“Extreme threats, surprise direct talks and a barrage of clichés about Israel being thrown under the bus and an unstable leader: everything Israel went through with Hamas in Gaza is now repeating itself with Iran”

Posted on March 26, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Netanyahu cools talk of regime collapse in Iran
Amit Segal
March 26, 2026

It is tempting to try to assess what to expect from negotiations between the United States and Iran based on previous rounds between the two sides. But perhaps the better lesson comes from another corner of the Middle East: Gaza. There, as here, Trump used the exact same threat on the enemy (“to open the gates of hell on them”), and there too Israel suddenly discovered that he was conducting direct negotiations with them. For many, this was proof that Trump had thrown Israel under the bus, that he was unstable, and other worn-out clichés. But the truth was different: Netanyahu’s Israel and Trump’s United States had the same goals, returning the hostages and demilitarizing Hamas. The gap was over the means. Israel believed in military force as the sole solution; Trump believed negotiations could also work. The US president was right, to Israel’s surprise. He secured the return of all the hostages while the IDF still controlled most of the Strip, leaving demilitarization for later. READ MORE

GATESTONE Khaled Abu Toameh: Begging Hamas to Disarm – The Misguided Approach of Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ Someone needs to inform [Trump negotiator] Mladenov that Hamas has already made a choice: to reject disarmament. Over the past few months, Hamas leaders have consistently dismissed demands to disarm and characterized disarmament as a “red line.” Hamas leaders have instead proposed long-term truces (5-10 years) rather than total decommissioning of arms. Another thing the “Board of Peace” and Mladenov do not seem to understand is that Hamas uses ceasefires with Israel to rebuild, regroup, and restock its arsenal and tunnel networks.  The tone of the latest US proposal to Hamas and Mladenov’s holiday greetings appears as if the Trump administration is pleading with Hamas to disarm. 

JINSA The Eroding Shield: Air Defenses Against Iran Although U.S. air defense systems have performed well, the defensive architecture shows signs of deterioration. Gulf nations and Israel both reportedly have warned that interceptor stocks are approaching critical levels. Meanwhile, fragmented national air defense inventories and Iranian damage to radars and sensors are degrading the regional air defense architecture’s ability to sustain effective operations. Air defense support from America’s allies from outside the Middle East have added marginal capability but are coming too slow to address the core shortfalls.

TIMES OF ISRAEL Zamir said to warn cabinet that IDF will ‘collapse in on itself’ amid manpower shortage Military Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir reportedly warned the “IDF is going to collapse in on itself” during a security cabinet meeting this week, as the army deals with mounting operational demands and a growing manpower shortage. “I am raising 10 red flags in front of you,” Zamir told ministers, according a Channel 13 news report on Thursday. “Right now, the IDF needs a conscription law, a reserve duty law, and a law to extend mandatory service,” he was quoted as saying. “Before long, the IDF will not be ready for its routine missions and the reserve system will not last.”

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

“Despite hostility from the American left and right, Israel’s strategic position is better than ever”

Posted on March 26, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

FREE PRESS
The Free Press
Israel Is Unpopular. And It’s Never Had More Friends.
Eli Lake
March 24, 2026

Israel’s public image is in the toilet. On the socialist left, the Jewish state is portrayed as a genocidal colony. On the populist right, Israel and its supporters in America are conniving courtiers who bullied President Donald Trump to launch a war against Iran on its behalf. The numbers back it up too. A Gallup poll released late last month found that more Americans sympathize with the Palestinians than the Israelis for the first time in the quarter century that Gallup has been asking the question. All of this might lead Zionists to despair for Israel’s future. In terms of soft power, Jerusalem is being pummeled by podcasts, protests, and social media. But that is only part of the picture. When it comes to hard power, the stuff of arms sales, diplomacy, and air space, Israel is on a generational run. READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Politics | Leave a comment

“Joe Kent is out the door at the ODNI after blasting President Trump’s Iran policy. Is his boss Tulsi Gabbard next?”

Posted on March 26, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
Who’s the Boss?
Lee Smith
March 23, 2026

The podcasters and senior Trump administration officials who attached themselves like parasites to the president to draw power from him because they have no power of their own are losing in Iran. They’re losing because they have no influence over Trump or his MAGA base, which supports the campaign to stop the terror regime’s nuclear program, by anywhere from 82% to 95%. They’re losing because they lost the argument over Israel on the ground, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proving to be America’s greatest wartime ally since Winston Churchill held off the Nazis until Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought America into World War II. And since the anti-Trump resistance is losing like Iran is losing, also like the Islamic Republic, they’re emptying their arsenal in scattershot fashion in the hope that they’ll hit something to ward off total defeat for at least one more day. READ MORE

FREE PRESS Coleman Hughes: The Myth of the All-Powerful Israel Lobby The idea that the most powerful country the world has ever known is being puppeteered by a country the size of New Jersey—and by a group that collectively accounts for 0.2 percent of the world’s population—is an extraordinary claim. You would expect overwhelming evidence. In reality, there’s little to substantiate it. Criticize America’s foreign and domestic policy as much as you want—there’s plenty to criticize. But don’t blame it on Israel or its supporters. The centerpiece of this narrative is a historical claim: that Israel got the United States into the Iraq War. In reality, Israel’s prime minister came to the White House to caution President Bush against invading Iraq, warning that it would empower Iran, Israel’s real enemy. Bush listened politely, then ignored him and invaded anyway, because American presidents make their own choices, for good and for ill.

