Is it more important for American Jewish peace groups to prove that they speak for most American Jews, or to be right? I vote for the latter. Last week, sighs of relief could be heard in the organized American Jewish establishment. A new American Jewish Committee poll showed that a majority of American Jews favored […]
Iran
The Middle East telephone game
Anyone who has played the game of “telephone” knows that our perceptions of what other people say are often distorted and inaccurate. In that game, people form a circle, and one person whispers something into the ear of his neighbor, who whispers what she thought she heard to her neighbor, and the whispers continue until […]
Which Israelis should we believe on the Iranian bomb?
There are probably 25 people in the world who have enough information and experience to gauge the likelihood that Iran will develop a nuclear bomb, and –if it is intent on nuclear weapons– when the warheads will be ready. I’m certainly not one of them. Neither are the leaders of all the American Jewish groups […]
Jeffrey Goldberg breaks major taboo: says interests of U.S. and Israel might diverge
There is a ridiculous canard that American Jews who speak out against Israel are “courageous.” These days, it requires no bravery to say almost anything you want to say about Israel in a public forum (unless, of course, you are a politician, or an official in a mainstream Jewish organization). But what Jeffrey Goldberg just […]
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 […]
A ray of hope: maybe Bibi has no principles
Under normal circumstances, we want the world’s leaders to have moral and ideological consistency and to know who they are. Perhaps, under current circumstances, it is better for Israel to be led by a man who doesn’t have the faintest idea of who he is and relies on others to define him. “Nothing has changed […]
Why neoconservatism is [almost] dead — Notes on the J Post review of my book
Initially, I was delighted to read Jonathan Schanzer’s vicious attack on my book in the Jerusalem Post. Until then, the few reviews out there had been been quite positive (See essays by Jerome Chanes, the History News Network’s Murray Polner, and Thomas Mitchell), and I was hoping and praying for controversy of some kind, as […]
Americans for Peace Now’s sensible take on new Iran sanctions bill
New Iran sanctions legislation is now in the House and Senate (S. 908 and HR 2194). No doubt it will be the major focus of AIPAC’s lobbying efforts this coming Tuesday, after AIPAC”s Policy Conference, when literally throusands of its members will descend on Capitol Hill. According to a contact at Americans for Peace Now, […]
Rallying against Ahmadinejad will accomplish…what, exactly?
There has been a loud, justified uproar over the fact that Sarah Palin was invited to speak at a rally of Jewish groups at the UN this Monday, an event prompted by the appearance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the General Assembly. The invitation to Palin has been rescinded, but, as the Jewish Week […]
Americans for Peace Now makes the neo cons panic about Syria
I can hear the alarms clattering in the minds of neo cons inside and just at the edges of the Bush administration, who have been increasingly upset that the U.S. is opening the door to diplomatic contacts with Iran. Despite arduous efforts, they were unable to prevent Israel from (gasp) negotiating with Syria under Turkish […]