Epraim Inbar of Bar-Ilan University has published a piece that disproves the notion that everything that can be said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has already said. He harbors the fantasy that somehow the chaos in Gaza and the disarray in the West Bank will turn out well for Israel because….eventually Egypt and Jordan will share […]
Israel
Sorry to disappoint you, conspiracy theorists: few Jewish voters are obsessed with Israel
A commentator with a brilliant nickname, “Agog,” was disturbed by the previous thread’s discussion of candidates’ positions on Israel. Agog asked: “Is that how you judge the merits of the respective candidates: who is best for Israel? Shouldn’t the criterion be who is best for the US? The two countries’ interests are not one and […]
Correction on Malley’s role, and a cyber-dilemma
I was so mortified by the bile that prompted the previous post that I somehow missed a clarification in Politico. This is why they invented newpaper editors and why the blogosphere is out of control: An Obama spokesman, Tommy Vietor, says, “Rob Malley has no day-to-day advisory role in the Obama campaign. He is among […]
Rob Malley: the Willy Horton of right wing Jewish nut jobs
Unable to find anything in his past to prove that Barack Obama will sell Israel down the river, right wing bloggers in my community are now focusing on one of his Middle East advisors, Robert Malley. Malley served various roles in the Clinton Administration and was President Clinton’s special assistant during the Camp David talks. […]
What to do about the Gaza Strip emergency…
In the last thread, Richard Witty asked what I thought of Israel’s behavior in the Gaza Strip and what I would do about the situation. My response was, “I haven’t the faintest idea.” But Americans for Peace Now just released a statement that makes a lot of sense. You will also find an “Action Alert” […]
AB Yehoshua wants U.S. pressure and denounces the Israel lobby: Anything new here?
Richard Silverstein’s Tikun Olam notes that Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua called for removing the U.S. ambassador to Israel and attacked America’s Israel lobby. But he missed a few nuances. I might be the only one in the universe who cares about these nuances, as they touch upon some of the work I’ve tried to do […]
Read it and weep: The Peel Commission Report
Bitter Lemons offers the original summary of the Peel Commission Report from 1937, along with commentary from two Israelis and two Palestinians. Everything that needs to be said about this conflict has already been said many times, during the last 100 years (including the preceding sentence, of course). Note the authors’ struggle to balance morality […]
For Zionists, the obsession with Jerusalem is a recent phenomenon
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations recently “reaffirmed its longstanding position that a united Jerusalem should remain the sovereign and eternal capital of Israel,” according to a JTA story. Some left-of-center groups were against it but they could not stem the tide. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the […]
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 […]
The peace process, Iran and the law of unintended consequences
At a luncheon panel on Israel and Iran at the Century Foundation yesterday, I was taken aback by some thoughts shared by Trita Parsi, author of the new and highly regarded Dangerous Alliance -The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States, and Daniel Levy, the former Israeli negotiator who is now Director of […]