From the monthly archives:

May 2008

Has Haaretz Fired Amira Hass?

by Philip Weiss28 May 2008

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…

3 comments

Why No McClellan of the Neocons? Or the Clintons?

by Philip Weiss28 May 2008

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…

6 comments

How Lobby Duties Have Corrupted Jewish Leadership (AJC Refuses to Denounce Hagee’s Praise of Hitler)

by Philip Weiss28 May 2008

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…

4 comments

Did Jeffrey Goldberg (Bravely) Damage His Friendship With Wieseltier by Embracing Walt & Mearsheimer Position?

by Philip Weiss28 May 2008

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…

4 comments

What Is the World Coming to, Two Jews Say ‘Zionism Is Racism’

by Philip Weiss27 May 2008

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…

10 comments

Kovner the Juilliard Chairman Should Pay a Price for His Extremist Connections

by Philip Weiss27 May 2008

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…

1 comment

Kovner the Liberal Lawyer Wants to ‘Restore First Amendment’ for Americans to Speak About Israel

by Philip Weiss27 May 2008

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’

by Philip Weiss27 May 2008

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…

13 comments

The Nakba Isn’t Just History, It’s About People Feeling Homeless

by Philip Weiss27 May 2008

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…

9 comments

Why Have the Dogs Stopped Eating Their Neocon Dogfood?

by Philip Weiss27 May 2008

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….

14 comments

Christians Don’t Live in the Past? Aaargghh!

by Philip Weiss26 May 2008

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…

18 comments

Getting It Right Re Finkelstein

by Philip Weiss26 May 2008

Jerry Haber’s post on Norman Finkelstein’s deportation is great (as LeaNder has noted). He writes as a progressive Zionist. But lovers of learning should be appalled by the Finkelstein rebuke. He’s an intellectual. They would seem to be afraid that…

22 comments

‘American Jews Are Double Agents’

by Philip Weiss25 May 2008

Yesterday Mike Desch, author of the new book, Power and Military Effectiveness, the Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism, knowing of my fascination with issues of dual loyalty, passed along this exchange from Haaretz. In it the writer David Samuels speaks of…

35 comments

Work With Me, Sword of Gideon

by Philip Weiss25 May 2008

I think Sword of Gideon is an asset to this site as he often cuts my piety and informs me about sports and religious matters. But lately he made a kind of death threat to Norman Finkelstein that I deleted,…

18 comments