Thursday, June 12, 2008
This is something I had been meaning to link to. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has launched a new web project called Middle East Strategic Information (MESI). According to the email I received:
...the director is Yehuda Avner, former ambassador to the UK and Ireland and advisor to five Israeli prime-ministers...
...The Middle East Strategic Information (MESI) project provides a unique in-depth analysis of the Middle East and its strategic issues as they relate to the outside world. The MESI informs beyond the headlines and provides news and evaluations that provide important relevant data to the understanding of the Middle East.
What makes us unique is as part of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs; the MESI has access to senior politicians, diplomats, high-ranking security officials, academics, legal experts and strategists from Israel and around the Middle East. These provide MESI with an important infrastructure to disseminate a professional and credible analysis of events from the region.
Looks like it will be another good resource.
Good stuff, a couple of example:
Among the "Key Articles" at the end of the home page, an article by Dore Gold, Defensible Borders for a Lasting Peace, or an article titled The Nexus Between Iranian National Banks and International Terrorist Financing. Very solid reading, well grounded, cogently rendered, relatively quick reads as well.
Or take a revealing point / counterpoint for example, displayed in the left column:
Point: Al-Qaida terrorism is fundamentally different from Hamas. It is not rooted in political objectives capable of negotiation, but rather in a reactionary, totalitarian ideology completely opposed to democracy, freedom and human rights. Negotiation with al-Qaida and its foreign jihadists is (unlike Hamas), therefore, politically and morally out of the question.
Counter Point: Bin Laden sent emissaries to Hamas in September 2000 and January 2001; Israel arrested three Hamas militants in 2003 after they had returned from an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda operations chief Abu Zubaydah entered the world of terrorism through Hamas. And according to a 2004 FBI affidavit, al Qaeda recruited Hamas members to conduct surveillance against potential targets in the United States.
All in all, some very basic stuff, nicely rendered, accessible, intelligent, thoughtful.
Enlarging on the defensible borders theme, the subject of Dore Gold's piece cited above, a web site titled Defensible Borders for a Lasting Peace is nicely done as well, and obviously covers a primary, a pivotal piece of ground (no pun intended). Some very sound, well reasoned material.