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…
Eloquent, moving, brilliant: the best words for Tony Karon’s reminiscence/analysis of the ’67 war in Israel/Palestine, and its lasting effects… Three excerpts follow: 1, Karon’s unflinching description of ethnic cleansing in ’48 (dispensing with the “They were told to flee”…
A little while ago I blogged about Norman Podhoretz’s statement in 1979 that neoconservatism arose in part out of a Jewish concern that the Democratic Party wanted to scale back the military, and this represented a direct threat to Israel’s…
Did George Tenet’s threat to resign cause Clinton to scuttle deal with Israel to release imprisoned spy Jonathan Pollard in ’98? Did Tenet lie about his role? And does Tenet secretly share Walt and Mearsheimer’s view that the Israel lobby…
For some time I have argued that the ’67 war in the Mideast was related to Israel’s nuclear plans. Today the Jerusalem Post heralds a book that says I am right…
I see it as part of my function to document instances of dual loyalty–in which American Jews are called upon to show loyalty to Israel. These appeals are problematic: 1, they define Jewish identity in a narrow and dubious way,…