I got home quite late from the Israel lobby debate and am on deadline for print, so I won’t get around to a full report till later, but thought it best to file a few impressions while the world is…
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Monthly Archives: September 2006
Never Mind the Bollocks–Here Is Walt and Mearsheimer!
Tonight’s the big debate. I haven’t been so excited since Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer and Susan Sontag squared off over feminism. As a pipsqueak, I was on the wrong side then (Mailer’s), now I’m on the right one. One…
Let’s Debate the Heresies of the Washington Thinktanks
One of the great potentialities in tomorrow night’s SRO debate at Cooper Union lies in the fact that on one sideÂNo, Virginia, there is no Israel lobbyÂtwo of the three illusionists are bigtime Washington thinktankers, while on the other the…
Does Israel’s Former Foreign Minister Regard the U.S. Lobby as a Pillar of His Country’s Foreign Policy?
One of the tables at Thursday night’s debate over the Israel lobby at Cooper Union will reunite three men who negotiated, unsuccessfully, at Camp David in 2000. Shlomo Ben-Ami negotiated for Israel. And Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk negotiated for…
Chris Matthews Is Looking for a Few Good Ideas
As a devotee of Chris Matthews, I’d point out a couple new trends on Hardball. A, he’s been using profanity, saying “damn” a lot and “bastards,” usually about our failed foreign policy; and B, he’s trying to give the neocons…
Why the Baseball Standings Suck
Something’s wrong with the baseball standings in the papers and online. No one’s interested in reading the classic divisional standings; we know who won now, only two out of six races are in play, Detroit vs Minnesota in the AL…
Chomsky and Chavez– The Left Is Back!
When is the last time the New York Times did major stories on Noam Chomsky two days in a row, one jumping off the front page, and excerpted his work? Like… never. Let’s understand what’s going on. All the American…
What Did the Pope Say About Islam?
Police in Dubai crept up on a couple who were kissing in a car. The 20-year-old at the wheel tried to get away. [L]aw enforcement officers reportedly opened fire on the suspect’s car… That was in April. The couple are…
Simon & Schuster Is More Powerful Than Pakistan
When Pervez Musharaff refused today at a White House news conference to answer the question of what threat was made against his government after 9/11, by the United States, he cited his contract to his publisher, Simon & Schuster, saying…
Why My Place Stinks
My friend Tony Schmitz is a doghater, but has owned two or three over the years because of his daughters, and his dogloving wife. He would say to me, “All they like to do is look around for a pile…
(At Last?) Bush Puts Israel/Palestine on Front Burner
An important piece in the Forward this week suggests that Bush is at last going to do something about Israel/Palestine so as to try and redeem his failed policies in the Middle East and restore American legitimacy in the world….
What Will Shlomo Ben-Ami Say at Cooper Union Next Week?
A lot of us are looking forward to the big debate over Walt and Mearsheimer’s paper next Thursday at Cooper Union. The ideas are finally coming where they belong: to New York. They were germinated in Chicago and Cambridge, broke…
Why Israel’s Founding Father Refused to Denounce Terrorists
Last week my father gave me a book of the English essayist Isaiah Berlin’s portraits. Berlin was a friend of Chaim Weizmann, the moderate Zionist and first president of Israel, whom Berlin often visited in Palestine during the tortuous years…
Siegman on the U.S.-Israel Alliance, Published in England, Of Course
Why is it that the most important advances in American understanding of the Middle East can only appear in papers that spell neighbor “neighbour”? Lately it was Tony Judt in the London Review of Books. Before that the LRB gave…
Amy Wilentz Reveals Arianna Huffington Et Al
On Friday I went to an old friend’s book party. Amy Wilentz has just published a book about California, I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen. The party was at Victor and Annie Navasky’s on the West Side. Wilentz…
Tony Judt on the Collapse of the Liberals
The brilliant ‘n bold Tony Judt has again put it all together. In the latest London Review of Books, he demonstrates how the liberal intelligentsia have provided crucial support and cover for Bush’s misadventures in Iraq and the “war on…
Why the Israel Lobby Wants to Marginalize Chuck Hagel
The effort to marginalize Chuck Hagel for saying fairminded things about Israel/Palestine is really among the most hateful/disastrous aspects of the Israel lobby’s effect in this country. So let’s connect the dots. Note that on the Haaretz panel that is…
Are They Good for Israel? Rating Our Presidential Candidates
Ha’aretz’s Shmuel Rosner has gathered a panel to rate American presidential candidates on a scale of 1 to 10 on whether they are good (10) or bad (1) for Israel. No surprise that Hillary and Rudy Giuliani are near the…
The Neocons Vs. the Hearts-and-Minds Party
How amazing that the Conservative Party leader in Britain, David Cameron, is now lashing out at American neoconservatives and denouncing Tony Blair’s “slavish” relationship to the U.S. So the neocons are identified there with Labor. As they have found a…
How Unilateralism Has Hurt the U.S. and Endangered Israel
On Friday, the Nation magazine hosted Yizhar Be’er, who directs a media monitoring organization in Israel called Keshev. (The group’s president is David Grossman, the writer, who lost his son, a tank commander, in Lebanon last month.) The theme of…
Will Tongan King’s Death Lift Curtain on ’76 Peace Corps Murder?
The King of Tonga has died in New Zealand, according to Matangi Tonga. He was 88, and survived numerous rumors of his death. Aioue! Will HRH the Crown Prince Tupouto’a succeed him? And will anything be done about the case…
James Zogby Disappoints
Last night James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, interviewed author Lawrence Wright on C-Span about his Al-Qaeda book, The Looming Tower, and alas made a hash of it. The best thing about After Words, the book interview show,…
Jim Kaat Offers the Pitcher’s Mantra
Yesterday on the Yes Network’s broadcast of the Yankees game, former pitching great Jim Kaat, commenting on Baltimore pitcher Adam Loewen’s long deliberations with catcher Raul Chavez over pitch selection, said that the coaches used to say, “Study Long/Study Wrong.”…
Bang-Bang, You’re Rightwing! The Role of Assassination in Israeli History
Earlier this summer, I read Bill Clinton’s startling insight on the assasination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 2005, passed along by the great columnist MJ Rosenberg: In 1997, President Bill Clinton told me that he believed that Yigal…
The Military Continues to Try to Save Us From Neocon Warmongering
Yesterday on Cspan, you could watch Naval Postgraduate School professor Vali Nasr talking about Sunnis and Shi’ites, at a book store, and Noam Chomsky speaking at West Point last spring. Both messages were leftwing, Nasr’s about the importance of understanding…