While Israel grapples with the drama surrounding the military advocate general’s office and the murky diplomatic maneuvers in Gaza, Washington is fast-tracking President Donald Trump’s grand strategy for the Middle East.

The administration is aiming for November 18, the date of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the US. During the visit, the two sides are expected to announce an expanded defensive pact and new arms deals, even before resolving Saudi Arabia’s demand for independent uranium enrichment.

Statements by senior Iranian officials about their determination to rebuild damaged nuclear sites and continue enrichment are likely to be used by bin Salman to justify his nuclear ambitions. In light of this, he is expected to add the demand to the list of conditions for normalizing ties with Israel, after his previous request for a roadmap toward an Israeli-Palestinian political horizon was incorporated into Trump’s 20-point plan.

Saudi Arabia, which welcomed the Gaza ceasefire and voiced hopes for stability, remains, like the United Arab Emirates, skeptical about the feasibility of Trump’s plan for ending the war. Both nations have conditioned their participation in Gaza’s reconstruction on a sustained and stable ceasefire, a phased Israeli withdrawal, the disarmament of the Hamas terrorist organization, and the transfer of authority to the Palestinian Authority or another internationally recognized body.

Trump and his team are likely to try to bundle these stipulations into the normalization deal Israel would be expected to accept.

About a week before bin Salman’s visit, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa is scheduled to visit Washington, where bilateral relations will be discussed. However, his ties with Israel are also likely to come up, in light of ongoing talks aimed at establishing security arrangements between the two countries.

Adding to this volatile mix is the growing tension on the Lebanese front, driven by Hezbollah’s rearmament efforts and the Lebanese government’s failure to dismantle the terrorist group.

US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack recently revealed troubling data about Hezbollah’s remaining firepower and the Lebanese government’s inability to address the threat. Combined with warnings from Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, this has reignited public discussion around the possibility of another round of fighting in Lebanon, despite official rhetoric about peace prospects.

So what does all this indicate?

First, instability remains the defining feature of the region. The intense involvement and close monitoring by Trump and his advisors reflects their understanding that the embers are still glowing on every front.

Second, ambiguity. The ceasefire and diplomatic arrangements in each arena were intentionally left vague to expedite agreements, but this has allowed for divergent interpretations. Reality on the ground will ultimately shape the outcome.

Third, disarmament. The idea that the so-called “resistance axis” can be disarmed through diplomatic agreements is, at best, naïve. An editorial last week on Hamas’ Al-Resalah website predicted that efforts to disarm both Hamas and Hezbollah will fail miserably.

The writers stressed the centrality of armed struggle to the resistance ideology and argued that disarming these groups would effectively spell the end of the axis, an outcome the groups cannot allow. In both Gaza and Lebanon, there is no governing authority capable of enforcing such a disarmament.

Was Israel too quick to ease military pressure?

The famous observation by Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz that war is the continuation of politics by other means has been frequently cited by those arguing that the time has come for diplomacy. But in light of the current picture, it’s worth asking whether Israel was too hasty in scaling back its military pressure.

Either way, it is not too late to learn the lessons and recalibrate.

First and foremost, Israel must avoid trading real strategic gains for vague future promises. This applies to preserving its military presence and freedom of action in Syria, to nuclear enrichment in Saudi Arabia, and to any future diplomatic frameworks with the Palestinians.

Second, Israel must not compromise in the fight to prevent Hamas and Hezbollah from rebuilding and rearming. With all due respect to mediators and even the US, this is a task that only Israel can carry out.

Third, no matter what agreements are signed or understandings reached, reality on the ground will be determined by action. Israel should take advantage of the current moment, while Hamas and Hezbollah are weakened, to impose the arrangements it deems necessary.

This policy may carry risks, of renewed hostilities, friction with mediators, and possibly even with the US administration, but the alternative is far more costly.

Published in  Israel Hayom, November 03, 2025.

