Just now on Charlie Rose, Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, co-author of the thoughtful Cheney bio running this week, said that opponents of torture are “gutless” when they insist it doesn’t work. The real challenge, he said, is this: What…
The other night at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, Anne Roiphe said that she could have dialogue with anyone except me, because as a non/anti-Zionist, I was denying the right of Israel to exist. Dan Fleshler, the third panelist, and…
I just got hold of a copy of Glenn Greenwald’s new book, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good Vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. Greenwald is a leftlib blogger/lawyer and has a mind like a steel trap: fiercely logical….
Last night’s discussion among progressive Jews on Israel, , organized by Charney Bromberg of Meretz USA at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, was a turbulent one. A lot of that turbulence surrounded me and my views. The…
Here’s the flyer for tomorrow night’s event, at the Stephen M. Wise Free Synagogue in N.Y. hosted by Meretz USA, that I’m participating in. I see that the Forward’s J.J. Goldberg is moderating, and Anne Roiphe is joining Dan Fleshler…
The New York Post says that the pictorial of Israeli babes in Maxim was “encouraged” by the Israeli consulate in New York. A Globe and Mail article posted by Israel21c, a lobbying organization, is blunter: Maxim’s expenses for the April…
Paul Berman’s piece in TNR on Tariq Ramadan is important, and deserves attention for a few reasons. One is Berman’s point that western liberals have rationalized the stoning of adulterers and other primitive practices in the Muslim world. I’m not…
I don’t share Joachim Martillo’s view of the Holocaust. The Nazi crimes define the word heinous. I don’t see the expulsion of Arabs from Palestine in ’47-’48 as comparable to the Holocaust. I’m also not going to be blocking Martillo…
A great book came out last year called To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever, by Will Blythe (yes, a friend), about the undying rivalry between Duke and the University of North Carolina. The rivalry goes way beyond…