March 21, 2012 | 5:36 am

March 21, 2012

Posted by Shmuel Rosner

A pupil is comforted following the shooting at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse on March 19, 2012. (Reuters)

Can Iran Be Saved?

Writing in Commentary Magazine, Sohrab Ahmari explains how the lessons of Iraq can help the international community prepare for Iran post regime change.

The most difficult challenge faced in post-invasion Iraq will also exist under any post-collapse scenario in Iran: namely, rapidly rebuilding a coherent state capable of wielding national authority over a large and diverse population. Doing so will involve balancing, on the one hand, the need to neutralize the most hardcore ideological remnants of the ancien régime and, on the other, the imperative to preserve state apparatuses basic to governance after the fall.

Congress’ Chained Woman

Why isn’t Congressman Dave Camp, who is lauded for his family values, going against rabbinical leaders by declining to press his Orthodox advisor Aharon Friedman to grant his wife a Jewish divorce, asks Deborah E. Lipstadt in Tablet Magazine.

It would be ironic if Camp is reluctant to take a stand because he fears that he might offend Jews. The fact is that Judaism takes a very dim view of husbands who refuse to give their wives gets, particularly after having been told to do so by rabbinic courts. Maimonides believed that recalcitrant husbands should be flogged until they agreed to issue the get.

The Tragedy in Toulouse

Writing exclusively for the Algemeiner, Elie Wiesel expresses his outrage in the wake of the murders of three children and a teacher outside a Jewish school in Toulouse.

When a blood-thirsty Jew-hater wants to kill Jews, he goes first to the Jewish schools. Jewish children are his primary target. It’s always been this way. This is what Pharaoh, King of Egypt did, what Hitler did. And this is what happened now.

Hizbollah is forced to choose sides against its own interests

As thousands of Syrian refugees pour into Lebanon, the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah finds itself in a dilemma over who to support, writes Faisal Al Yafai in The National.

This daylight between Hizbollah and public opinion is dangerous for the group, especially as the political language in the region takes a more sectarian tone. If Hizbollah cannot place itself on the right side, especially of the Lebanese on whom it depends, the party’s position may change. Arabs, especially majority Sunnis, may increasingly see Hizbollah as a nakedly Shia organisation, willing to sacrifice people for its ideological goals.

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