Jacob Heilbrunn’s book on neocons teased the public with boldfaced back-cover suggestions of a neocon cabal and then Heilbrunn soberly denied he meant any such thing when he was at forums. I feel I’ve been taken in by the same…
My wife threw out my April Commentary–too long in the bathroom, I think–and so I can’t quote from R.R. Reno’s wonderful piece about working on oil-drilling crews in Wyoming (it’s only abstracted here). A nice contribution to the literature of…
When I was a kid, we didn’t drink Welch’s Grape Juice, didn’t eat Welch’s grape jelly. Any Welch product. That’s because Robert Welch was one of the founders of the John Birch Society, which my family saw as anti-semitic. Probably…
JTA reports a generational shift among Jews: Younger Jews are for Obama, older ones for Hillary, who reportedly has been circulating Rev. Wright’s scary statements about Israel/Palestine to superdelegates, many of whom are Jewish, to try and win their support….
I’ve been having my semi-annual argument with a Jewish friend over, Whether the neocons were Jewish or not. I generally find these arguments pointless because there is an element of fear in them: my friends are nervous that Jews will…
The flip side of John Mearsheimer’s blacklisting at the New York Times is the Sacrifice of Steve Walt. What do I mean by that? As I’ve said on this blog, Walt is a very different character from Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer is…
Today the Times has a front-page article saying that antisemitic vitriol in Gaza, licensed by Hamas, is an impediment to the peace process. The one comment I’d make is that if Jews were starving and blockading your territory, and denying…
After doing an item yesterday on Kenneth Pollack’s incredible endurance as an expert in the op-ed pages of the NY Times even after being dead wrong about Iraq, I went on the Times site and typed in the name “John…
The American Friends Service Committee has helped organize a tour in the U.S. of a Nakba recognition group from Israel/Palestine. Many Jews are involved in this effort, for instance Jewish Voice for Peace. So are many Palestinians. We all know…