fitting time to recall with gratitude what Warren G. Harding did for the Jewish people.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Michael Freund

This multi-part series (Part I here, Part II here, Part III here) focuses on the perspectives of blacks — conservative, liberal or libertarian — who appraise BLM and its agenda. The following selection of commentary by blacks from all walks of life — actors, athletes, businesspeople, civil rights activists, clergy, commentators, physicians and politicians — demonstrates that black public opinion is not monolithic, and that BLM does not speak for all African Americans.

Walter E. Williams, Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, wrote:

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Soeren Kern

The normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates announced earlier this month is a relatively minor adjustment in relations between two countries that were never at war and have been growing closer for years, but it heralds the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict as we thought we knew it.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Gary C. Gambill

There is widespread anticipation of the availability of vaccines to prevent COVID-19 infections so that Americans can get their lives back to some semblance of normal. About four dozen, made with a variety of technology platforms, are now in clinical trials, nine in large-scale safety/efficacy testing.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Henry I. Miller , M.D.