Today the Times at last quotes Steve Walt fairly, in an article by Steve Erlanger and David Sanger about why Israel and the U.S. are joined in a war on terror from Gaza to Baghdad, and maybe on to Tehran….
My commenters below are right: the prejudices that Sacha Baron Cohen stokes in Borat are conventional ones, and the film is a form of Red-State blackface. All the juice in his journey happens between the coasts. When he’s on the…
I caught Lieberman on Meet the Press today. The guy is an amazing politician. He’s always been a great politician, this time he outdid himself. He knows how to talk to people, he knows how to build a coalition, he…
Antony Loewenstein is saying just what I’m saying about Israel’s crisis, but in Australia. The author of the book, My Israel Question, Loewenstein writes in The Age: Israel is a nation in serious decline. Israel’s long-term future lies not with…
The movie Borat is a lot of things, a comic triumph, mean, weirdly Tocquevillian. It is filled with anti-semitic humor, and I admit I laughed. But there is also something really scary about the film, and that seems to me…
Last night in a conference room at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, 20 students gathered to hear a young Palestinian woman and a former Israeli soldier, sitting side by side under the auspices of the peace organization One…
The Gates appointment to replace Don Rumsfeld is important: I think it might signal a shift in George Bush’s thinking (I know, that’s an oxymoron) re Israel/Palestine. Consider a few facts: Former Sec’y of State James Baker is now of…
If Rumsfeld’s resignation was in the playbook, presumably under Hail Mary Pass, then why didn’t they call the play two weeks back when it could actually have done some good politically and maybe saved Lincoln Chafee et al? Paralysis at…
I can’t wait for the Republican fingerpointing to begin. I can’t wait so much I want to start it myself! My Monday-morning questions for Karl Rove: Why didn’t you sacrifice everything else to try and hold the Senate? Howard Dean…