Fifty years ago, on November 10, 1975, the United Nations notoriously passed General Assembly Resolution 3379 declaring that “Zionism is racism.” Since then, the UN has become the ultimate cesspool of ferocious anti-Zionism, raw antisemitism, and rank anti-Americanism.

It is time for the United States to lead a global process of repentance and repair by defunding the UN all-together and replacing it with a series of professional bodies free of fecund hostility to Jews/Israelis and liberated from radical anti-American ideologies.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations back in 1975, ripped into the infamous resolution, recognizing it was an attempt to demean America by demeaning its ally. He repudiated what he would later call the “Big Red Lie” as an assault on democracy and decency. And he warned that this libel would enter the international bloodstream.

Alas, he was right. With its perverse Soviet-orchestrated distortions of language, history, and reality, Resolution 3379 “reeked of the totalitarian mind, stank of the totalitarian state” – as Prof. Gil Troy reminds us in an important article this week in Commentary Magazine.

Troy: “With the bully’s instinctive genius, the haters understood what would hurt Israel’s reputation most—and what the world would swallow easily. They showed how to foist broadly-agreed-upon aversions—to racism, to genocide—onto the Jews.”

“Totalitarian anti-Zionism helped Western elites cast Palestinians as noble, oppressed, disenfranchised people of color and Israelis as ignoble, oppressive, racist whites. It helped progressives ignore the Palestinian national movement’s violence, Islamism, sexism, and homophobia. The Red-Green alliance united leftists with Islamists, and Moynihan’s ‘Big Red Lie’ became the ‘Big Red-Green Lie’ that refuses to die.”

Ben Cohen and David May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington detailed this week the extraordinary resources devoted by the UN to the demonization of Israel.

This begins with the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, which drives the Israel-as-colonialist and Israel-as-an-apartheid-state narratives (over $3 million per year over 50 years).

It continues with the UN Palestine Committee and the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People; the Division for Palestinian Rights; the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has been shown to be a close collaborator of Hamas; the UNHCR (High Commissioner for Refugees) special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories; and the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices.
Even more absurd are UNHRC (Human Rights Council) Agenda Item 7, which requires the body to scrutinize Israel’s human rights record at every meeting it convenes (Israel is the only country subject to this treatment); the UN Register of Damages (since 2007 to assist Palestinians in collecting on claims of damages allegedly incurred by the construction of Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank); and so many other virulently hostile bodies.
Then there are the International Criminal Court (ICC) which has issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister, Yoav Galant (on the basis of malevolent falsehoods and serial abuses of its own processes); and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which has falsely accused Israel of illegally occupying the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria.

Grotesque accusations against Israel of genocide, apartheid, and crimes against humanity bounce around the UN, the ICJ, the ICC and non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. They feed these claims into each other’s reports and then repeat and recycle them to create an infernal echo chamber of Israel demonization.

US SENATORS Mike Lee (R-UT), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rick Scott (R-FL) and Reps. Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced the DEFUND Act, which would initiate the United States’ withdrawal from the United Nations, citing in part the U.N.’s actions toward Israel.

But the UN offense is not just about Israel. As researchers Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, Edwin Black, and Claudia Rosett have shown the U.S. government provides more than $20 billion to the UN and related international organizations and multilateral entities – that are pugnaciously anti-American and radically woke too.

The Trump administration started in the right direction by ending US funding for UNRWA. The complete dismantling of UNRWA is the next challenge. Its $1.5 billion budget can much better be spent on real refugee settlement and peacemaking, perhaps through the new US-led stabilization administration for Gaza.

Trump also should reopen the 1947 agreement locating UN headquarters, tax free, in NY. And yes, defunding of the UN all-together may be warranted, at least for a while – as prophylactic treatment.

Personally, I don’t really believe that the UN can be reformed. It operates with no real accountability, no functional moral compass, and no mechanism for acquiring any such vital features. It has developed a tyrant-friendly, diplomatically immune, and collectively irresponsible DNA.

