A lot of new people are coming to this blog– and to leftwing and Arabist sites–because of Gaza. These new readers are outraged by the slaughter and don’t trust the conventional guides. This influx represents a great opportunity for my…
On New Year’s I kept wondering if I’d made a mistake posting about Meet the Press, the fact that four of six participants are Jewish this Sunday, in a discussion of foreign policy. Was I imposing a quota on foreign-policy…
Here’s Obama’s transition website, where Americans are urged to ask questions. Reports a friend: You will see in the Foreign Policy link, almost all the questions were related to the bombardment of Gaza and in general, asking him to do…
A smart piece of reporting in the Times by Samuel G. Freedman on the ways in which the New York Modern Orthodox community was the epicenter of the Madoff catastrophe. And pointing out that no Reform or Conservative institution was…
This morning’s Times has the news of the strikes on Gaza killing over a hundred, and on the same front page there is this review of Ari Folman’s movie, Waltz With Bashir, “Inside a Veteran’s Nightmare,” that raves about this…
Yesterday I heard Robert Siegel of NPR doing two Christmas stories. One was about NORAD tracking Santa’s movements, as it does every year. And in another story he signed off by saying, “Happy Christmas.” Siegel is of my generation: a…
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) sent out an email today saying that the chain that owns Long John Silver’s restaurant in Minnesota has apologized for giving out a toy to child patrons with a bible passage on it. A…
A good thing that Yahoo carries stories from the Agence France-Presse. Otherwise I wouldn’t know that American Jews have any power. From a story on Madoff destroying Elie Wiesel’s foundation, which allegedly serves international understanding (but surely denies that gypsies…
Obama has named James Steinberg and Jacob Lew as deputy secretaries of state under Clinton. I suppose I will have to wait for the Israeli press to tell me whether both men are Jewish. Steinberg helped write Obama’s speech to…