Ira Sharkansky

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM –You know the fog of battle, when the smoke, noise, and panic are so heavy as to confuse one’s views about what is happening, and which side has an advantage. Politics isn’t all that different. In this case, the fog is not so much the result of smoke as of confusing […]

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Israel’s three week holiday season from Rosh Hashana through Simcha Torah resembles the shorter period in western countries from Christmas through New Years. The western holiday is actually longer than a week, due to pre-Christmas work, school, and bar parties, and time in early January for sobering up. What is common to

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Islam is a problem for the faithful, as well as for the rest of us. Its 1600 years of accumulated doctrines may not differ in essence from what Jews have accumulated in 2,500 years or Christians in 2100 years. What is problematic, however, are all those Muslims stuck in a

By Ira Sharkansky   JERUSALEM– There was a conference to decry destruction and announce donations for Gaza. Sound and fury signifying nothing? Perhaps. Delegates representing some 50 nations and 20 regional and international organizations met in Cairo to talk about peace and reconstruction, and fill the hat being passed by the President of the Palestine

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–There is something American about the most recent quarrel between Barack Obama and Benyamin Netanyahu. There are other things as well. A clash of strong egos, of the kinds required and nurtured by serious politics. And greatly different geopolitics. While Obama is required by his setting to play among the world leaders and

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Relax? Impossible. Too much is threatening. Daesh, whatever that is, is chopping heads and managing to evade the US air campaign (along with a few other participants providing 10 percent of the airstrikes), and imposing its draconian Islam across much of Syria and Iraq. Hamas says that it intends to do

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–One of the most powerful of political rules is that things are not likely to change a great deal. It’s called incrementalism, and appears all the way from domestic budgets to foreign policy. If things change, they change in increments from what exists. Incrementalism is prominent among the routines that guide policymakers.

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — I published a book titled The Routines of Politics in 1970. It had a bit of academic success, making the point that politicians spend much of their time doing the same old things that they learned who knows how long ago. I’ll not bother with a new edition, but I see reinforcement,

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — The most pressing issue that raises the will he or won’t he question concerns President Obama and American troops. It’s shaping up not as will he or won’t he, but how will he do it? His promise to avoid the use of American troops is clear, and repeated too many times to be discarded

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — What do the 1861 attack on Fort Sumter, Germany’s 1941 attack on Russia, Pearl Harbor, and 9-11 have in common? They represent an adversary’s error that brought upon it a greater power, and–in the case of the first three–eventual destruction. We’re still seeing the playing out of 9-11, principally now

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — One of Israel’s recent headline grabbing political event was the decision of the Supreme Court, against the government policy to place, without individual trials, illegal immigrants in something between a prison and an open facility deep in the desert for a period of up to three years. Insofar as the