Worse still, as Melanie Phillipps has written, it is an “unstoppable geyser of moral and intellectual corruption. It teaches the West that lies about Israel are truths and truths are lies, and it has turned what the West tells itself is morality and conscience into an agenda of evil.”

It has ensured that the West can no longer distinguish more generally between victim and oppressor, reality and propaganda, right and wrong. Treating the UN and the ‘international law’ it has promoted as the moral arbiters of global order is not just a sick joke. It has made the world sick, too.

ALTHOUGH EVERYBODY knows that the UN is broken, it’s pretty much taboo to call for its shutdown. The usual defense of the UN is that “it may be imperfect,” but “it’s all we’ve got” – a refrain that tends to be accompanied by prescriptions for reforms that either won’t stick or won’t work at all.

The counter argument is this: Is the UN really the best we can do? Do we have to settle for a system that elects Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran to lead human rights councils, women’s rights agencies, and cultural bodies? If the UN is “all we’ve got,” and it can cavalierly disregard slaughters in Syria and Sudan while outrageously branding Israel a war criminal enterprise, then it is way past time to come up with something else!

Therefore, it is time to create alternatives to the UN, like a “Covenant of Democratic Nations,” an UN-successor entity limited to nations governed by democratic principles. This body could nullify crazy acts and nasty resolutions – such as UNESCO’s denial of Jewish Jerusalem. The Covenant also would seek to create a long-overdue new body of reformed and updated international law.

Claudia Rosett’s book What To Do About the UN demurs from this. She feels that the ideal of “world peace” led by democracies is an overreach. It is too driven by ideals that won’t translate easily into action. (Just how will democracy be defined for membership purposes?).

Her guiding principle for replacing the UN is competition, the establishment of professional agencies with no grandiose moral pretensions. Competition is what takes down monopolies, and the UN is the biggest monopoly of them all.

It is a mammoth helped along by immunities, privileges and lavish government contributions, and it is backed by legions of special interest NGOs around the globe that lobby for more.

As a result, Rosett writes, the UN has become like the failed collectivist experiments of the 20th century; those huge old Soviet state enterprises and gargantuan Chinese communist industries. It was and is very hard to shutter these behemoths since they are tied into every aspect of a dysfunctional economy plus their employees’ lives. They are a terrible drain.

You fix this by creating competition. So, Rosett proposes the establishment of several coalitions that are not so much pegged to ideals, but rather are mission-driven by countries with specific shared interests – like NATO during the Cold War.

As for the residual usefulness of some type of global “talking shop” in which even Iran can bluster and Russia can dissimulate – well, if at all, this should be a forum for exchange of views only; for blowing-off steam. Rosett: “It should be a General Assembly minus the votes and minus agencies with multi-billion-dollar budgets. It is not a joke to suggest that it would be better to be housed in a gymnasium somewhere in Iowa (or Siberia) than in a multi-billion-dollar gilded chamber in Manhattan.”

Thinkers and experts need to apply themselves diligently to this task. It is time for those with know-how, resources, and genuine goodwill toward future generations to take an in-depth and non-polemical look at the opportunity cost to the West of cleaving to the UN.

Published in The Jerusalem Post 24.10.2025.

On September 8, the finance ministers of Israel and India signed an investment protection agreement (BIT), a move that significantly upgrades bilateral relations between the two countries. The timing speaks volumes. As uncertainty grips West Asia and tensions between India and the United States are yet to be resolved, this agreement sends an unmistakable message—the Israel-India partnership stands on its own merits.

This also suggests that ambitious regional initiatives such as IMEC, the India-Middle East-Europe Connectivity Corridor, simply cannot succeed without Israel as a cornerstone partner.

The signed agreement is not historic as reported by many, since a mutual investment protection agreement existed between the countries from 1996 until 2017, when the Indian government decided to comprehensively cancel such agreements following an overall policy change. However, this is a very important agreement that places Israel first among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries to sign such an agreement with India. The agreement is expected to increase mutual investments, whose current scope doesn’t reflect the tremendous potential between the countries.

