This is from the Times of London. Obama is endorsing the Geneva initiative of 2002, privately. So Dan Kurtzer may be the real wheel in the swiss watch we call Obama’s brain. Obama is getting Peres on board. And presumably…
The Obama effect. A friend just got back from Europe. Last year she felt like a pariah. Porters in Paris refused to pick up her daughter’s bags. At a ski lodge in Switzerland people screamed “Bush” at her over dinner….
Yes that’s a provocative headline. The latest New York Review of Books includes a wonderful interview from Yedioth Ahronoth in which Ehud Olmert says it’s time to give up the land now, and stop these idiotic generals from running our…
Obama effect. Rahm controversy spilloff. Good piece by Matt Duss raising the double standard for Israeli terrorists–Rahm’s George Washington father– and Palestinian ones in the American discourse. Do you see what’s happening? The realist wisdom gained from Iraq–that when people…
I’ve been waiting for this. I have always said that J Street’s role is to lobby the lobby. They’ve made nice to AIPAC. But a split seems to be occurring all the same. Haaretz again (they don’t write about this…
Jeff Blankfort writes: I don’t know if you’ve seen Jeffrey Goldberg’s take on Emanuel [adulatory] but it is pure BS and Goldberg is disingenuous when he writes that Emanuel was not in the Israeli Army– Rahm did not, despite the…
Again I’d state that I don’t know whether the Rahm pick is a great disaster or a possible opening. This stuff is complex. I believe Obama is a great leader/player, capable of being sphinxlike even to the lobby. You sense…
Ira Glunts, who lived in Israel and volunteered for the IDF–see you can’t judge a book by its cover–sends me this scary piece from Haaretz that suggests Obama will put no pressure on Israel, and trust Dennis Ross: Washington sources…
A few years back I had an argument with one of my journalistic mentors, who is Jewish (almost all of ’em were). I was naming Jewish names in power and he bridled. “But are they Jews qua Jews?” Why call…