Archive for March, 2008
Is Israel a settler colony like South Africa?: A guest column
Monday, March 31st, 2008
This blog is fortunate to get regular contributions from Tom Mitchell, a scholar who has carefully analyzed the similarities and differences between Israel, South Africa and Northern Ireland. He sent me a summary of a longer article. I thought I would publish it, as people on the far left often claim that there is […]
Why most checkpoints are unnecessary: a primer
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008When my previous post about the checkpoint at Sheikh Sa’eb was published in July, in slightly different form, I received an angry email from a friend of a friend. An excerpt:
“If the IDF says we need all of them [the checkpoints], who are you to say they’re wrong? Where do you get off giving […]
Revisiting a checkpoint, and an unexpected message
Monday, March 17th, 2008The Jerusalem Post notes that Ala Abu Dhaim, the gunman who shot up the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem:
…did not meet the typical profile of Palestinian attackers, police said. “He is not known to the security forces,” Jerusalem Police Chief Cmdr. Aharon Franco told Channel 2. “He was a normal man … who was going […]
Aaron David Miller: The pro-Israel community has won, so stop “geshraying” already
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008Aaron David Miller has a stirring piece in the LA Times that deserves to be quoted in full.
A note on my headline:”geshray” is Yiddish for “wail.” Other than that, believe it or not (is everyone sitting down? Get ready…), I have nothing to add! Nothing more needs to be said, as far as I’m […]
Announcing the “Fleshies”: awards for the best responses to anti-Semitism on the Web
Friday, March 7th, 2008It is hard to convey the amount of bile and reductionist, blame-the-Jews-for-every-sin rhetoric that has taken over much of the blogosphere. Phil Weiss’s blog generally attracts some of the most articulate Jew-bashers, so I tune into the comments from time to time in order to gauge the level of hatred.
I just noticed some great […]
Will Obama, Clinton or McCain make Israel-Palestine a priority on Day 1?
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008To gauge what the presidential candidates might do about the ongoing Arab-Israeli nightmare, one has to make inferences based on inflections, hints, nuances and tea leaves. What they or their campaign staffers say now is at least as important as the identity of 4 or 5 of the many “foreign policy advisors” who have […]