Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS
Martin Sherman. Credit: Courtesy.

Martin Sherman

Martin Sherman spent seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli defense establishment. He is the founder of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a member of the Habithonistim-Israel Defense & Security Forum (IDSF) research team, and a participant in the Israel Victory Project.

The plethora of emerging parties in Israel does not seem to reflect a commensurate plethora of emerging ideologies.
It could well be that Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayalet Shaked have shrewdly diagnosed an inherent lacuna in Israel’s body politic and have identified a significant, yet untapped constituency of secular hawks.
Unlike Arab terrorist organizations, alleged Jewish “extremists” have no equivalent of Iran to equip them or Qatar to finance them; they have no international offices with communications and supply infrastructures spanning the globe.
Charges of “occupation” of Palestinian land and dispossession of the Palestinians were widespread long before Israel had control of a square inch of the “West Bank.”
Having your disagreeable spouse separate and move off to some distant location, allowing each former partner to live their life in undisturbed peace, is one thing. It is quite another to allow a belligerent spouse to take control of a property overlooking your own—from which he/she can harass you continuously, egged on by similarly inimical neighbors in the surrounding areas.
Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stewardship, Israel has become one of the best performing economies in the world.
Terrorism is always heinous, but it is even more abhorrent when directed against children.
Can or should enemy civilian casualties be considered an operational constraint that precludes reaching necessary operational goals or endangers Israeli forces or civilians?
If back in 2005, on the eve of the “disengagement,” some far-sighted individual had predicted that reality would be as it is today, his caveats would have been disdainfully dismissed as unfounded scare-mongering.
The escalation in the violence emanating from Gaza on the very day after Israel permitted the transfer of millions of Qatari-sourced dollars into the coastal enclave underscores the futility of persisting with conventional wisdom.
The American president’s actions have been hugely supportive of the Jewish state in the face of withering criticism. Unlike his predecessor, he has acted with unprecedented resolve against Israel’s enemies.
The policy of trying to placate Hamas with enhanced humanitarian aid is sadly no less farcical than trying to convert a man-eating tiger into a cuddly bunny rabbit by offering it a diet of premium carrots.