I don’t usually read “Who is a Jew?” articles that quote Israeli rabbis. They are always filled with How-many-angels-can-dance on the head of a pin arguments utterly devoid of spiritual meaning. And as far as I’m concerned, a foreign country…
In the Guardian, an Israeli minister warns that Palestinians may face a “holocaust” because of the rockets falling on Ashkelon and Sderot. Oh my god. Meantime, on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, there is this horrifying photo from Gaza of a Palestinian…
I finally caught Tim Russert’s question in the Cleveland debate Tuesday night about whether Obama would reject Louis Farrakhan’s support, a man who once called Judaism “a gutter religion.” Russert’s follow up was, ” What do you do to assure…
Obama’s meeting with 100 Cleveland Jews is taking on the same kind of resonance as Kennedy’s talk about the Pope to the Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960. Except Obama came to kiss a ring, not unkiss it! Now the…
Rosner, in Haaretz, agrees with me that the general election will at last bring a robust debate of our Israel policy: Israeli experts on American politics said in recent weeks that a campaign between Obama and McCain will place Israel…
I’ve learned a lot about Israel/Palestine from Saifedean Ammous, a Palestinian grad student at Columbia U. and a leader of the Arab Students Association there. He’s introduced me to lots of Arab students, I’ve heard him lecture at the 92d…
Nearly two months ago, Saif Ammous attacked the peace process as a delusion here. Part of his analysis: Israel has absolutely no intention of giving away anything meaningful in the West Bank—certainly nothing on which anyone could establish a viable…
As you might know, an exhibit of horrifying photographs of the Occupation taken by Israeli soldiers (and sponsored by a host of progs including Brit Tzedek, APN, Jewschool) is touring the U.S. The Ivies anyway–Penn and on to Harvard. One…
The Harvard Independent has a fine piece in on two Palestinian freshmen, titled “Citizens of Nowhere.” One of the students grew up in a refugee camp in Tyre, Lebanon. The other lives on the West Bank. His village is bisected…