Here is an editorial from my favorite newspaper decrying the disruption of the Palestinian olive harvest by violent settlers during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Thus spake Haaretz: They have been stealing the land of powerless farmers for decades [my…
By James North There’s one scene in the just-released film Body of Lies that shows perfectly why the American popular understanding of the Middle East is so distorted. Much of the big-budget film is set in Amman, Jordan. Leonardo DiCaprio…
Anna Baltzer is a Jewish-American writer now doing a series of presentations on Israel/Palestine. Go see her, I’m going to. I love her website name: Anna in the Middle East. I believe Baltzer’s a non-Zionist, for she is against the…
The High Holidays produce anxiety for me. Some of the anxiety flows from the “days of awe” themselves, in which you are to make an inventory of your sins against laws that are meaningless and laws that are not; and…
Here is something morally depraved. The head of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira Forman, writes a piece on Huffpo saying that the Republicans are using “guilt by association” tactics against Obama by saying that he is connected to Rob…
One great thing about this blog is that in addition to meeting Arabists and Arabs on the pretext, It’s My Job, I have gotten the social comfort-food of meeting a lot of Jews who feel just the way I do:…
Last spring my friend Hilda Silverman died, a leader on pro-Palestinian issues and a mentor to me on the idea that Jewish identity doesn’t have to be captured by Israel. I think of Hilda now because one of her issues…
Ralph Seliger and Steve F. respond to me re the right of return. Seliger first: It’s simple history that Israel overran its borders in 1948, because the tides of war permitted it to. The Palestinian and external Arab forces made…
Ralph Seliger has responded to Saif Ammous’s latest response to him re the right of return: Mr. Ammous obviously doesn’t want to come to an understanding with me. The fact that a Zionist like myself does believe in a moral…