The recent revelation that Kamala Harris' team asked Pennsylvania's Jewish governor, Josh Shapiro, whether he was an Israeli agent during the vice presidential vetting process shows the dangerous degree to which antisemitic views have infected American politics. This episode, coupled with wider concerns about rising antisemitism on both the left and the right, raises the concern that antisemitism could be impeding Jewish participation in political life at the highest levels. More broadly, it raises the question of whether the recent surge in antisemitism is a temporary phenomenon in a country that had seemingly moved past the world's oldest hatred, or a depressing return to the natural order of things?

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Big changes are afoot in Eurasia. Over the past several months, the region has undergone a series of tectonic shifts, as countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus have recalibrated their respective foreign policies and expanded ties with the West.

This shift is being propelled by real-world worries. Russia's war on Ukraine has sent economic shock waves across the region and underscored the risk of overreliance on Moscow, and the resulting Western sanctions have narrowed the economic and political options available to regional states.

At the same time, China's expanding economic footprint has heightened concerns about long-term sovereignty in those places. As a result, regional governments are increasingly seeking to diversify their external partnerships and reduce their geopolitical vulnerability. (These considerations have been amplified in recent days by the unrest roiling nearby Iran.)

The effects have been dramatic.

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Nicolas Maduro was led to believe that Russian air defense systems would keep American helicopters from landing near his fortified compound in Caracas. He was misinformed.

The Venezuelan dictator also thought that any hostiles who managed to enter his residence would be taken down by his Cuban bodyguards. But Caribbean muscle proved no match for Delta Force special operators relying on actionable intelligence provided by a clandestine CIA team. More than 30 Cubans were reportedly KIA.

President Trump deserves enormous credit for authorizing this intervention, fully aware of the risks entailed but also anticipating significant rewards – for the U.S., Venezuela, and Latin America.

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Israel's recent decision to formally recognize Somaliland has generated a great deal of discussion, primarily through the lenses of geopolitics, security, and regional realignment. That is entirely understandable. Situated along the strategic Gulf of Aden, Somaliland offers Israel a critical diplomatic foothold in the Horn of Africa.

But beyond ports, shipping lanes, and intelligence cooperation lies another, largely overlooked dimension of this emerging relationship: Jewish history. Long before the two countries recognized each other, Jews were already present in Somaliland, leaving behind traces that still whisper to us across the centuries.

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The Trump admin­is­tra­tion's cap­ture of Venezuelan dic­tator Nicolás Maduro on Sat­urday was a US vic­tory on two fronts: the war on drugs and the great-power com­pet­i­tion with China and Rus­sia.

For years, the war on drugs has been fought at home, primar­ily with slo­gans, aimed at chan­ging the beha­vior of Amer­ican cit­izens.

Pres­id­ent Trump upen­ded that feck­less approach in 2025 when he began bomb­ing the narco-ves­sels bring­ing drugs to the United States.

His strategy was con­tro­ver­sial, to put it mildly: Even strong pro­ponents of the US mil­it­ary and fierce oppon­ents of the nar­cok­ing­pins were alarmed by Amer­ica's use of force in the Carib­bean Basin.

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What is a refugee? The 1951 UN Refugee Convention says it is someone outside their country of nationality with a 'well-founded fear of being persecuted' for reasons of race, religion, nationality, social group membership, or political opinion. Yet beyond this legalistic criteria, all definitions include the sense that it is a temporary and undesirable status. The notion that refugees would wish to end their presumed displacement is taken as axiomatic. Yet this is not so for Palestinians, for whom the word "refugee" marks a critical part of their national identity.

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It has been a tumultuous few months for relations between the United States and Russia. Last October, President Donald J. Trump, clearly frustrated by his inability to end Russia's aggression against Ukraine, a war he had vowed as a presidential candidate on more than 50 occasions to end within 24 hours, did something that even his predecessor had declined to do.

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The Biden administration's decision to cut off weapons supplies to Israel during the war in Gaza has raised concerns that the Jewish state is overly dependent on the United States for its security. Washington has supplied Israel with more than 10,000 tons of munitions since October 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered more than 1,200 Israelis. However, the White House has threatened to suspend further arms transfers to restrain the Israeli military by conditioning how American armaments can be used against Hamas and Hezbollah, the Iranian- backed terrorist proxy in Lebanon.

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I can't believe we're having this discussion in September 2023, just as the fall respiratory virus season commences and we're experiencing a new wave of COVID-19, but the politicizers of COVID won't let up. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) this week introduced legislation that "would prohibit any federal official, including the President, from issuing mask mandates applying to domestic air travel, public transit systems, or primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools."

There was also the ill-timed article by John Tierney in City Journal on August 27th claiming that "maskaholics are incorrigible" and everyone should reject masks because "we're rational."

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While the ongoing protests in Syria's southern province of al-Suwayda' against the Syrian government and its policies are noteworthy, the tribal uprising in the eastern countryside of the eastern province of Dayr al-Zur against the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is arguably of greater significance, as it amounts to an actual armed revolt that has posed a serious challenge to the SDF's authority over the area- an authority that was only established because of the American-led campaign against the Islamic State. In turn the revolt raises very serious issues about U.S. policy in the region and the supposed ongoing American mission to ensure the "enduring defeat" of the Islamic State.

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