Saudi Arabia has experienced budgetary deficits in every year since 1983, in sharp contrast with its large surpluses of the previous decade. Between 1983 and 1992 the cumulative deficits of Saudi Arabia amounted to $141 billion, while in the previous decade its cumulative surpluses had totalled $107 billion.
Now that the drama surrounding the Israel-PLO signing ceremony has passed, it is critical to consider just what this accord means for the future of the Arab-Israel conflict. Are we speaking about a historical reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians that will bring a new era of stability to the Middle East? Or will many of the struggles of the past just be rechanneled within new parameters?
The Islamic Jihad is one of the most complex and dangerous of the Arab terrorist organizations, with cells in many Middle Eastern countries and, apparently, in Europe as well. These groups generally act on their own initiative without coordination, sometimes even within the same country. All these groups share a fundamentalist Islamic ideology which espouses holy war (jihad) against the infidels, and which is under the powerful ideological-religious influence of the Islamic revolution in Iran.
The Madrid and Washington peace talks have elevated the question of the Palestinians to new heights of international interest. The reason for this is directly tied to the results of the Second Gulf War (the First Gulf War was the Iran-Iraq War). The Americans had promised Israel that as a result of the war many things would change in the Middle East, but many things did not change.
The Hamas movement is an offshoot of the Moslem Brotherhood in the Israeli-administered territories, or as defined in the second and fifth articles of the Hamas Charter: "Hamas–the Islamic Resistance Movement–is a division of the Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine.
[Editor’s Note: After Syria’s appearance at the Madrid Peace Conference, we must remind ourselves with whom Israel must deal. The U.S. needs to be reminded, too; hence, this Special Report.]
The world has now entered a period in which the end of the classic colonial era and the beginning of the Third World is coexisting with the end of the Cold War and the absence of Soviet-American confrontation. Indeed, it is often now said in East Europe, for example, that the Communist era will be seen historically as a 45-year interregnum and that the 1930s are in many ways being resurrected.
The first results of the Council of Jewish Federations-sponsored demographic study of the population of the United States Jewish community now have been released. They include good news, strange news, and bad news. First the good news: There are 5,510,000 self-defined Jews in the United States as of 1990. This is 300,000 more than the 5.2 million self-defined Jews in the 1970 study.
The world is moving into a new era in international relations in the wake of the apparent end of the forty-year Cold War. After viewing the first year of the Bush administration following eight years of the markedly pro-Israel Reagan administration, one may begin to assess the impact of this changing world on U.S.-Israeli relations.
Most of the focus on Arab-Israeli relations over the last two decades has centered on the situation of the Arabs in the administered territories, to the neglect of the Arabs in Israel. Yet the intifada has triggered scattered acts of violence by Israel’s Arabs as well, mandating a new look at this community.
Jews have lived in the Arab-speaking countries of western Asia and North Africa for millennia. Indeed, in certain countries such as Iraq, Yemen and Morocco, Jewish communities can be traced back to the period of the first exile, following the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. If one includes the Muslim but non-Arab countries of Iran and Turkey, more than one million Jews lived in this region before the establishment of Israel in 1948.
One Shabbat in July 1987, for the first time since the synagogue was built 419 years ago, there was no minyan in the fabled Paradesi Synagogue of Cochin. Since the beginning of 1987, the population of Jew Town, once about 300, has diminished from 33 to 29 due to immigration to Israel. Similar forlorn scenarios are being repeated throughout India.
During two decades of Jewish communal service, I have been continually confronted by the numerous paradoxes I see in American Jewish life today. The following list of fifteen paradoxes represents my personal assessment. The list is not exhaustive but, for me, intriguing.
