I always feel guilty when I make posts like this. I feel that I’m arming anti-semites. Then I say, I can’t care, and the only question is whether what I’m saying is true. And I think it is true. So…
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Monthly Archives: May 2008
‘New York Times’ Flexes Its Moral Muscle for Palestinian Freedom
I often criticize the New York Times on this site, in fact I am about to get out my rusty Judy Miller popgun later for the Scott McClellan story. But today we really must celebrate the Times. Yesterday it ran…
Tough Israelis Tell Mearsheimer, ‘Give the Palestinians a State in Jordan’
John Mearsheimer isn’t entitled. He went on Israel National Radio to answer questions from two raving Israeli Zionists, Jeremy Gimpel and Ari Abramowitz, who start out by accusing him of “not necessarily the oldfashioned antisemitism” but “the sophisticated antisemitism… anti…
Memo to ’60 Minutes’ Producers: Take ‘The Israel Lobby’ to the Israel Lobby
To the guys and gals of Black Rock: Respectfully, it’s just a matter of time before you do the Walt & Mearsheimer story. It’s just too important, and every week that goes by it becomes less radioactive and more conventional-wisdom….
‘J Street’ Adopts a Position Goldberg Deems ‘Anti-Semitic’
In a Newsweek interview, Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street, the new Israel lobby, takes a position that Jeffrey Goldberg says is antisemitic: that 9/11 flowed in part from our policies in supporting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Q. You’ll…
Steinhardt’s Hebrew Charter School in Brooklyn–What’s the Agenda?
I took Michael Steinhardt and his daughter Sara Berman at their word when they said the charter school teaching Hebrew, in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, is just about spreading Hebrew culture, not about pushing Zionism. Joachim Martillo sees a pro-Israel agenda,…
Professor Gray Provides Me His First Name and Administers a Spanking
Jonathan Gray has responded to my post that mentioned him and says I’ve misrepresented his views, and suggests that I made a racist comment, to boot. He writes: As for your desire to have me attack Sam [Freedman] about the…
Roll Over Ben-Gurion, and Tell Jabotinsky the News
William Pfaff, a columnist for the International Herald Tribune, born 80 years ago in Council Bluffs, living in Paris, offers the now-almost-conventional-wisdom in international circles that Israel has destroyed the future of a Jewish state through its greediness for land….
McClellan May Be the Everyman That Breaks the Neocon’s Back
One of the pleasures of watching Scott McClellan is his sheer ordinariness. In the era of West Wing, the meritocracy, and the “overclass” (my new favorite expression, thank you Samuel Freedman), McClellan is an ordinary Joe. He’s pudgy and not…
British Paper Publishes Jewish Anti-Zionist
How refreshing to read, in the Guardian, a piece on Ahad Ha’am, the cultural Zionist who opposed Herzl’s dreams of a Jewish state in Palestine. The writer, David Goldberg, is plainly an anti-Zionist, and urges readers to go past the…
Conventional Wisdom Shifts Toward Belief, We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran
Amitai Etzioni is quoting a Council on Foreign Relations type saying we have to live with a nuclear Iran. He won’t say who. For weeks I’ve meant to record a similar data point: that Fareed Zakaria said as much on…
At the Center for Jewish History, the Kumbaya Mood Is Broken With an Attack on Hiphop
Last night the Center for Jewish History hosted a panel on Obama and postracial politics, and I dropped in. Three panelists– 2 Jewish, one black, and most of the talk was about Obama and Jews. The oldest panelist was Samuel…
In the Swamps…
In a comment on this site the other day, journalist David Samuels took a neat swipe at me. He said the figure on 1.1 million Jews killed in the destruction of the second temple period comes from the Roman historian…
‘Maariv’ Laces Into Diaspora Jews Who Come and Go, ‘Basking a Little’ in Their Mediterranean State
Yesterday’s Maariv had a slashing piece on the Olmert corruption scandal, by Ofer Shelah, asserting that Diaspora Jewry’s romantic projections on Israel are undermining Israeli leadership. Shelah goes beyond corruption to the “way we [Israelis] perceive our lives here.” And…
Has Haaretz Fired Amira Hass?
Jeremiah Haber reports rumors that Haaretz has fired Amira Hass, who was on sabbatical, and Meron Rapoport. Haber finds the Rapoport rumor more troubling, as he was filing such fine reports from the Occupied Territories. If this is true, it…
Why No McClellan of the Neocons? Or the Clintons?
Scott McClellan is a good man, is all I have to say. He’s a whistleblower of a sort, he’s put country ahead of party and chain-of-command. He even describes how Bush was converted to the neocon delusion, that peace in…
How Lobby Duties Have Corrupted Jewish Leadership (AJC Refuses to Denounce Hagee’s Praise of Hitler)
I love creative reporting. After a sermon surfaced from Pastor John Hagee in which he said that Jews are not “spiritually alive” and that Hitler was merely a “hunter” who responded to their weakness, Mother Jones’s Justin Elliott wanted to…
Did Jeffrey Goldberg (Bravely) Damage His Friendship With Wieseltier by Embracing Walt & Mearsheimer Position?
In The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier writes: A few days ago a friend of mine published a miserable piece on a matter about which I care deeply, and I am of a mind to be withering about it. The decline…
What Is the World Coming to, Two Jews Say ‘Zionism Is Racism’
How interesting that the equation Zionism is racism, such a bloody bone of contention at the U.N.,is now cropping up in the work of Jewish anti-Zionists. 2 examples I’ve seen in the last month: –Avigail Abarbanel, a psychotherapist born in…
Kovner the Juilliard Chairman Should Pay a Price for His Extremist Connections
In the Times the other day, the main critic of the peace talks between Israel and Syria was Dore Gold, the rightwing former ambassador under Netanyahu who emigrated to Israel from the U.S. and doesn’t seem to believe in territorial…
Kovner the Liberal Lawyer Wants to ‘Restore First Amendment’ for Americans to Speak About Israel
Reporting on the alternative new Israel lobby, Dan Fleshler scores two points that bear repeating. The first one is joyful news to me, that dovish Jewish organizations “have increasingly worked in tandem on legislative initiatives with Churches for Middle East…
Zbig Brzezinski Says Israel Lobby Is ‘McCarthyite’
I just did a piece on Zbig Brzezinski for the American Conservative, tried to get him to break loose re Israel/Palestine. The man was careful. But I say it’s the Jeffrey Goldberg effect–when Goldberg all-but-embraced the Walt and Mearsheimer thesis…
The Nakba Isn’t Just History, It’s About People Feeling Homeless
Nakba commemorations are coming to an end. This month has been a real eye-opener for me, raised my consciousness. I want to talk about Nakba here in strictly emotional terms. One of the signal moments for me came when Nadia…
Why Have the Dogs Stopped Eating Their Neocon Dogfood?
Paul Berman says something smart in this generally-obnoxious feed from a Nextbook festival on Jewish power (!)–written up by in the NY Sun by Adam Kirsch– to which of course no critics of Jewish power, even Jewish critics, were invited….
Christians Don’t Live in the Past? Aaargghh!
One of my closest friends in this life and the hereafter is Tony Schmitz, a writer I met in 1976 in Minnesota. At the time, he was my first German-Catholic. From a very small town in the German-American zone, surely…