One of my touchstones for trying to understand Israel is something Tony Kushner said to me a year ago: that most American Jews’ idea of Israel is a “fantasy built on a delusion.” They have little idea what it’s really…
The other night at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, Anne Roiphe said that she could have dialogue with anyone except me, because as a non/anti-Zionist, I was denying the right of Israel to exist. Dan Fleshler, the third panelist, and…
I just got hold of a copy of Glenn Greenwald’s new book, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good Vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. Greenwald is a leftlib blogger/lawyer and has a mind like a steel trap: fiercely logical….
Here’s the flyer for tomorrow night’s event, at the Stephen M. Wise Free Synagogue in N.Y. hosted by Meretz USA, that I’m participating in. I see that the Forward’s J.J. Goldberg is moderating, and Anne Roiphe is joining Dan Fleshler…
The New York Post says that the pictorial of Israeli babes in Maxim was “encouraged” by the Israeli consulate in New York. A Globe and Mail article posted by Israel21c, a lobbying organization, is blunter: Maxim’s expenses for the April…
Paul Berman’s piece in TNR on Tariq Ramadan is important, and deserves attention for a few reasons. One is Berman’s point that western liberals have rationalized the stoning of adulterers and other primitive practices in the Muslim world. I’m not…
I don’t share Joachim Martillo’s view of the Holocaust. The Nazi crimes define the word heinous. I don’t see the expulsion of Arabs from Palestine in ’47-’48 as comparable to the Holocaust. I’m also not going to be blocking Martillo…
On Thursday night at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, 30 W. 68th Street in New York, a number of Jews including myself will be on a panel about “How Do We Talk About Israel?” The discussion is about: how to…
Speaking of Norm Finkelstein, here is the story of how my blog ended up here, and off the Observer site. And yes, it’s a form of censorship; these views will not be underwritten in the mainstream…