Robert Silverman

1 month ago | jstribune.com | Drew Thompson |Jacob Heilbrunn |Ksenia Svetlova |Robert Silverman

American diplomats are supposed to serve at least one tour on the visa line overseas, interviewing would-be visitors. It’s important work that has the side benefit of supplying some good stories. The Mahmoud Khalil case reminds me of a story from my first tour at Consulate General Jerusalem in 1990, interviewing mainly Palestinians on the West Bank. One day we received a handwritten letter in Arabic addressed to the American Consul.

1 month ago | jstribune.com | Ksenia Svetlova |Robert Silverman |Paul du Quenoy |Jacob Heilbrunn

The six chords, each spaced with a rest of about a second, came crashing down in the resplendent home of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The audience sat transfixed. Seated in the rear balcony, I was listening to Santtu-Matias Rouvali conduct Jean Sibelius’ 1919 fifth symphony based, like Beethoven’s, around a four-note motif. The opening of Beethoven’s fifth has been called “the knock of fate” and the conclusion of Sibelius’s—with its six thunderbolts—evoked it.

Jan 21, 2025 | jstribune.com | Robert Silverman |Ben Cohen |Toby Dershowitz |Seth J. Frantzman

Not since Grover Cleveland won non-consecutive terms in 1884 and 1892 has an American president duplicated this feat. Now Donald Trump, at 78 years old, has come back to win a second term. With it, he has loomed large over American politics for well over a decade. Will Trump’s second term become a success? Or will it, like Cleveland’s, turn into a cautionary tale? In his inaugural address, Trump indicated that his years away from office have not altered his approach to national politics.

Jan 12, 2025 | jstribune.com | Jacob Heilbrunn |Robert Silverman |Ben Cohen |Toby Dershowitz

Israeli tourist Yuval Vagdani had to escape for the second time. On October 7, 2023, he survived the Hamas massacre at the Nova music festival near Gaza. Then in the first week of January 2025, he escaped Brazil ahead of a court-ordered investigation into his service as a military reservist in Gaza. He was vacationing in Brazil. Vagdani’s near miss is part of an international trend targeting Israeli soldiers with politically motivated arrests.

Dec 2, 2024 | jstribune.com | Daniel Runde |Melinda Haring |Daniel Balson |Robert Silverman

Turkish-backed Arab jihadists have taken Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and are moving on Hama, the former capital of the Muslim Brotherhood-led revolt in 1981-1982. Here is my bottom line upfront – the realistic best option for Syria is survival of the Assad regime, with further weakening of its Iranian support – and following are three observations.