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Politics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

“The $3.8 billion America sends to Israel annually isn’t aid. It’s one of the highest-return strategic investments in modern history”

Posted on March 26, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

COMMENTARY MAG
The Media’s Attempt to Drive a Wedge Between the U.S. and Israel
Seth Mandel
March 20, 2026

…It’s certainly true that Israel’s “brand” has taken a hit among U.S. voters. The Trump administration’s apparent contribution to that is based on three major examples in the CNN story. The first is Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s inartful answer to a question that was then chopped up by his critics and presented as proof that Israel dragged America into the war. The administration quickly cleaned it up, but there wasn’t much of a mess to begin with because the Trump team was clearly calling the shots from the beginning and anyone following the war knew immediately to dismiss any ginned-up rumor to the contrary. The second is Joe Kent’s resignation letter. As I wrote this week, the former counterterrorism official’s letter was so conspiracy-ridden that it accused Israel of being responsible for ISIS in Syria. So I chuckled when I read this part of the CNN story…READ MORE

FUTURE OF JEWISH Most Americans don’t realize how much they need Israel. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced recently that Israel would achieve full independence from American military aid, the response in Washington should have been something closer to panic — not because Israel desperately needs America’s $3.8 billion annual check, but because America needs what that investment buys far more than Israel needs the money. Strip away the rhetoric about shared values and historical bonds, which matter but aren’t the point here, and you’re left with a cold strategic reality: American power throughout the Middle East depends almost entirely on having one absolutely reliable partner in a region where literally everyone else is either actively hostile to the United States or so unstable they might collapse and flip sides at any moment.

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

According to a recent survey by the Jewish Federations of North America, millennial Jews — the demographic where Birthright had the greatest penetration — were the only age group to have a majority identify as “Zionist”

Posted on March 26, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

JTA
Birthright participants are more Orthodox, more right-wing and more familiar with Israel than before Oct. 7
Andrew Lapin
March 23, 2026

…More than half of last year’s participants, 54%, had already participated in some variety of Israel programming, up from 38% in 2023, according to Saxe’s report. (Birthright loosened its eligibility requirements in 2014 to allow students who had visited Israel in high school to go again.) About 1 in 5 participants were Orthodox, a more than threefold growth from summer 2023, the last trips before the start of the Gaza war. And 38% of participants attended Jewish day school, up from 23% two years prior. The survey also detected a rightward political shift among Birthright participants. Forty-two percent of 2025’s Birthright participants identified as conservative, and 34% as liberal, a dramatic shift from 2023, when 20% identified as conservative and 57% as liberal. Those who do participate in Birthright still report that it deepens their connection to Judaism, and there is mounting evidence that connection is long-lasting. READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Psychiatrist Ken Levin: Adapted from his new book, “The Canary on the Couch: The Psychology of Jewish Self-Delusions in the Face of Rising Antisemitism”

Posted on March 26, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF ANTIZIONISM
By Kenneth Levin, “Varieties of Jewish Antizionism”
Andrew Pessin
March 22, 2026

[Kenneth] Levin’s essay analyzes contemporary Jewish antizionism as a recurring psychological and historical response to antisemitic pressure rather than a purely principled political stance. He identifies multiple forms, from overtly anti-Israel activism to institutional alignments that downplay threats to Israel while embracing movements hostile to it. Levin situates these patterns within a longer history of Jewish efforts to gain acceptance by internalizing external criticisms, from Enlightenment-era reforms to modern progressive politics. The essay’s central contribution is its argument that antizionism often reflects a maladaptive strategy of appeasement, misdiagnosing antisemitism as a reaction to Israel and thereby weakening both Jewish self-understanding and collective security. READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

“As Passover approaches, Dan Senor speaks with Rachel Goldberg-Polin about how this year’s Seder lands differently”

Posted on March 25, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
USA Today names Rachel Goldberg‑Polin as a Woman of the Year
Sue Serkes
March 19, 2026

USA Today has named Rachel Goldberg‑Polin as one of its Women of the Year. The Jerusalem resident, who was raised in Chicago, became a symbol of the fight to release the 251 hostages abducted during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, onslaught, when terrorists surged through the border and murdered 1,200 people in southern Israel. Goldberg‑Polin’s 23-year-old son, Hersh, was taken hostage from the Nova music festival, where his arm was blown off by a grenade in the Hamas massacre. In August 2024, he was murdered in a Gaza tunnel by Hamas terrorists along with five other captives. READ MORE

CALL ME BACK WITH DAN SENOR Podcast: The WHY of this year’s Passover with Rachel Goldberg-Polin As Passover approaches, Dan Senor speaks with Rachel Goldberg-Polin about how this year’s Seder lands differently. In a moment shaped by war, loss, and uneasy relief, they explore how the rituals of Passover hold both joy and sorrow—and why that tension is the point. From the Exodus story to the symbols on the Seder table, Rachel reflects on memory, meaning, gratitude, and the challenge of holding both relief and restraint. Less about retelling the past, this conversation asks what it means to be free right now.

