From the category archives:

Books

‘Other countries have experienced terrorist campaigns without giving in to extremism’

by Philip Weiss3 December 2009

Last night I went to a party in New York for Emma Williams’s new book, It’s Easier to Reach Heaven Than the End of the Street, a chronicle of what it was like to live in Jerusalem during the second intifada.
Williams, an English doctor and wife to a U.N. diplomat, was introduced to the large [...]

42 comments

History’s fool

by Philip Weiss2 December 2009

The so-called independence of any our leaders is vastly overrated. A friend of mine who was a big editor at a major newspaper once told me of the incredible pressure they came under on news decisions from high officials, even the White House. You wouldn’t want my job, he said to me. George Orwell was [...]

45 comments

Folklore and journalism

by Jeffrey Blankfort25 November 2009

A piece assailing Shlomo Sand’s book on the Invention of the Jewish People in the New York Times the other day drew this applause from Andrew Silow-Carroll of the New Jersey Jewish News:

The debate – and the Jews – are well served by [Patricia] Cohen’s piece, which eschews “objective” news reporting for analysis. If done [...]

7 comments

Why it’s appropriate to remember the Warsaw Ghetto when considering Gaza

by Philip Weiss20 November 2009

"He [Spinoza] had to fight against the Jewish clergy which, itself recently a victim of the Inquisition, became infected with the spirit of the Inquisition."

–Isaac Deutscher, writing about the excommunication of Spinoza by the Dutch rabbis in The Non-Jewish Jew. 

21 comments

Packer liketh not the internet

by Philip Weiss16 November 2009

I caught a little of authors Chris Hedges and George Packer at the Miami Book Fair on C-Span yesterday.
Hedges is inspiring, an American transcendentalist for our age. His father was a minister and he has the bearing of a blue-eyed religious political savant. I disagree with most of what he says on analytic grounds–the America [...]

4 comments

Atoning for anti-Semitism (by dispossessing Palestinians)

by Philip Weiss2 November 2009

Scott McConnell in The American Conservative’s books issue reviews George Gilder’s new book about loving Israel and offers a provocative (and spiritual-psychological) theory about the American establishment’s support for Israel thru thick and thin, post war:

After thumbing through The Israel Test, blogger Matthew Yglesias speculated that Gilder may be a kind of WASP who “likes [...]

6 comments

Blumenthal responds to Goldfarb n Goldberg

by Philip Weiss29 October 2009

Max Blumenthal entertained everyone in D.C. the other day with his attack on John Hagee, the Christian Zionist who has praised Hitler. You may know that Elie Wiesel was at that very time breaking bread with Hagee in Texas, and Blumenthal mocked Wiesel for his faith in Hagee, saying he hadn’t trusted anyone this much [...]

5 comments

Trying to rationalize Israel’s bar on intermarriage. No can do

by Philip Weiss21 October 2009

Haviv Rettig Gur attacks me for picking up Shlomo Sand’s statement that intermarriage is banned in Israel legally. His attack begins with this rather unpersuasive statement: "The basic fact is true, but the social, historical and moral reality behind it is missing."

40 comments

Shlomo Sand’s ‘The Invention of the Jewish People,’ reviewed by Jack Ross

by Jack Ross10 October 2009

Last Spring, I asked my father over dinner why it was such an outrageous proposition, leaving aside whether or not true, that Judaism is solely a matter of confession, as opposed to an ethnonational identity. He answered with some trepidation “because it contradicts 2,000 years of history.” When I went on to concede [...]

191 comments

Orentalism

by Philip Weiss9 October 2009

We delinked Joachim Martillo because of his endless Jewbashing. But he’s smart. Here he is on Israeli ambassador Michael Oren’s hogwashian scholarship in Power Faith and Fantasy, which says the US has been Zionist from jump street:
as part of an effort to become the next Bernard Lewis, Michael Oren uses the Barbary pirates as [...]

25 comments

Not so long ago, liberal idealism ravished the Jewish soul, even Podhoretz’s

by Philip Weiss9 October 2009

I’m reading Norman Podhoretz’s egomaniacal memoir, Ex Friends. It came out 10 years ago. I don’t know how much self-awareness Podhoretz has, but so far he breaks with people over and over about Jewish chauvinism. He’s decided that the question, Is it good for the Jews? is a vital one; so when any Jew [...]

6 comments

In my hour of meanness, Janet Malcolm came to me, speaking words of wisdom–

by Philip Weiss5 October 2009
8 comments

Why do they hate us? (bin Laden says: Read Walt, Mearsheimer, and Carter)

by Philip Weiss14 September 2009

I did a snarky post about the Atlantic today, for killing Walt and Mearsheimer’s groundbreaking essay. Here’s why it’s important. Here’s why the New York Review of Books’ failure ever to review Walt and Mearsheimer is important. And the scholars’ disinvitation from Yivo and the Chicago Council for Global Affairs, too: According to the New [...]

22 comments

Time to hit the books – check out ‘Republican Gomorrah’ & ‘My Israel Question’

by Adam Horowitz9 September 2009

It’s the first day of school here in New York City and it’s gotten me in the mood to catch up on some reading. Luckily, two of Mondo’s favorites have new books worth checking out.
The first is Max Blumenthal’s expose of the Republican Party Republican Gomorrah. Nation Books describes it as "a bestiary of dysfunction, [...]

11 comments

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