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…
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…
Speaking of Norm Finkelstein, here is the story of how my blog ended up here, and off the Observer site. And yes, it’s a form of censorship; these views will not be underwritten in the mainstream…
DePaul’s lamentable decision underscores the fact: There is no room in our discourse for sharp criticism of Israel. As a commenter notes below, Grad students take notice..
A couple weeks back, I mentioned Noam Chomsky’s assertion that the smear of Jews who criticize Israel as being “self hating” originated in 1973 in comments by Abba Eban in an American Jewish Congress publication. I looked up that old…
Eloquent, moving, brilliant: the best words for Tony Karon’s reminiscence/analysis of the ’67 war in Israel/Palestine, and its lasting effects… Three excerpts follow: 1, Karon’s unflinching description of ethnic cleansing in ’48 (dispensing with the “They were told to flee”…
I see it as part of my function to document instances of dual loyalty–in which American Jews are called upon to show loyalty to Israel. These appeals are problematic: 1, they define Jewish identity in a narrow and dubious way,…
A few weeks back, I landed on Michael Walzer for his parochialism in a speech about Jewish identity at the Center for Jewish History. The speech was complacent: it celebrated the American Jewish religious revival and American Jews’ connection to…
Last night the Center for Jewish History had its Hannah Arendt event. The big surprise about the evening for me was the extent to which the panel, which consisted of two Arendt-adorers in Jerome Kohn and Richard Bernstein, ennobled Arendt’s…