Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS
Israel Kasnett

Israel Kasnett

Israel Kasnett, editor at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, offers expert analysis on Israeli politics, society and regional developments at JNS.org. With a deep understanding of the region, he delivers insightful commentary that challenges media bias and provides a clear perspective on Israel.

As some predicted, while Tehran sought revenge for the U.S. assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, it retaliated in a calculated way so as not to provoke a U.S. response.
The two main obstacles to moving ahead with such relations seem to be public opinion and the Palestinian conflict.
The ICC “ignores international law by inventing a Palestinian state that does not exist and creates a crime that no one in international law has ever been charged with before: the crime of people living in places,” said Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason Antonin Scalia Law School.
The seven-year prison sentence for Israeli-American Naama Issachar as well as the recent questioning of dozens of Israeli travelers has brought the complex relationship between the two countries into the public eye.
Law professor Eugene Kontorovich said for the first time, the ICC has raised a terror program as a possible war crime; still, that “should not whitewash or smokescreen their bias against Israel and the great unlikelihood that they will take any serious action against the Palestinians.”
More than 100 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to U.S. Secretary Mike Pompeo, expressing “strong disagreement” with the State Department’s new policy and urged him to “reverse this policy decision immediately.”
More than that, an effort is underway to recognize centuries of contributions of Jews in the Middle East and North Africa, and to foster relations for the future.
With somewhere between 100 to 200 protesters dead, the question lingers as to whether or not these demonstrations will grow stronger, resulting in significant change or ending in bloody repression and no achievements for the public?