American Jews like me who argue against the one-state solution are constantly confronted by those who claim a moral high ground and cite the small but growing number of Palestinian intellectuals who have given up on two states. They spend much of their time showing why the two-state solution is no longer feasible while spending […]
American Task Force On Palestine
The best post by MJ Rosenberg…ever
The latest “IPFriday” from MJ Rosenberg was obviously written in a kind of white heat. It is engagingly furious about the “Status Quo Lobby.” Nobody does fury better than MJ. Here he is on Eric Cantor’s speech at the AIPAC Policy Conference: The crowd adored Cantor who managed to invoke the Holocaust, gas chambers, and […]
Jewish-Muslim engagement on domestic issues isn’t enough
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs has adapted a resolution that, at first glance, warms the heart, according to the Forward. It proclaims: “Jewish and Muslim Americans…should work in coalition to advance our common commitment to civil liberties, the struggle against all forms of terrorism, racism, anti-Semitism (and) anti-Muslim prejudice,†the resolution declared. It also […]
Philip Weiss attacks J Street. Why he’s wrong.
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 […]
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. […]
Suddenly, the two-state chorus grows louder, more diverse
Something seems to be brewing out there, something new. I’ve been doing Middle East peace work, on and off, since the mid-1980s. I have never heard so many people from so many different corners of America defying right-wingers (and ultra-left-wingers) on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and saying the same things at the same time. What do […]
An approach to the different “narratives”: Don’t let them prevent Arab-Jewish coalition-building
There is a remarkable essay by Hussein Ibish, a Palestinian American who is a Senior Fellow with the American Task Force On Palestine, on the ATFP’s web site. Called “Sense, Nonsense and Strategy in the New Palestinian Political Landscape,” it allows us to eavesdrop on the internal Palestinian American conversation about what is to be […]