In reading on-line histories of the Clifford Irving hoax case, I note that an episode that the movie rushes through–Irving and his sidekick make a copy of a manuscript penned by a former Hughes aide named Noah Dietrich–played an important…
Yesterday, C-SPAN broadcast a panel from the L. A. Book fair called “Profiles in Terror,” featuring several authors with expertise on the Arab world. Someone in the audience asked forthrightly, “why do they hate us?” Why, she went on, were…
I saw “The Hoax” last night and generally enjoyed it, though I found my mind wandering. One of my friends fell asleep during the show. The problem is that writers tend to lead boring lives; when they’re working they’re sitting…
The rightwing Israel lobby feeds on American youth. Young idealists must be recruited into the enterprise before they think to question Israeli policies. Columbia/Barnard Hillel is housed at the handsome, new Kraft Center on W. 115th Street in New York,…
Today I thought about a story Jewish boys told at Harvard in the ’70s. The great sculptor Chaim Gross was teaching an art history class at Yale. He showed a slide of the Venus de Milo and said, “That’s a…
Last night the Hungarian writer George Konrad spoke at Columbia U. about his new book, A Guest in My Own Country. Born in 1932, Konrad grew up in a small market town in eastern Hungary. In March 1944, the Nazis…
On today’s Times Op-Ed page, Robert Wright says, “Critics murmur that neoconservatism is ‘all about Israel.'” Then Wright deflects the idea with patter about neocons trying to spread democracy everywhere, even China. The critical murmurs Wright dismisses are serious charges,…
The other night on Charlie Rose, the host asked the regrettable Richard Perle about Israel. Perle went on to liken Yasir Arafat to Hitler and asked, rhetorically, “would you have diplomacy with Hitler?” Perle’s comment should be filed with a…
I keep saying that leftwing Jewish criticism of Zionism is a movement. Exhibit A is Australian author Antony Loewenstein, who has lately published a book, My Israel Question that is forthright and searing. His travels through Israel and the West…