We have already spilled enough pixels on this site talking about the incoming Israeli government. Netanyahu will be the Prime Minster, Avigdor Lieberman will be Foreign Minister, and Ehud Barak has weaseled his way into remaining Defense Minister. This is…
Monthly Archives: March 2009
Update: ‘JPost’ states that its report on Norwegian Foreign Minister was inaccurate
in this snaky manner an hour ago or so: This article supersedes an article published earlier this week on Norway which contained inaccuracies, and has been withdrawn. David Horovitz, where is the apology? And just what was inaccurate?
Anatomy of an anti-Semitic falsehood: ‘Jerusalem Post’ said Norway’s Finance Minister led chant, ‘Death to the Jews!’
Bruce Wolman of Bethesda, MD, lived in Norway for more than 20 years. He reads the Norwegian press in Norwegian and offers the following exclusive report: According to NTB, the Norwegian wire service, Norway’s Finance Minister and Socialist Left party…
Netanyahu comes in talking Iran
Bruce Wolman writes: Incoming Israeli P.M. Bibi Netanyahu tells Jeffrey Goldberg: “Iran is a composite leadership, but in that composite leadership there are elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist right now in any other would-be nuclear power in…
‘The Archipelago of Eastern Palestine’
Thanks to reader Jim Harb for alerting us to this interesting imaginary map. It is one way of showing the fragmentation of the West under Israeli occupation – an archipelago of disconnected islands. It’s from the website Strange Maps, which…
Justice for Larry Franklin
Bruce Wolman writes: An American gentile, Larry Franklin, goes to prison. But, according to Haaretz, his Israeli intelligence counter-party in crime (Uzi Arad, security aide to Netanyahu) will get a visa so as to visit the Obama administration. If this…
‘Commentary’ accuses ‘J Street’ of trying to ‘insinuate’ itself between American Jews and foreign policymaking
There’s a long piece on J Street by Noah Pollak in the forthcoming Commentary. I just read it. It’s a smart piece. Its essence is the claim that Jews are on the neocons’ side, and just look at Gaza. Barney…
The Jewish question has become the Jewish quandary
Columbia had its semi-annual University Lecture last night: history professor Ira Katznelson’s thoughts on tolerance and liberalism, using the example of the history of Jews in England, from their expulsion in the 1200s to their readmission in the 1650s to…
Loewenstein: Jews are getting the image of being afraid of debate
Antony Loewenstein, the Australian author, reports on the recent visit down under of Jeff Halper: Jeff Halper, Israeli/American peace activist, retired anthropologist and head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), writes in his recent book, An Israeli in…
Pharaoh’s on ‘Facebook’
Jack Ross sends this “extremely silly item.”
Richard Wolffe: How remarkable that VP Cheney tried to undermine President-elect Obama with a foreign power
Susie Kneedler writes: Keith Olbermann and Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe seem to have discovered that they can (barely) discuss Israel through a left-wing lens by (rightly) linking Cheney to Netanyahu and then discussing Obama’s efforts to broker Israeli-Syria negotiations. Key insights…
Evidence of malicious destruction is everywhere in Gaza– from olive trees to roads to a bullet fired sideways through a closet, piercing every article of clothing
The international community is now arguing over Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Were they an aberration? Are not the Israelis a moral fighting force? Etc. Etc. The following report confirms that the atrocities were not an aberration; they sprang from a…
ADL sure knows how to raise money
“Anti-Semitism–the Ugliest Backlash in Our Lifetime.” Well not Abe Foxman’s lifetime.
American Conservative is webby
The American Conservative has gone webby. I mean, they were on the web before, of course, but they just got redesigned and it feels webby. Also, there’s a podcast on there of me and Scott McConnell talking. McConnell wouldn’t put…
The banality of ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem
We tend to focus on the most dramatic aspects of Israel’s efforts to force Palestinians out of Jerusalem and “judaize” the city, such as the massive home demolitions in Silwan or the plans for Israeli settlements in E-1. But the…
Obama plans to confront Netanyahu over settlements, borders, 2 states, the whole megillah
Yes I just violated my anti-ethnocentric Yiddish policy in that headline. Apologies to everyone. Rosten: rigmarole. Akiva Eldar in Haaretz says that Obama will be basing his Israel/Palestine policy on the report by the 10 realist luminaries who say that…
Gaza effect: European boycott is now hurting Israel
From the Jerusalem Post: “In addition to the problems and difficulties arising from the global economic crisis, 21 percent of [90] local exporters report that they are facing problems in selling Israeli goods because of an anti-Israel boycott, mainly from…
Congresswoman brags of checking with Zionist Organization president before she signs on to legislation
From the JTA report on the Zionist Organization of America’s lunch on Capitol Hill last week. Best moments belong to Shelley Berkley. Emphasis mine: Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) joked that she always brings [ZOA President] Mort Klein her ZOA membership…
One State for Palestine Conference – ‘Israel’s massacres are the price of maintaining a Jewish state’
The second day of the One State for Palestine/Israel: A Country for All Its Citizens? conference had a much more ominous tone than Day 1. It focused on the long road to building a one state solution – from the…
Jim Crow Israel: National railroad fires 40 Palestinian workers
Where do you get this kind of stuff? Oh, I get it in Haaretz– and my friend Zellnik passes it to me. The noblest newspaper in the world struggles against Jim Crow while the New York Times is silent. Haaretz…
Response to MK Dov Khenin – A just solution in Israel/Palestine is both utopian and necessary
Phil posted an interesting interview with non-Zionist Israeli MK Dov Khenin from the Hadash Party while I was attending the One State for Palestine/Israel: A Country for All Its Citizens? conference in Boston. He makes two different comments about the…
Roger Cohen now getting ‘self-hater’ label (maybe we should call it a star?)
The Guardian on all the heat that Roger Cohen is getting for being open-minded about Iran: Cohen said he was stunned by the vehemence of the response, an impression exacerbated when he visited exiled Iranian Jews in California and was…
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Debate: Boycott or ‘One Big Carrot of Peace’
The following report was sent to us by a long time U.S.-based activist for a just peace in Israel/Palestine posting under the name Rie Graham. It is in response to a discussion between Naomi Klein and Rabbi Arthur Waskow on…
What Kafka’s Jewish fear in central Europe teaches me about America today
A lot of the life of this website is a response to a challenge that Tony Judt issued two years ago: “Why is the American Jewish community so determined to convince itself that we are living in 1938? Why does…
Churchill would end the ‘cowed silence’ around Gaza slaughter
Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon begin their piece on “Seven Jewish Children” in the Nation the way all such pieces should begin, reciting the terrible numbers from the Gaza slaughter. Then: There are passages, particularly in an ugly monologue near…