Having covered former Iran hostage Michael Metrinko’s homecoming to Pennsylvania 25 years ago, I remember the mixture of humiliation and rage that proceeded from that long nightmare. The British hostage crisis has been a Broadway farce by comparison. The sailors…

The other night at Columbia, student groups including Lionpac, Columbia’s version of Aipac (the Israel lobby), held a panel on “What to do about Iran?” They invited three experts. One was a fullblown neoconservative, Herbert London, the ruddy-faced former mayoral…

Sen. Joe Biden’s refrain these days is that the violence in Iraq requires a “political solution.” I.e., it’s not religious fanaticism, it’s not Islamofascism, it’s not a clash of civilizations, it’s not a war on terror; suicide bombers are motivated…

I’m surprised that I’ve seen no coverage of political theorist Michael Walzer’s lecture at Yivo Institute last month on the issue of Jewish identity: “Are We a People?” Surprised because it was such a strong lecture, and such a disturbing…

M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum has a fine piece this week about Hebron (all but endorsing my view that the situation in the West Bank is worse than apartheid). This week 200 settlers in Hebron grabbed another building…

Richard Silverstein, the blogger Tikun Olam, writes in the Guardian that progressive Jewish bloggers have played an important role in undermining the establishment Jewish consensus re Israel. A new weapon in the battle for that free exchange of ideas has…

My dad’s real smart, even if he doesn’t agree with me on my Middle East politics, and a couple weeks ago he said something that stuck. He was saying that Jimmy Carter’s book is a sign of rising anti-Semitism (something…

A few weeks back I brought up the charge of dual loyalty with respect to the neocons who claim that Israel’s interests and the U.S.’s interests are identical. A very sensitive question, yes, and a lot of people got upset…

The AJC’s report on “Only Self-Hating Jews Don’t Like Israel”—it’s actually called “‘Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism”—is officially an embarrassment. I say officially because the report’s theme that it is “illegitimate” for Jews to question the nature of…

A reporter called me yesterday and said I was wrong in declaring there’s a movement of progressive Jews who are criticizing Zionism. He asked for my evidence. I started with Jewish Voice for Peace, which runs muzzlewatch and rallied in…