One of my new themes on this site is that the Israel lobby as we know it is over. Gaza and Netanyahu shattered it. Obama gave his speech in Cairo because he knew he would have political cover from American…
Rob Browne at DailyKos urges Rabbi David Saperstein (of the Union for Reform Judaism), who is fasting for Darfur, to fast on behalf of the people of Gaza too–a crisis in which American Jews have far more influence than they…
Uri Avnery on Netanyahu’s forthcoming speech, “his resounding response to Obama’s speech in Egypt.” Everything has been done to put the two events on the same level. Obama spoke at Cairo University? Netanyahu will speak at Bar-Ilan University, the religious…
The lower photo above is of a long boat used to carry stuff through the tunnels from Egypt to Gaza. Someone left it out on the road in Rafah. It slides along the sand in the tunnel. The tunnels are…
These were my favorite jeans. I threw them in the laundry room. My wife didn’t take the pen out of the pocket when she did the wash. She said I should have done that. When I showed my wife this…
Chas Freeman made a speech on the lobby and the two-state solution at the Middle East Policy Council the other day, in “Remarks to Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired (DACOR)”: For the past forty or more years, the achievement of…
Shiva Balaghi is an editor at MERIP and, beginning in July, a fellow at the Cogut Center for Humanities at Brown University (where she will teach history). She has been compiling information on the outcome of the elections from news…
Gershom Gorenberg in Foreign Policy: “The classic definition of chutzpah is murdering your parents and begging for the mercy of the court because you’re an orphan. Adding thousands of settlers to existing communities so that later you can claim that…
Among the astonishments of visiting Gaza are the ubiquitous portraits of martyrs in public places. Such pictures are, obviously, an essential expression of honor in Palestinian culture. My response to these portraits was wholly aesthetic, and not moral. I don’t…