Anya Landau French directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative. This post originally appeared at The Havana Note.

General Jim Jones is an interesting kind of national security adviser. He doesn’t pretend to be an architect of strategic leaps like Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, or Henry Kissinger — who had to wrestle with a tense nuclear weapons-edged global Cold War with lots of abounding episodes of heat.

Bernard Schwartz Fellow Eyal Press has published an in depth look at the explosive issue of settler religious nationalism in Israel’s army in the current issue of the New York Review of Books. “The refuseniks making noise today come from Israel’s religious right, and they want to preserve the occupation, not end it,” he writes….

A rather unfortunately titled piece in today’s New York Times, “The Search for White Jihadists,” seeks to shed light on the growing problem of Al Qaeda seeking out seemingly non-traditional recruits in order to wage small-scale attacks on the United States. There are some pretty glaring problems with this article, but the following stood out….

(Sterling, VA District Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio checking in with Senator Jeff Sessions) Eugene Delgaudio is the District Supervisor in Sterling, Virginia. This is — for certain — the craziest, most bizarre political letter I have ever read. And I have read a lot.

Few places in the world have assumed as much importance for the United States and its allies since 2001 as Pakistan’s northwestern tribal regions, which have served as a base for the mix of militants seeking to attack the governments, militaries, and civilians of the United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and others.

This note is reprinted with permission from a note health care policy blogger Brad Wright sent out. Brad blogs at Wright on Health. Even TMZ Doesn’t Care Anymore. . . Just saw John Edwards at the food court at Southpoint Mall (Durham, NC) and absolutely nobody cared.

Acclaimed strategist and Nobel Laureate in Economics Thomas Schelling gave a command performance at this American Strategy Program meeting I had the privilege to chair with Arms Control Wonk publisher and New America Foundation Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Director Jeffrey Lewis.

After my post about King Abdullah II’s sobering comments that war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanan may be “imminent” to a group of Congressmen organized by Representative Adam Schiff last week, I received a clarification from the Embassy of Jordan that I am glad to post as an update to the meeting and discussion….

I received a note today reacting to a set of Congressional letters reaffirming US-Israel relations from Sama Adnan, executive director of the new political action committee advocating for Palestinian interests, NewPolicy.org.