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Ambassador Ettinger: “The demographic tailwind is now blowing in Israel’s favor. Israel’s Jewish majority in the combined areas of pre-1967 Israel and Judea and Samaria is not threatened. It is growing”

Posted on March 22, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

THE ISRAEL BIBLE
Why Israel Still Has Babies (And the Rest of the World Has Stopped)
Rabbi Elie Mischel
March 22, 2026

For decades, the most powerful argument against Israel’s future was demographic. The claim went like this: between the Israeli Arabs who are full citizens of the state and the Arabs of Judea and Samaria living under Israeli military administration, the Arab population in Israel was growing so fast that Jews would eventually become a minority in their own land…The bomb didn’t go off. It was a dud. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the Jewish fertility rate currently stands at 3.09 births per woman, significantly higher than the Muslim fertility rate of 2.51. The annual number of Jewish births surged 74% between 1995 and 2025, while Arab births in the same period grew by only 21%. Jerusalem’s total fertility rate stands at 4.57 children per woman, more than triple the rate of Washington, D.C. ..Israel isn’t just outpacing the Arabs. It is outpacing everybody. It is the only country in the developed world with a fertility rate above the replacement level, at nearly double that of the next-highest OECD nation. READ MORE

ARUTZ SHEVA The three causes of the West’s crisis: Demography, demography and demography When Zohran Mamdani Defeated Andrew Cuomo, There Were More Muslims than Italian-Americans in New York. “Church in west London engulfed in flames. Another fire that broke out near a church in Northamptonshire is a suspected arson attack.” Two English churches set on fire at night within 24 hours must be a coincidence. As it must be a coincidence that, during the same hours, a church in Germany was also set ablaze. But if you look, you discover that churches in the United Kingdom have faced 3,237 criminal attacks, vandalism and arson between 2022 and 2024 (an average of 8 per day). Even more, 3,700, are the number of the attacks against British Jews in a single year. And then a coincidence looks more like a clue.

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

“The federal government’s latest escalation of its battle with the Ivy League school could be the most severe yet. Harvard called the move “retaliatory” and vowed to defend itself”

Posted on March 21, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

POLITICO
Trump administration sues Harvard over alleged discrimination against Jewish students
Bianca Quilantan
March 20, 2026

The Trump administration on Friday sued Harvard University, accusing the Ivy League school of failing to address antisemitism and discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students. The federal government’s latest escalation of its battle with the university could be the most severe yet as it seeks to stop paying all existing grants to the school and demands Harvard pay restitution of all grant payments made since at least Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel. The lawsuit could also provide an opening to strip the school of all of its federal cash. Since Oct. 7, 2023, the Justice Department says Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard have been “harassed, physically assaulted, stalked, and spat upon,” “endured a hostile educational environment” and were “repeatedly denied access to educational facilities by antisemitic demonstrators.” READ MORE

FREE BEACON Harvard Business Professor Who Protested at Library Now Teaching Israel Divestment ‘Case’ in Class A Harvard Business School professor who participated in a library protest in favor of student anti-Israel protesters is planning to teach a “case” in her class on Friday about divesting from Israeli and other companies because of “their possible complicity in the crisis in Gaza.”

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

“All of Paul Ehrlich’s predictions were not just wrong: They were laugh-out-loud wrong, almost the precise opposite of what would actually occur over the following decades and generations”

Posted on March 21, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

FREE BEACON
Insect-ifying Humanity: The Paul Ehrlich Legacy
Nicholas N. Eberstadt
March 21, 2026

…There were no mass famines in the 1970s, nor have there been any since. Deadly hunger crises in our era are caused by killer governments (Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge; Ethiopia’s Derg; North Korea’s “Dear Leader”), never by Ehrlich’s “population overshoot.” But that is just a foretaste of how completely and utterly wrong Ehrlich got humanity’s future. In the decades since The Population Bomb, human numbers have more than doubled—from about 3.6 billion in 1968 to around 8.2 billion today. Yet in spite of the scale and the tempo of this unprecedented surge of humanity, the world and all its regions are dramatically, incontestably more affluent today. And despite decidedly more rapid population growth in poorer countries over the interim, global per capita GDP was over two-and-a-half times higher in 2024 than in 1968, according to World Bank estimates. READ MORE

Posted in Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment