Economics blogger Paul Amsterdamski, posts about his inquiries into the workings of government privatization and the scope of its outsourcing programs in Israel. The results? Only the Ministry of Health was able to provide data. Most other Ministries did not respond or were unable to provide data. The Ministry of Finance clarified to Amsterdamski that […]

Professor Avishay Margalit, a Molad Senior Fellow, reviews Hadara Lazar's book Out of Palestine: The Making of Modern Israel, and paints a fascinating picture of the relative benevolence of British colonizers, especially when compared to the current regime of occupatoin which does something the British never tried: threaten to disinherit those it rules.

Last Friday Mahmoud Abbas gave an interview to the Lebanese television network Al–Miadin. Elchanan Miller explains the Palestinian president's position: He comes across as both defensive of Palestinian national interests and aspirations while still demonstrating the understanding that, ultimately, there is no choice but to compromise with Israel on some of the most important issues.

Two years after the Tunesian Arab Spring, radical Salafi-Islamist elements are broadening their goals and widening their impact, looking not only towards liberalization but towards a moderate Islamisim. Dr. Nimrod Horwitz from “Can Think” suggests the challenges such a moderate Islamist regime would face and analyzes the direction it might take as a result.

His private blog, “Calcalist” writer Saul Amsterdamski paints a bleak picture of what will happen as high-level officials ignore mid-level workers in the Ministry of Finance as they warn against the emerging gap between forecasted and actual state revenues. According to Amsterdamski's sources, senior officials “ignored the numeric data, or rejected them, and cooperated with […]

The New Yorker quotes the Molad's Academic Director, Dr. Assaf Sharon, as he attacks the “irreversibility” thesis. Sharon explains that if the government were to decide to remove settlements it could certainly do so — most of the settlement project is simply not self-sustaining. The article itslef is a powerful overview of Naftali Bennett's ascendance […]

U.S. national security expert and 28-year CIA veteran Paul Pillar takes Molad's recent report and applies its findings the the United States. He concludes that the United States tends to have a policy problem, not a “hasbara [public diplomacy] problem”

Michael Lind, co-founder of the New American Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, explains why he abandoned the American right. Lind traces the rise of the messianic religious right, the neoconservative New American Century right, and the utopan libertarian right of today. He wonders what will come next, and reminds us that “a sane society can never […]

Vladimir Putin, a man who incontestably sits at the helm of the Russian state, has been held aloft for the last decade by rising oil and gas prices. With them came the promise of stability and economic growth. But a drop in gas and oil prices foreshadow hard times ahead for the Russian president, and potentially […]

The widely-read Candaian daily “The Globe and Mail” reminds us that the official narrative of 2013 will be shaped at the ballot box. Israel is included in a list of influential countries soon to hold elections whose outcome will reflect the disconnect between our stagnant electoral choices and an ever-dynamic political sphere. The article notes […]

Dror Ze'evi responds to Naftali Bennett's remarks to Ari Shavit about “untrustworthy” secular Zionism. Ze'evi strikes back, reminding us that the essence of the state and culture of Israel was built throught the “existential Zionism” of secular Israelis. Bennett's Zionism, it seems, misses much of Israeli history.