I heard Lebanese-Palestinian journalist Rami Khouri speak two weeks back in Cape Cod. Here he is with an eminently sensible column about Iran’s nuclear threat, in which he acknowledges Israel’s justifiable concern re nukes (Scott Ritter, after all, said that…
Hamas has delivered. Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak is saying that the Egyptian-negotiated truce between Israel and Hamas is a success, he hopes it lasts a year. Mr Barak said if Israeli forces invaded Gaza and stayed there two years…
My commenters are right, and I was wrong about John Edwards’s affair. While I’m for a more modern understanding of marriage, Edwards can’t be my poster boy. He’s heedlessly selfish and vain (and also a good politician and right on…
I just saw George Bush on the Olympics deploring the violence in Georgia and Russia, saying that he told Putin things must return to the “status quo ante” of August 6. Though he had trouble with “status quo ante.” The…
I just saw the “60 Minutes” piece on the Israeli Air Force and I’m stunned. The piece had the feel of pure propaganda. It was all about the mighty air force, with acrobatics, macho pilots, cool missiles and cockpit footage…
Jon Powers is an Iraq war veteran running for Congress in Buffalo as a Democrat. On his campaign website, the former army captain damns the administration’s Middle East strategy: It is a choice between politicians who send other people’s sons…
On NBC’s Olympic coverage last night, Bob Costas told Michael Phelps’s story of growing up outside Baltimore and focused on his mother Debbie in the stands. She was the emotional focus of the broadcast, outshining George Bush. The mini-documentary NBC…
Eulogizing the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Richard Silverstein points out that Darwish was born in Palestine in 1941, spent his early life chiefly in Israel: Darwish was born in the upper Galilee village of Birweh in 1941. In 1948, Israel…
Only in Haaretz. By Zeev Sternhell: The real reason for the settlements…was occupying the land… [R]ight and left were partners to the act. The nationalist-messianist fervor and the desire to end the War of Independence merged into the momentum for…