For comparison, Japan is the dominant Asian investor in Israel with approximately 9 per cent of foreign investments in high-tech (2024) and a total of about half a billion dollars. Meanwhile, India, despite a decent presence of several major Indian corporations in Israel for decades, is barely seen in innovative sectors, except for defence, health, and infrastructure.

The gap between India and other Asian countries vis-à-vis Israel is also evident in trade. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics data, while trade between Israel and China stood at over $16 billion (a trade deficit of over $10 billion), trade volume between Israel and India stood at only about $4.7 billion (excluding defence exports and diamonds).

Official sources in both countries hope that the newly signed investment protection agreement will provide tailwinds for a Free Trade Area (FTA) agreement, negotiations for which have been unsuccessful since 2010. However, alongside the bureaucratic difficulties and slow pace of progress, these gaps actually indicate the enormous potential that exists in the Israel-India partnership.

Nowadays, it has become trendy to speak of the strategic partnership with India. At a time when Israel faces an extremely challenging political position in the international arena, many view India as a new wonder and rising power standing alongside Israel despite calls for boycotts. However, the strategic partnership between Israel and India is not new but rather evolving.

For many decades, Israel-India relations focused primarily on two strategic areas: agriculture and defence. The first is strategic because Israeli knowledge assists approximately 800 million farmers in India; the second is strategic because Israel has proven itself as a reliable defence partner to India throughout its various wars against Pakistan, in 1965, 1971, in the Kargil War in 1999, and in the recent escalation (Operation Sindoor). But despite cooperation in these areas, relations remained low-profile most of the time.

The transformation began in 2014, and I witnessed it firsthand as director of the Asia-Pacific Department at the National Security Council. Months before the election that would sweep Narendra Modi to power, I advised the Israeli National Security Advisor that Modi’s victory would create an unprecedented opportunity for a bilateral breakthrough—if we moved swiftly to capitalise on it. The response was immediate and comprehensive: every government ministry mobilised to map obstacles, opportunities, and priorities for the new relationship.

All this ultimately led to a government decision to advance relations between the countries, PM Modi’s historic visit to Israel, and reciprocal visits by PM Benjamin Netanyahu to India. Thanks to the Abraham Accords, this partnership also aspired to positively influence the regional level with the establishment of I2U2 (2021) and subsequently the announcement of the IMEC connectivity initiative (2023). Recognition of the strategic importance of strengthening the partnership with India became a priority.

Two years of war have only sharpened these strategic calculations. Beyond bilateral cooperation in investment, trade, defence production, and political support, India serves as a natural bridge between East and West and opens a door for cooperation between Israel and the Global South.

As one of PM Modi’s closest advisors shared with me at the time, “The partnership and friendship between India and Israel must be built as a partnership for generations, yielding fruits not only for both countries but also for the regional environments in which they operate.”

This investment agreement represents more than economic coordination—it is the latest milestone toward that generational vision. In an era when strategic partnerships often prove fragile and self-interested, the Israel-India relationship offers something increasingly rare: a foundation built on complementary strengths, shared democratic values, and mutual respect that transcends the political weather of any given moment.

Published in Firstpost, September 12, 2025.

לורם איפסום דולור סיט אמט, קונסקטורר אדיפיסינג אלית לפרומי בלוף קינץ תתיח לרעח. לת צשחמי צש בליא, מנסוטו צמלח לביקו ננבי, צמוקו בלוקריה.

Hamas’s propaganda against Israel resonates widely in the Western world, not out of moral compassion for perceived victims, but because classical antisemitism still pulses beneath the surface—and since October 7, it increasingly bubbles above it.

Hamas’s “starvation” campaign and accusations of Israeli genocide represent a direct continuation of one of history’s most notorious antisemitic documents: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Like that conspiratorial text claiming Jews sought world domination, today’s lie alleges Israel commits genocide against Palestinians. As then, the falsehood spreads like wildfire, now through digital platforms.

