A reader has pointed out to me that the neoconservative thinktank I wrote about last night, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is intimately connected to the illegal colonization of the West Bank. As I reported, Tony Gelbart–the board member…
One of the best lines in Jacob Heilbrunn’s book on the neocons, They Knew They Were Right, is that having been excluded by the old WASP establishment, young Jewish rightwing intellectuals of the 50s-70s burned with outsider resentment. And in…
One of the best things in Jacob Heilbrunn’s new book, They Knew They Were Right, is his analysis of the children of the neocons. Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz had struggled to attain prominence. They had varied careers, generally on…
You have to do Kremlinology with the neocons. Study the pictures, see who’s missing. Well, the latest Commentary I got has as its lead coverline, “Stopping Iran: Why the Case for Military Action Still Stands,” by one Norman Podhoretz. If…
I’ve long argued here that American Jewry won’t be healed, and neither will American leadership, till we come to terms with the neocons as an expression of a hawkish Jewish interest in the Middle East, and a powerful expression at…
C-Span just aired a panel at the Nixon Center about Jacob Heilbrunn’s book on the neocons: They Knew They Were Right. For me it was significant for the raw argument about Jewish identity that arose between Heilbrunn and respondent Dov…
At least three Democratic associates of mine, one of them my mother, regularly give me withering lectures on the fact that I voted for Nader in ’00. I just got that lecture now. These people hold me responsible for George…
One of the most important reporters on neoconservatism, Jim Lobe of IPS, has an item on Freedom’s Watch in which he notes the mainstream press’s lazy and fearful shorthand re neoconservatism–“strong supporters of Israel.” Why don’t those reporters spell out…
I’ve often written that the neoconservatives became far less transparent about their devotion to Israel once they attained power. It was one thing to write as Jewish intellectuals about Middle East policy in books and little magazines in the 1970s,…