Eric Alterman now weighs in on Freedom’s Watch’s pro-Israel agenda. The thing I love about Alterman is that he is very upfront about his Jewishness as an important factor in his thinking, even as he is capable of raising questions…
This weekend the Times did a piece on Freedom’s Watch, the new pro-war advocacy group. Once again it left out the Jewish angle, that the leaders of the group are rightwing Jews (one of whom has given $60 million to…
One of the interesting things about Walt & Mearsheimer’s book is their reliance on the left. Their citations overflow with lib-lefters, from Counterpunch to the Nation to J.J. Goldberg to Michael Massing. Leftwing rabbi Michael Lerner has embraced W&M. But…
The Hopkins event about Iran the other day in Washington was a Realist event. It was led by Francis Fukuyama, who has left neoconservatism for his own brand of realism. And the discussion revolved around realist scholar Trita Parsi’s book…
The greatest achievement so far of Walt & Mearsheimer is that they have knocked down a wall in the American discourse: They have licensed ideas and statements that would have been impossible to imagine even a month ago. On Monday…
I blew the post on Daniel Pipes yesterday. The point here is a simple one: Pipes says that the Oslo process is “appeasement.” Israel must defeat its enemies. “There is not a single active leading politician in Israel who talks…
A number of thoughtful people were shocked by the lengthy hazing Columbia President Lee Bollinger administered to Iran’s Ahmadinejad Monday in introducing him at the school. Chris Matthews said, “Who is this guy?” then laughed at the length of the…
Give the devil his due, the true star of the Philadelphia synagogue event I went to a week ago was Daniel Pipes. Pipes was the most physically impressive of the speakers, at about 6-6 it would seem, and true to…
On Huffpo the other day, David Bromwich gave Walt and Mearsheimer a laudatory read and expressed shock at the quote they offer from Bush’s Mideast policy guru Elliot Abrams: How mad is Elliott Abrams? If one passage cited by Mearsheimer-Walt…