Philip Weiss and I have been communicating after he attacked J Street on MondoWeiss. A good many issues were broached, but one of his arguments is that J Street ought to be appealing to a much broader constituency than American Jews who feel some attachment to Israel. Some of his acolytes, true to form, said […]
American Jews
Newsflash: AIPAC (probably) isn’t pushing for an attack on Iran
I have read even more drivel than usual about AIPAC in the blogosphere these days, and thought I would explain a few things to those who have never attended an AIPAC Policy Conference. First of all, AIPAC does not appear to be trying to prod the U.S. to bomb Iran. If it is, I have […]
From Rabbi Don Quixote: Why the new Middle East peace lobby has a chance
The scoffers are coming out of the woodwork. After all the hoopla over the new J Street project, in separate conversations, two friends have expressed skepticism about the Jewish peace camp’s ability to offer more than token resistance to AIPAC’s lobbying juggernaut. AIPAC has 100,000 members and its operating budget is somewhere between $40-50 million. […]
An obscene bill would make Arabic a “secondary” language in Israel
Last Friday, I spent the morning at a planning session with the most courageous, inspiring and sensible Israelis I have ever met: the leaders of Givat Haviva, which has been fighting the battle for coexistence and equality between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel for decades. At a time when the social and economic gaps […]
Carter was, and is, “Good for the Jews”
Before his controversial book used the “A-word” (apartheid), I never understood the reflexive, visceral hostility harbored for Jimmy Carter in the mainstream American Jewish community. He made a good many political mistakes early in his admnistration, using code words like “Palestinian homeland” and almost casually intimating that the U.S. and Israel should deal with the […]
Don’t just sit there and complain about American policy. Help J Street
At long last, the urgently-needed “J Street” project has been officially launched. It has generated a great deal of media attention, much of it positive, but the most important story by far was in yesterday’s Washington Post: Some of the country’s most prominent Jewish liberals are forming a political action committee and lobbying group aimed […]
Free Marwan Barghouti?
What are the mainstream American Jewish organizations going to say if Israel releases a convicted murderer who is one of the Palestinians’ most powerful advocates of peace and a two-state solution? o–Haaretz reports that: “Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer on Saturday said that if Israel were interested in achieving peace, it had no choice but to […]
Aaron David Miller: The pro-Israel community has won, so stop “geshraying” already
Aaron 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
It 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 […]
So just who are Obama’s Middle East advisors? Finally, some clarifications…
Clarifications –i.e., light, as opposed to heat– about Obama’s Middle East advisors are provided by Jack Levin, an Obama friend and campaign insider quoted in Gidon Remba’s Tough Dove Israel. Almost the exact same language can be found on a blog called The Sunny Side, which quotes Eric Lynn, who is on Obama’s staff. Here […]