I don’t think there’s much question that there’s been progress in Iraq. Some markets seem to be flourishing, American deaths are down. That phantasma-gory-a of suicide bombings one day after another may even be petering out. Hallelujah. I remember a…
Here is a truly weird column about Jewish intelligence by Dana Milbank, the WP columnist who slagged Walt and Mearsheimer last year, labeling them blue-eyed and Teutonic, i.e., Nazis. (In this column he refuses even to dignify W&M by naming…
The November Commentary is not online yet, but I’m a subscriber, and it contains an article by a Christian theologian, R.R. Reno, that justifies the Jewish law against intermarriage–including Reno’s own, for which his Jewish daughter is now paying a…
Last Sunday I went to the CAMERA conference on “Jewish defamers of Israel” and it took me a day or two to recognize what the news was: a speech in which CAMERA president Andrea Levin said that the pro-Israel lobbying…
Giuliani’s dangerous assembly of neocon advisers suits his temperament. Giuliani is hotheaded and operatic. I wonder if it also doesn’t serve his fundraising interests. Neoconservatism is a largely Jewish movement, and a large amount of political giving is now Jewish….
The feds have arrested David Brooks, the New Yorker who made a fortune selling body armor for the troops in Iraq, on fraud charges. There’s always been a Jewish angle on this story. Brooks lavished money on horses but it…
Here is a wonderful blog item by Scott MacLeod of Time Magazine, about Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the House yesterday. The perspicacious MacLeod notes Condi’s words doubting the two-state solution. Our concern is growing that without a serious political prospect…
Again I wonder why we’re not seeing this story in the U.S. press, but Haaretz reports that Condoleezza Rice regards the system of bizarre and freakishly discriminatory laws that govern Palestinian life in the West Bank as being like Jim…
Here’s a link to a powerful article (in the Harvard/MIT journal International Security) on the tremendous damage done to the U.S. by faulty press coverage of Israel/Palestine, by Jerome Slater, a scholar at SUNY Buffalo. Apropos of my posts on…
I had a brilliant mentor in journalism in Zachary Stalberg, the former editor of the Philadelphia Daily News. He hated natural disaster stories. “No villain.” (Of course the global warming angle does bring back the good-and-evil narrative. )
Law professor Peter Berkowitz is one of Giuliani’s neoconservative braintrust: “his Senior Statecraft, Human Rights and Freedom Advisor.” In a piece in the Weekly Standard a couple of years ago, the new human rights and freedom advisor expressed grave concern…
Three weeks ago I reported that Newsweek senior editor Michael Hirsh said at a SAIS panel that the “Israel lobby” was pushing for an attack on Iran. Hirsh was liberated to state what is obvious, I ventured, by the effect…
It takes me a while to understand stuff I see with my own eyes. In my post last night about CAMERA’s conference on Israel’s Jewish defamers (which I paid $40 to attend), I failed to linger on executive director Andrea…
Yesterday CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) held a conference on fighting “Jewish defamers of Israel.” A couple hundred people in the basement of the Park Avenue Synagogue– that beacon to assimilationist German Jews. I…
On his book tour, Alan Greenspan has been talking about the dangers of capitalism. Sounding the socialist, he sees a moral problem with the rising gap between rich and poor. The unprivileged will begin to question the rightness of capitalism…
After their ’60 Minutes’ appearance, I’m on Valerie Plame and Robert Wilson’s side. During the Iraq war horror, they were patriots, and they paid a price. Wilson stuck his neck out on a big lie. Period. I still don’t buy…
Jews are principals in U.S. society. Antisemitism here is dead…
Iranian-American realist scholar Trita Parsi, a protege of Fukuyama, has been making the rounds of the left to talk about his new book Treacherous Alliance: the Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S. The book is extremely powerful. After…
Yesterday Manny Ramirez said it wasn’t the end of the world if the Red Sox don’t beat Cleveland. Shocking. Tucker Carlson said on his show that he thinks Manny is smoking pot. Last night Ramirez went two for four (though…
An amazing new study by two Jewish scholars underwritten by the Bronfman foundation echoes just what I’ve been saying in this space about Jewish identity and Israel. Titled “Beyond Distancing: Young Adult American Jews and Their Alienation From Israel,” the…
This Sunday, CAMERA, the Committe for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, is holding a conference about Jewish defamers of Israel. Their word, defame. Cynthia Ozick will be there, so will Alvin Rosenfeld, who wrote the paper for the…
I went to a party last night in the city and met an Israeli. Handsome, tall, a chest as broad as a desk. We talked about movement between the U.S. and Israel, and I asked him about the Israeli reputation…
Congratulations are due to John Podhoretz, chosen to become the next editor of Commentary in 14 months. Nonetheless, the appointment is shocking. Podhoretz is famous on the internet as a gadfly and horse’s ass; once he sent me a note,…
For a guy who writes about the Israel lobby all the time, you’d think I would have related all I personally know about the lobby by now. Not true. I’ve never told this story. I live in New York’s 19th…
One of Israel’s most fascinating functions for American Jewry is, It is our id. Here we have responsibility, logic, power, and indirection. There they have brawn, testosterone, impulse, straightforwardness. When I was young, women used to say that over in…