In Tuesday’s New York Sun, editor Seth Lipsky refers to the Six-Day war of 1967 in typical fashion, saying that Ariel Sharon “saved the Jewish state” by enveloping the Egyptians in the Sinai. Lipsky’s view of the war is unreconstructed…
3
Monthly Archives: December 2006
My Assimilationist Christmas: ‘This Too Survived Hitler’
I spent Christmas Eve at two parties in LA hosted by Jews—friends of my gentile brother-in-law. Didn’t plan it that way; just worked out that way. The first party was all film industry. I asked the host’s daughter about being…
I Witness the Israel Lobby in Action
A few weeks back at Columbia, I watched with amazement as the former Israeli soldier Yehuda Shaul, who started the group Breaking the Silence, gave his presentation on the horrors of the occupation to about 75 students in a darkened…
This Just In: Niall Ferguson Uses ‘All Happy Families Are Alike’ Lead In New Republic
I’m actually shocked that Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor, used Tolstoy’s opening line from Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” as the lead of his review of a book about…
I Meet ‘Galut’ Jews at a Christmas Party in L.A.
I’m in L.A. One of the liberating things about being here is that while there’s Jewishness all around me, it is not as confining a Jewishness as the one in New York. The definition is looser. At a Christmas party…
Jimmy Carter, on Mission
A friend went to Jimmy Carter’s book-signing in Pasadena the other day. 3200 books, all snapped up weeks before, then signed by an aloof former president, who did not shake hands but was flanked by two phalanxes of security. Everyone…
I Visit a German-Jewish Relative
When I was a kid, my parents had an expression, WASPy Jews. It was based in part on our one German-Jewish relative: Trudy (a pseudonym). Trudy was cold, straightforward, and wealthy. German Jews and Eastern-European Jews used to be the…
Barack Obama Disappoints Re Israel/Palestine
I heard a report that Sen. Barack Obama’s position on Israel/Palestine is no different from the Democratic mainstream, that in fact he abandoned a more progressive view—which you might expect given his multicultural/international backstory—to get there. I asked someone who…
The Lesson of the Oregon Tragedies: Sit Tight in the Car/Cave?
The latest reports from Mt. Hood leave almost no hope that the two lost climbers are alive. The bottom line on the two outdoor tragedies in the state this month is: 4 males dead or missing, 3 females alive and…
Brandeis: Jimmy Carter Can Come, If He Does a Dog-and-Pony With Dershowitz
M.J. Rosenberg has a terrific piece on TPM about his alma mater Brandeis saying that Jimmy Carter can only speak there if he’s balanced by Alan Dershowitz. It is with real pain that I note that Brandeis is yielding to…
Another Jewish Liberal Rationalizes Silence on Things That Disturb Him in the Middle East
Following Tony Judt’s lecture two weeks back, NYU had a wine-and-cheese where I ran into a leftish Jewish journalist who felt guilty over Judt’s criticisms of the Jewish state. I ought to write about what is going on in Palestine,…
Why Aren’t American Alpinists Looking for Osama bin Laden?
Till he died on Mt. Hood, Kelly James led a rich, daring life. He did “high-end modernist” landscape design and loved climbing mountains. He proposed to his now-widow at 14,000 feet, on Mt. Rainier. The two men he climbed the…
Some Psychological/Marital Thoughts on the Last Oregon Tragedy
Yesterday’s investigation by The Oregonian of the Bear Camp Road tragedy two weeks ago is haunting on a couple of levels. First there’s the family drama. The Oregonian reports that the Kims “drove past signs that said the road was…
Flynt Leverett Calls Ken Pollack ‘Flat-Out Wrong’
A few minutes ago in a speech before the New America Foundation, Flynt Leverett, a former CIA and NSC official, attacked Kenneth Pollack, the “thinker” at Saban/Brookings who served up the Iraq war on a silver platter for liberals. Leverett…
In the Last Oregon Tragedy, Shameful Official Conduct
Now when everyone is gazing at Mt. Hood, let’s not forget the last outdoor tragedy in Oregon. Today’s The Oregonian prints a bravura piece of reporting about why local authorities failed to find the Kim family on Bear Camp Road…
‘How Many Bubbles in a Bar of Soap?’ Jimmy Carter Fails the Literacy Test
The Times mentioned Jimmy Carter twice in yesterday’s paper. On the sports age, he was described as “soft-spoken, cautious, reserved, conformist, reliable” (a piece on blood types). But the other article was in Arts, and labelled him a raving lunatic….
Anybody Know the Number to Dial NYC Taxi Lost-and-Found From Outside City?
Left my favorite hat in a cab. Tried to file the request on their website, but it doesnt work… Thanks
Scrap at Yale Highlights New Social Divide: Global Elites Vs. Populist Realists
A few months back, the brilliant and flawed David Brooks said that blue/red was giving way to a new divide in American society that would play out in ideology and partisan politics: globalist interventionist elites on one side, populist isolationist…
Tom Ricks Doesn’t Want to Be Called A Lefty (Jump In, Tom, the Water’s Fine)
Tom Ricks of the Washington Post is ticked that I said he is on “the left” (in my last item re Obama). He wrote me a note, here’s the exchange: TR: Describing Iraq as a Hobbesian state worse than a…
Can Barack Obama Heal Us?
The Iraq Study Group report has freed the left to describe Iraq in a new way, as worse than a civil war. On Meet the Press, Tom Ricks of the Washington Post said: Right now it’s…the pure Hobbesian state, the…
Herzl’s NFP. And Our NYT.
At last week’s conference on “Freud’s Jewish World” at the Center for Jewish History, two scholars talked about journalism. Freud lived an upper middle class life in Vienna, and until he fled Nazism as a dying man, he read the…
Sigmund Freud, the Hep-Hep Riots, and the Wimpy Jewish Male
Last week the Yivo Institute co-sponsored a conference on “Freud’s Jewish World.” Many of the speakers brought up an antisemitic incident that Freud related in The Interpretation of Dreams. When Freud was 10 or 12, his father Jacob told him…
Perle (and Frum) Dismiss Possibility of 3,000 American Deaths in Iraq
Richard Perle is back! The man is resilient. He was around in the ’70s and ’80s and, between journeys to his sock in France, the Prince of Darkness was sure around in the enfant siecle as well. These days he…
Hillary & Bill & Avigdor: Making a Persona Non Grata Grata
Hillary and Bill Clinton met behind closed doors this past weekend with Minister Avigdor Lieberman, among other Israeli officials, at the behest of Brookings’ Saban Center —so JTA reports. Lieberman is a racist. He has supported the expulsion of Arabs…
Jimmy Carter Can’t Say What Jewish Critics of Israel Are Free to Say
The paddling Jimmy Carter is receiving for making criticisms of Israel that are common in Israel demonstrates a law of the Israel conversation: It is one thing for Jews to criticize Israel, but it’s not O.K. for non-Jews to do…