Daniel Pipes

Islam’s Image Problem

Americans are increasingly negative about Islam and Muslims - or so found an important survey that the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press published last week. Perhaps the most dramatic change has been the jump in Americans who find that Islam, more than...

Israel’s Best Weapon?

Middle Easterners were widely puzzled in early 1994 when some leading American politicians, including Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), forwarded more assertive, tougher positions vis-à-vis the Palestinians than did the government of Israel....

“A Shot at Peace”: Can the U.S. Enforce the “Road Map”

The goal, everyone needs firmly to keep in mind, is not the signing of more agreements but (short-term) the ending of terrorism and (long-term) the Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state.

U.S. to Israel: Do As We Say

In an agreement brokered last month by U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Palestinian terrorist groups agreed to a temporary cease-fire on condition that Israel ceases its practice of "targeted killings" (executing would-be terrorists before they have a...

The Failure of Middle East Studies

The U.S. Congress broke with a 45-year tradition last week: It permitted a dissident to critique the federal funding for the study of foreign language and cultures - to suggest that the program often serves the very opposite of academia's goals or the nation's...

Learning from the Mistakes of Oslo

Can the "road map" that President Bush just launched do better than the dismal failure of prior Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy? Yes - if it avoids making the same mistakes. The failure of the last round was foreshadowed at its very start, on Sept. 13, 1993 - the day of...

Al-Qaeda’s Limits

A day after suicide bombers killed 29 people in Morocco in mid-May, that country's interior minister noted that the five nearly simultaneous attacks "bear the hallmarks of international terrorism." More strongly, the Moroccan justice minister asserted a "connection to...

War as Social Work?

When President Bill Clinton deployed American troops in places like Bosnia and Haiti, he was criticized for turning foreign policy into "social work" (as Michael Mandelbaum pungently put it). By what authority, many asked in the 1990s, did the president place troops...

Who’s to Blame for the Destruction of Iraqi Museums, Libraries, and Archives?

Who's to blame for the destruction of Iraqi museums, libraries and archives, amounting to what The New York Times calls "one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history"? The Bush administration, say academic specialists on the Middle East....

Columbia VS. America

by Daniel Pipes and Jonathan Calt Harris "U.S. flags are the emblem of the invading war machine in Iraq today. They are the emblem of the occupying power. The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military." Those words were spoken last...

Murder in the 101st Airborne

How did the enemy get into our camp?" That's what Bart Womack, a command sergeant major of the elite 101st Airborne Division, asked himself as a grenade rolled past him after 1 a.m. on Sunday at an American camp in Kuwait. The attacker worked methodically, destroying...

Why the Left Loves Osama (and Saddam)

Has anyone noticed an indifference in the precincts of the far Left to the fatalities of 9/11 and the horrors of Saddam Hussein? Right after the 9/11 attack, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen called it "the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos." Eric Foner,...

The FBI Fumbles

As an FBI agent, Gamal Abdel-Hafiz could have a key role helping America's premier anti-terrorist force protect the United States from harm. But evidence from high-profile terrorism cases suggests that Abdel-Hafiz, an immigrant Muslim, twice refused on principle to...

Terrorist Professors in the United States

"It was quiet in [Cooper Hall] 464 Thursday night," noted the student newspaper, "where [Sameeh] Hammoudeh's 6 p.m. Arabic IV class was scheduled to meet. Two students who hadn't heard of his arrest came to class, and a substitute was assigned to teach in Hammoudeh's...

Bush on Israel: Heartburn for All

Consistency and predictability are core strengths of George W. Bush as a politician. Be the issue domestic (taxes, education) or foreign (terrorism, Iraq), once he settles on a policy he sticks with it. There is no ambiguity, no guessing what his real position might...

Polls, Palestinians and the Path to Peace

Why are Palestinians so angry at Israel? There are two possible reasons. Political: They accept the existence of a Jewish state but are angry with this or that Israeli policy. Rejectionist: They abominate the very existence of Israel and want to destroy it. Which is...

The Rot in America’s Universities: Islands of Repression in a Sea of Freedom

TORONTO - How fares freedom of speech at Canadian universities? It looked pretty grim back in September 2002, when a mini-intifada prevented Benjamin Netanyahu, former prime minister of Israel, from speaking at Concordia. Then last month, Ali Hassan and his Middle...

An Axis of Appeasement: Why the “Old Europe” Balks

Leading French politicians made some remarkably defeatist pronouncements last month. Rejecting any U.S. military action against Iraq, President Jacques Chirac said that "War is always the admission of defeat, and is always the worst of solutions. And hence everything...

After Saddam?

Outsiders wonder if the U.N. Security Council will endorse Washington's goal of toppling Saddam Hussein. But policy insiders assume an American war and an American victory, followed by Iraq's rehabilitation. For insiders, the main issue is the extent of U.S. ambition...

The Enemy Within

The day after 9/11, Texas police arrested two Indian Muslim men riding a train and carrying about $5,000 in cash, black hair dye and boxcutters like those used to hijack four planes just one day earlier. [The police held the pair initially on immigration charges...