Today’s Haaretz features an interview with Ehud Olmert datelined the U.S. in which the P.M. says that Israel must allow a two-state solution now or face a “South-African style struggle for equal voting rights” that will alienate American Jewish groups….
Sometimes we don’t see how much the world has changed. The left has changed the U.S. discourse in the last few months. It’s happened before our eyes. Yes, Walt and Mearsheimer are marginalized, but last night in a packed church…
My wife and I made some money off the sale of our house (I’m almost ashamed to admit, what with the sales crisis) and I was about to give a bunch to our investment guy when my wife invoked Sharia,…
A couple weeks back, I criticized Americans for Peace Now for remaining on the executive board of AIPAC; and Dan Fleshler responded to me on his blog, in a post called “Are Pro-Israel doves part of the ‘lobby’?” Weiss does…
This Thanksgiving my wife and I went to her cousin’s place in suburban Philadelphia, not all that far from my parents’ house, and since my wife’s sister and her family from Connecticut were also coming, we made a plan for…
I’m the general contractor and main laborer on renovations of my new house, and the job has brought me into contact with working-class Americans. I enjoy this, and experience it as a privilege: it’s part of the economy that my…
First, an apology to readers. I’m moving, so my posts will be intermittent. Also: I’m aware of what a lousy job I’ve done of monitoring comments, reading them. Very unprofessional. It has in part to do with time/pay. I might…
My wife and I are moving, and the buyer came to our old house three days before closing as we were clearing out. A little pushy; but it was O.K. She wanted her architect to look at the place, that…
The NY Post covered the anti-settlement protests at the diamond store opening the other night as celeb gossip, noting that Susan Sarandon crossed the picket line (so much for the left’s braintrust…) to go inside. Observers have commented on the…
More than five years ago, Adam Shatz, then the Nation magazine’s literary editor, wrote an important piece about the left’s response to 9/11. One of Shatz’s targets was Dissent magazine liberals who were pushing for war in Iraq. For them,…
The ever-curious Charlie Rose deserves kudos for hosting Saad Eskander, the Iraqi national librarian, the other night. It is the kind of interchange that I as an optimist want to think can change America: an intelligent, sensitive Arab speaks from…
My side will win. Why? Because the movement is growing inside Jewish culture to call attention to the destruction of Palestinian lives. And Jewish culture is, like it or not, really important in the American discourse. Note that the Jewish…
A friend has passed along Norman Pearlstine’s piece in WSJ urging Michael Mukasey to drop the AIPAC case. Pearlstine argues that the lobbyists were performing routine business: there have been few prosecutions of government leakers for espionage in recent decades…
On TPM, the main approach that commenters have to Mukasey’s approval is to talk about AIPAC: Mukasey’s Jewishness, and the Jewishness of Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, the NY and Cal senators who gave him the votes he needed. Meantime,…
I’m trying to mint the term “religious left.” This Thursday night the religious left is having a hoe-down at the Grand Hyatt in New York, a fundraiser for the Jewish settlers who who have colonized central Hebron, the second-largest Arab…
The amount of anti-Mormonism in the culture right now is shocking. People unload on Mormonism all the time, John McCain’s mother, the New Republic…. Mitt Romney says he’s going to deal with it. Maybe give a speech. Last night on…
There’s an attack on Norman in Jewlicious, referring to comments he made about his Jewishness in Nextbook, but the best piece I’ve seen is The American Conservative’s interview of five years back. The folks from TAC asked about Israel and…
On “ABC World News” tonight, Steve Osunsami did a fine report on an Atlanta man who has been using 440,000 gallons of water a month–about 50 times the average usage. The Atlanta Constitution unearthed the story, now the whole city…
The endorsement by Pat Robertson of pro-abortion candidate Rudy Giuliani this week is widely seen as a sign that the evangelical Christian vote, which has scared the bejesus out of a lot of people in blue states for the last…
A year ago at the Center for Jewish History, after a lecture by Niall Ferguson about “Jews & Money,” a woman in the audience asked whether Jewish money had not played a part in the British Balfour Declaration of 1917,…
Former CIA agent Michael Scheuer is not only a smart guy, he’s legit. He was on ’60 Minutes’ three years back talking about the hunt for bin Laden. Well, now Scheuer is out of the closet, on antiwar.com, with accusations…
When I visited Bethlehem a year back, I got the view north back to Jerusalem–beyond the all-but-encircling concrete barrier–of a sugarloaf of a hill with a gleaming settlement on it. Har Homa was built in the late ’90s, and its…
I watched Sarkozy’s speech to Congress on C-Span last night and it brought tears to my eyes. That guy has some good writers. Sarkozy summoned us to what is great in America. He talked about American individuality and daring, he…
I grew up middle-class in Baltimore. My parents raised 6 kids on an academic salary and my mother bought all our clothes at thrift shops. From 10 to 12, the object of all my hankering was E.J. Korvette’s. It was…
One of my mentors in Israel/Palestine issues is Boston-area activist Hilda Silverman. She is at once very Jewish (which gives me great comfort) and very concerned with Palestinian human rights. The other day she sent out the following note to…