In recent weeks, the world watched with concern as images of three allegedly starving Gazan children dominated international headlines, further cementing the false narrative of Israeli genocide in Gaza. In reality, these children—who became symbols of supposed “genocide”—suffered from genetic diseases, not starvation. Moreover, one of them received medical treatment in Italy with Israeli coordination, another was treated in an Israeli hospital, and in the third widely circulated photo, the sick child appears in the arms of his healthy mother.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered statements to the media, dedicating significant time to refuting Hamas and the international community’s claims about hunger and starvation in Gaza. However, this move—important as it is for Israeli public diplomacy—remains a case of too little, too late. The facts, as the Prime Minister accurately presented them, no longer interest anyone.

Meanwhile, the only intentional starvation occurring in Gaza is what Hamas inflicts on Israeli hostages. The shocking images of Evyatar David and Rom Braslavsky, which Hamas itself released to pressure Israel, clearly show who is deliberately starving whom. In one video, viewers can even see the healthy, full hand of the terrorist offering Evyatar a can of food. Yet even when the world saw this documentation, it chose to equate the hostages’ condition with Gaza’s humanitarian situation.

Regarding the existing hardship in Gaza, context matters. This is the result of a war forced upon Israel. Nevertheless, while fighting, Israel provides extensive humanitarian aid—thousands of trucks, airdrops, and food distribution stations through the Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) to ensure aid reaches civilians, not Hamas. Yet Hamas itself violently hijacks food convoys, threatens Gazans who cooperate, and insists aid flow through the UN to preserve its control.

The disturbing ease with which Western nations embrace Hamas’s lies stems from classical antisemitism resurging. This worsens due to a dangerous alliance between progressive liberal elements and Islamist communities wielding electoral power in the West. Countries like France, Britain, Canada, and Australia are prepared to make a historic error by recognising a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September—effectively rewarding Hamas for the October 7 atrocities. Despite the facts, it remains convenient to blame the Jewish state.

This propaganda’s consequences manifest beyond the political domain. Militarily, entrenched false narratives constrain IDF operations and encourage weapons embargoes against Israel, distancing Israel from achieving war objectives while draining resources toward missions that divert attention from defeating Hamas. This demonisation of Jews has a direct impact on the safety of Jews worldwide. Indeed, we witness a sharp increase in antisemitic violence, including murders.

Some argue Israel’s battle for global consciousness is doomed against 1.5 billion Muslims. I argue that the Muslim population isn’t the problem—parts of it support Israel, as proven by the Abraham Accords and relations with Azerbaijan, for example. The real issue is classical antisemitism resurging in Western society, adopting false narratives.

International organisations under UN auspices strengthen Hamas’s lies through pseudo-academic reports based on data provided by Hamas, echoing their messages. As we witness, these don’t stop at public opinion-shaping but lead to concrete actions against Israel: embargoes and recognition of a Palestinian state.

Even when some recognition announcements specify Hamas must disarm and won’t be part of Palestinian leadership, this move effectively rewards Hamas for the October 7 horrors and is expected to strengthen its position among Palestinians—not only in Gaza but also in Judea and Samaria at the Palestinian Authority’s expense.

We must, therefore, continue fighting for the truth. The Jewish people are indigenous to the Land of Israel, and Israel’s existence represents Jewish restoration after the Holocaust and exile—victory over Christian and Muslim colonialism in the Land of Israel. This battle isn’t just against Hamas in Gaza; it’s tied to our obligation as Jews to say, “Never Again”.

Published in Firstpost, August 14, 2025.

Under President Trump’s trade policy, the US has imposed new tariffs on more than 90 countries, following the expiration of the 90 days allocated for negotiations on trade terms on August 1. One of the countries affected by this is India, on which tariffs of 25 per cent were imposed, plus an American threat to impose sanctions that could take effect on August 8 due to India’s close relations with Russia.

These developments follow a series of recent disputes between India and the US, including tensions over India’s role in Brics and President Trump’s self-proclaimed position as a ‘peacemaker’ in the India-Pakistan conflict. Trump has also threatened to impose 200 per cent tariffs on the pharmaceutical sector — a key industry for India.

