People sometimes say: “Why didn’t the Palestinians pursue nonviolent resistance ala Gandhi and Mandela, just think what they might have achieved!” The truth is that many Palestinians have pursued nonviolent resistance, but they operate in an administrative atmosphere that can…
There are accusations across the leftwing blogosphere, including at Liberal White Boy and Dailykos, that Sarah Palin’s fifth child, Trig, her Down’s Syndrome baby, is actually her daughter’s. The main evidence is that Palin didn’t look pregnant when she said…
I just watched Sarah Palin’s stump speech in Missouri today on C-Span and had a few quick impressions. She’s very attractive, no one can deny this. She’s fun to watch, she’s got spark and zest. McCain stands by watching like…
The Jerusalem Post is saying that Haim Saban is supporting Obama for a reason very similar to my love of Obama, his statement at AIPAC that the great martyrs Schwerner and Goodman, two Jewish boys, were “willing to die” alongside…
Haaretz gets it. The great newspaper is trying to lead Israelis away from apartheid and toward respect for Arabs, how–by publishing this piece arguing that New York is a better place for Jews than Israel: What do “we Jews” look…
Two nights ago I went to a friend’s 50th birthday on Long Island and stayed at the house of my wife’s dear friend, Virginia Reath. In the morning I grazed her book collection, found a copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Reality…
For 25 years I was a Geico customer. I got Geico insurance because someone told me about Government Employees insurance a long time back. Big secret. Now I’m a Progressive customer, because Geico wanted $800 for my insurance for two…
I just heard Joe Trippi on NPR this morning admiring the Sarah Palin choice as potentially transformative. Not that he’s for her. But Trippi is a populist operative, and he sees the power of Palin’s appeal. Trippi emphasized that both…
Strict application of the Israel lobby theory would not have predicted Sarah Palin. Romney, Lieberman, anybody but. Palin’s an unknown quantity and she likes to buck lobbyists. Culturally she’s not tight with Jews; I wonder how many she’s even met….
I was driving yesterday and heard Terry Gross interviewing presidential historian Michael Beschloss a year back about Harry Truman’s decision to recognize the state of Israel in 1948. Beschloss puts Truman’s decision in his book on nine presidential decisions that…
There’s a great piece buried in the Times today, about a Manhattan art dealer who owned a portrait for ten years, selling it last year for what she had paid, nearly $22,000, and now European experts using high-tech imagery are…
The commenters are right and I’m wrong, largely, about Sarah Palin. She’s not fit to lead the country. You’re right, all of you. That said, I still find her appealing as a person. I’d like her on my town board….
I changed parties after Clinton to vote for John McCain in spring ’00, then he disappointed me and became a warmongering Bush clone, and today I’m reminded of why I loved the guy. He was daring, had a great sense…
McCain has made a genius choice. This woman is impressive, she’s ordinary in a way that Joe Biden isn’t, she puts Pennsylvania in play. She is in touch with ordinary Americans, with the people I spoke of last night who…
I love The National, the new Abu Dhabi paper. It’s so sophisticated. Maybe the Arab world is full of dictatorships, and women have no freedom, but the National is breaking paradigms. Today they have a memoir of Mahmoud Darwish by…
The AP says that Iraq and China have inked a $3 billion oil deal that had been negotiated five years ago then set aside right after the American invasion. If my wife is right, and this is all Cheney cares…
What a surprise. On that score alone hat’s off to McCain for his stunning (and desperate) choice. Change is truly afoot. And as I and so many others have said before, we’ve never lived through such an exciting political year….
Wikipedia says that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is married to a native Yup’ik Eskimo, Todd Palin. And her son is being deployed to Iraq. If the report on CNN that Palin is McCain’s choice is true, it shows that the…
Jerusalem Post has a piece on Israel’s coming demographic crisis: not enough Jews want to move to Israel. The Knesset has a committee on aliyah, or Jewish immigration, and one of the members seeks a “mental revolution” in aliyah. [S]ignificantly…
Great speech. Fiery. Strong. The new image: Obama as commander in chief. I think he’s won this. I keep saying that he’s already president, he is. The speech got better and better as it went along. The spiritual ending was…
Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s father, is extremely upset about the talk of the one-state solution. This piece in Haaretz is so emotional it seems unstrung, he keeps comparing the one-staters to genocide-planners, Nazis: I am concerned because evil plans begin…
when the Democrats nominated Barack Obama to be president?
Progressive Zionist Ralph Seliger, of Meretz, defends his defense of Joe Biden here. He quotes a JTA article saying that Biden has been critical of Israel: Biden has been especially sharp in criticizing the United States and Israel in their…
Earlier today I posted about “reverse aliyah,” or the desire of Israelis to move to the U.S. A friend points out that many Jews would prefer to live with gentiles: Jews have never been especially interested in moving to Israel….
More on Reverse Aliyah. This is from the Forward in June: A recent survey by the Jerusalem-based Menachem Begin Heritage Center found that 59% of Israelis had approached or intended to approach a foreign embassy to ask for citizenship and…