Here is a great video on Avigdor Lieberman from J Street. “Stand up for your values,” it tells American Jews. Who is standing up? The video notes that David Harris of the American Jewish Committee was upset with Lieberman, but…
Bruce Wolman, who is taking over the mental-rock-breaking labors of this site today, notes that three American congressmen, Gary Ackerman, Brad Sherman, and Eliot Engel, all think that the new Netanyahu government is great, per Haaretz. Meanwhile, Lieberman had his…
I’m keeping a catalogue of answers to the Dershofoxmanitz question, Why do we single out Israel amid the sea of man’s inhumanity to man? Here’s Julian Kossoff in the Telegraph, with another good answer: the cynosure answer, Israel/Palestine is at…
Rabbi Brant Rosen is one of the heroes of this site, for his courageous condemnation of Gaza. Today he demonstrates further intellectual leadership by examining the Jewish dismissal of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions as a tool to change Israel’s policies–…
Jim Sleeper at TPM doesn’t like what I wrote earlier about Looking for Gandhi in Palestine: The blogger Phil Weiss, for example, has barricaded himself into an intellectual Masada that leaves no option I can find short of massive dispossession…
A few comments about Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview with Bibi Netanyahu yesterday. –Looking thru his book Prisoners, I was freshly irritated by Goldberg’s line near the end of the book that he and his Palestinian counterpart in his story are “two…
I don’t like the Where’s the Palestinian Gandhi? talk in part because it’s so disingenuous, in a highminded Monty-Pythonish way. If the analogy holds, and Israel is India under the Raj, well darling, this must be England, and then why…
A curious report in the Nation by Barbara Crossette who tantalizingly speaks of the role of “an Israeli lobby” (gosh, dear, what’s that!?) in the destruction of former ambassador Chas Freeman’s career, and says the lesson is underlined by a…
One of my new themes is that many Americans hate Israel; it is a kind of groundswell. I don’t say this is good energy, it has a sometimes reactionary component. But it must be dealt with politically. Here are two…