Christopher Varley sent along another email reflecting on his trip to Israel, which was a lot of fun, but mentally very tiring. Israel’s much vaunted history feels freshly minted and somewhat contrived. I saw evidence of this everywhere. The Eretz…
On Al-Jazeera television, a moderator with a thick accent is asking Why the U.S. invaded Iraq and then pitting John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein on the question. They debate Israel’s security as a motivation for the neocons who helped plan…
God bless Barack Obama, at today’s hearing he called for regional talks to try and stabilize Iraq and get us and our children out of there. Talk to Iran! Drudge is running it as his main headline (to this Breitbart…
I generally keep my crushes off this blog but every man has his limits. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic congresswoman from Ft. Lauderdale, FL, is sexy. Sometimes I just gaze at her on CSPAN. She has an elegant horsey face–my…
The other day I quoted two Israelis saying that Americans don’t understand the normalness of Israel. It is a heroic place to American Jews, most of whom have never been there and have a fantasy of a heroic valiant place,…
My big question about Obama isn’t why I love him, I understand that (Middle East, postracialism); but why young people are gaga for him. What are the issues they care about? Is this, as I want to believe, a great…
During the event I attended Saturday at the Arab arts center in New York, Eitan Bronstein, the visiting Israeli activist, made a crucial point regarding the American conversation about Israel/Palestine. He and his tour had been in Chicago when he…
Yesterday I attended a touring presentation, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, of an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian speaking on the Nakba and the Right of Return. About 30 people came to an Arab group’s space near Wall…
Here is scholar Jerome Slater’s take on the Times coverage of the southern Israeli town of Sderot: “Yesterday’s New York Times carried a frontpage story, meant to be heartwarming, about how Israelis and other Jews are rallying around the residents…