Tablet reviews GOP campaign finance records and finds that more than half of major Republican Jewish donors have yet to support a primary candidate. [Tablet] Israel’s relations with her Middle Eastern neighbors with be revolutionized should current Syrian leader Bashar Assad survive the uprising, Daniel Freedman predicts. [Forbes]  Israeli company Globe Light & Water System has designed a sturdy, solar-powered light specifically for public spaces in Africa or South America lacking the …More

As Syria slides into what appears to be a civil war, the permanent presence of President Bashar Assad's army along the border with Israel has granted him some peace and quiet on the part of the area's Syrian residents. Nonetheless, the IDF believes the tyrant's days are numbered and is not ruling out the possibility that the riots will reach the border area, including extreme scenarios in which Syrian refuges will seek shelter in Israel of all places. …More

In recent years, Israeli strategists have identified an Iran-led regional alliance as representing the main strategic challenge to the Jewish state. This alliance looks to be emerging as one of the net losers of the Arab upheavals of 2011. This, however, should be cause for neither satisfaction nor complacency for Israel. The forces moving in to replace or compete with Iran and its allies are largely no less hostile. The Iran-led regional alliance, sometimes called the muqawama ("resistance") bloc, consisted of a …More

The Obama Administration’s decision to refer Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the International Criminal Court for alleged human-rights abuses suggests that U.S. policy toward his government is finally shifting. The Damascus regime’s radical violence against its own people seems to have disabused the White House of the notion that the Syrian president is a reform-minded and Westernized Arab leader with whom they can do business. With the death toll mounting and thousands of Syrian refugees crossing …More

The clashes between Syrian protesters and the Israeli army along the two countries border pose no real threat to Israels economic stability, saysEster Levanon, CEO of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Investors, mainly outside Israel, think that this might affect Israel. I dont believe so, she told CNBC today. I think the future will show that Israel will go on flourishing as it is. But as you know, everyone is listening to the news and being impacted by it in the short term. Levanon sat down with Steve Forbes in …More

A student fleeing unrest in Syria was greeted by relatives after crossing over into Israel last week. Predictably, Israel and Syria blamed each other for the bloodshed Israeli soldiers killed four people as hundreds stormed the border. But the message was far more important, since the Syrian government, which controls access to the border, allowed crowds to venture to a place it had all but declared off limits until now. For the first time in his 11-year reign, Mr. Assad demonstrated to Israel, the region and …More

Syrian President Bashar Assad clung to power after protests, saying his country has become the target of an external plot, in his first speech to parliament on Wednesday since demonstrations erupted two weeks ago."Syria has become the target of a big plot from outside," Assad claimed. "I am speaking to you at an extraordinary moment...it is a test of our unity. These tests repeat themselves due to plots threatening our homeland." Assad, widely expected to speak about reforms, including abolishing the …More

Syria's Cabinet resigned Tuesday to help quell a wave of popular fury that erupted more than a week ago and is now threatening President Bashar Assad's 11-year rule in one of the most authoritarian and closed-off nations in the Middle East.     Assad, whose family has controlled Syria for four decades, is trying to calm the growing dissent with a string of concessions. He is expected to address the nation in the next 24 hours to lift emergency laws in place since 1963 and moving to annul other …More

Syrian security forces opened fire on hundreds of demonstrators chanting against emergency laws in the southern city of Deraa on Monday, a witness said.The demonstrators had converged on a main square in the city, chanting "We want dignity and freedom" and "No to emergency laws", the witness said. Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Shara said on Monday President Bashar al-Assad would announce important decisions that will "please the Syrian people" in the next two days. Shara was speaking to Lebanese Hezbollah's …More