In Vanity Fair, Fred Burton and Samuel M. Katz explain—minute by minute—what really happened in Benghazi, Libya the night of September 11, 2012 when the U.S. Special Mission went up in flames and led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

George Packer of the New Yorker argues that in Egypt, America “may no longer have the leverage to insure an outcome favorable to its interests or its values, but it should use its remaining influence to help Egypt’s factions move past their own zero-sum game.”

Due to a series of events that demostrated the widespread racism among youth, Assaf David calls on the religious-Zinoist youth movements and educators to take resposibility, or at least stop claiming that such incidents are rare. 

Avner Inbar of Molad takes on the “irreversibility” thesis — that settlement growth functions as a permanent impediment to two states — and and reminds the American Secretary of State, John Kerry that “alarmism about the impending end of the two-state option is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Molad analyst Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis takes Dani Dayan to task for a piece he wrote last week and argues that the recent statements by the Qatari PM accepting land swaps as a part of Arab Peace Initaitive is not interesting or new in and of itself: What is new is the statements' timing.

A group of progressive U.S. organizations have announced a two-week freeze on purchasing advertisement on Facebook, in protest of tactics employed by a new lobby group led by Mark Zuckerberg, the social network's founder. The lobby, FWD.org, seeks comprehensive immigration reform, but has wound up backing projects like the Keystone XL pipeline for political reasons.

The Georgia State Legislature recently decided to sue the State of Tennessee for a piece of land on the river that hasn't been controversial since the Civil War. Influential security blogger Andrew Exum draws up a battle plan as a military defense strategy for Tennassee against the “impending invasion” from the South. A serious piece full of […]

Eva Illouz writes about one Friday morning when she moved from reading Sayed Kashua's weekly Haaretz columnn to listening to a Molad lecture by Moshe Habertal. These experiences frame her thoughts on the differences between liberalism, democracy, and liberal democracy — and how Israel stacks up on each.

The New York Times magazine wasks us through the  battle for Palestinian liberation in Nabi Saleh over the last year. He gives an up-close description of the cycles of protest and violence in the West Bank through the political deadlock.

Efraim Halevy writes how diplomatic relations between Egypt, Hamas, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are perhaps not as moribund as they  may seem at first glance. Though hushed, conversations are going on in the region that may spark some hope.

Democrats may no longer control the American House of Representatives but Obama's amitious State of the union shows us that he wants the White House to set the terms for the next four years, whether that means vast infrastructure investment, higher taxes, or stricter gun control. In this vision, says Wonkblog, “America would be a […]