There are mixed reports from Fort Worth, where the Methodist conference was considering divestment from Israel. A church report says the Methodists shot down divestment. The ADL is congratulating the Methodists– The resounding defeat of five anti-Israel divestment resolutions by…
Nakba memorial week went well at Columbia. Here’s some favorable coverage in a School of International Affairs journal. Though my friend the journalist Armin Rosen (whom I admire for his doggedness) says the week failed, it was shallow and anti-Zionist…
General Fraser is George Bush’s envoy monitoring compliance–non-compliance–with the road map. Yesterday the religiously-crazed Jewish colonists of Hebron rammed the envoy’s convoy with another vehicle. There is just this sketchy report, which I gather comes from Haaretz. Can you imagine…
A great number of Jews are among the signatories of a letter published in the Guardian, in England, saying that they will not celebrate Israel’s 60th birthday because of the Nakba. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded…
Rowan Berkeley has posted the Rev. Wright speech at the Detroit NAACP last weekend and challenged people to listen to what the man is saying. I imagine I will some day, and probably agree with a lot of what Wright…
Scott McConnell, editor of the American Conserative, saw Obama at a Pennsylvania rally, and was charmed: “Wall Street is teetering on the brink of nobody knows what,” [Obama] told the crowd, a more felicitous line than the standard political pose…
I keep a dual-loyalty file. Jews like myself who say that Zionism demands dual loyalty of American Jews. Today an addition: former Israeli Speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, writing in Haaretz this week: [Jonathan Pollard] and his handlers lived…
Israel/Palestine discussions are marked by conflict and ferocity. No big surprise. Rarely do you come on gentleness and dignity. In that spirit, I offer the following. Two nights ago at Columbia they held a panel on the Nakba. There were…
Salon has a good piece on the new Israel lobby, J Street, whose founder, Jeremy Ben-Ami, says that part of the motivation for the organization was the special Jewish role in the Iraq war. Well let’s not put words in…