Foreign Policy

Elan Journo on Trump’s Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital

ARI foreign policy expert Elan Journo went on Facebook Live yesterday to share his perspective on the Trump administration’s controversial announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. In the video, Journo evaluates the administration’s decision and considers the wider implications for America’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Foreign Policy

Making Sense of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dizzyingly complicated. In this talk, Elan Journo — author of an upcoming book on the conflict and America's stake in it — looks at how intellectuals conceptualize and debate the issue, and spotlights the distinctive value of an Objectivist perspective on it.
Foreign Policy

Israel’s PM Reading John David Lewis’s Nothing Less Than Victory

Lately we've seen a whole flurry of articles — many of them overstated — about the influence of Ayn Rand on some of Trump's cabinet picks, and in that there's some (qualified) good news. Now comes this heartening news story: Israel's newspaper of record, Haaretz, reports that the country's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was seen in parliament reading a book by an Objectivist historian, the late John David Lewis.
Foreign Policy

Culpability for Palestinian Aggression

When they read about a “wave of knife, gun and vehicular attacks targeting Israeli soldiers and civilians,” most people recognize it as murder or, broadly, terrorism. But in a fascinating report, the Washington Post underscores how “Palestinian society struggles with” how to describe such murderous assaults.
Foreign Policy

Rethinking the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Two peoples. One piece of land. No wonder there’s a conflict, right? But what if this common perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is wrong? What if this view of the conflict obscures more than it explains? What if it distorts our understanding, rather than helps unravel the conflict?
Foreign Policy

Understanding What Palestinians Believe and Act On

What do Palestinians think of Israel? What do they believe about the legitimacy and efficacy of violent attacks? Daniel Polisar, a political scientist, examined more than 330 opinion surveys, carried out by reputable polling organizations, to find answers. What he pieced together is profoundly unsettling. More so than you might have supposed.
Foreign Policy

Why Americans Struggle to Understand Palestinian Violence

To many Americans, the spate of random stabbings and car-ramming attacks in Israel, often carried out by young Palestinians, seems unfathomable. One significant reason such attacks are hard to understand is that a lot of Americans assume that basically everyone everywhere wants the same things: a good life for themselves, a bright future for their children. But that life-affirming orientation is far from universal. Yet that assumption has shaped the common view of the Palestinian cause. The result: it subverts our ability to understand what animates that cause.

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
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Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
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