From the economic angle, the imposition of tariffs can have a rationale, since the US was in a trade deficit with India of over $45 billion in 2024, an increase of 5.4 per cent compared to the previous year. President Trump also considered the trade barriers, mainly in the agriculture sector in India, as unfair. The “Make in India” regulations contributed to the difficulty of doing business in India.

Nonetheless, the US is India’s leading trade partner with a total trade volume of approximately $132 billion, and the countries’ leaders set a target of $500 billion in trade volume by 2030 with the intention of deepening the strategic partnership between the countries. Additionally, the imposition of tariffs on India can be mitigated by the future free trade agreement between the countries, which is still under negotiations. Moreover, goods exports from India to the US are worth only 2 per cent of the US’ total imports.

However, the geopolitical implications of the American move vis-à-vis India are much more significant and raise concerns for the future of the strategic partnership between the countries. Trump, who aspired to end the war between Russia and Ukraine upon entering the White House, discovered that reality is more complex and is now working to increase pressure on Russia and the countries that assist it. In this context, India’s energy and security ties with Russia – India is the largest importer of Russian oil (alongside China), which constitutes about 35 per cent of all its imported oil, and Russia is India’s leading arms supplier – have placed a target on India’s back.

According to expert assessments, if India stops importing Russian oil following American threats, oil imports from other sources are expected to cost around $10 billion more per year. India is the world’s third-largest oil importer, and it has exploited well the geopolitical reality following the Russian invasion of Ukraine to import Russian oil at low prices, since it is not party to Western sanctions on Russia. Even so, there is a sense of a double standard, as the US and Europe bought some of the Russian oil from India.

At this stage, the Indian government is examining the implications of Trump’s announcement. While several reports claimed that tankers carrying Russian oil were not allowed to unload in India and refineries are not accepting Russian oil, some voices are calling to continue importing Russian oil.

At least regarding security procurement from Russia, India has significantly reduced the Russian share in the Indian security sector, from 72 per cent in 2010-2014 to only 36 per cent in 2020-2024. This trend gained momentum after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which limited Russia’s ability to supply extensive quantities of arms, and it aligned well with the Indian government’s military modernisation efforts.

Beyond the Russian context, the level of tariffs imposed on India places India in an inferior position vis-à-vis other countries in Asia, including its neighbours. For example, the US imposed 15 per cent tariffs on Japan, despite the American trade deficit with Japan being estimated at $70 billion, more than the deficit with India. The US imposed only 15 per cent tariffs on South Korea, and Indonesia, which chose compromise over confrontation, managed to reduce tariffs from 32 per cent to 19 per cent. Additionally, Vietnam, which constitutes an alternative to manufacturing in China, suffered 20 per cent tariffs, and even Pakistan ended up with lower tariffs of 19 per cent.

Simultaneously, the US continues to conduct negotiations with China regarding tariffs between the countries, with a decision on the matter expected to be made on August 12. Understanding between the superpowers that will lead to the removal of some of the tariffs on China, combined with sanctions on India, could harm broader geopolitical interests within the framework of the partnership between the US and India, to the point of shattering the partnership and destabilising the geopolitical architecture in the Indo-Pacific.

But not all bad. India has an opportunity now to reshape its partnership with the US, focusing more on technological cooperation and interregional digital connectivity initiatives than trade in goods, as expected from a sustainable and developed country it aspires to be. Therefore, the ongoing trade talks with the US should reflect India’s advancement in the technological sphere and ensure India’s deserved place in global technological supply chains.

Although signing a free trade agreement will be a major bilateral milestone, it will also send a strong signal to India’s neighbours and to China, recognising the geopolitical importance of India to the US. This will also make a notable contribution to the success of the IMEC initiative (India-Middle East-Europe connectivity), as well as to the distancing of the “Global South” from China.

Published in Firstpost, August 06, 2025.