Mearsheimer and Walt
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Banish me. Shoot me. I often agree with Stephen Walt.
Saturday, August 15th, 2009
There is a peculiar, paranoid style of Jewish politics. Its logic would be shameful and contorted even it didn’t come from descendants of the people who invented sophisticated, multi-layered Talmudic pilpul: once someone is deemed beyond the communal pale, an enemy of the Jews, then you become tainted if you approvingly quote anything he or […]
New, shameless self-promotion: review of my book in “Zeek”
Monday, June 1st, 2009Zeek, the magazine for literate, cultured, youngish, freethinking Jews just published a glowing review of Transforming America’s Israel Lobby. The reviewer is “Moshe Yaroni,” the pseudonym for someone who is clearly very astute. Some excerpts: This is a book that should have been written many years ago. It is full of insight into the major […]
Jeffrey Goldberg laments the Jewish “Cossacks”
Monday, March 23rd, 2009Jeffrey Goldberg appears to be the new punching bag of left-leaning bloggers and Walt/Mearsheimer realists who focus on Israel and the American Jewish community. After Goldberg opposed the Chas. Freeman nomination, my dear friend and fellow-traveller MJ Rosenberg (who wrote the Foreward to my breathlessly anticipated, long-awaited book) lumped Goldberg into the same category as […]
From Rabbi Don Quixote: Why the new Middle East peace lobby has a chance
Monday, May 26th, 2008The 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. […]
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 […]
The peace process, Iran and the law of unintended consequences
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007At 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 […]
Are pro-Israel doves part of the “lobby?”
Thursday, November 8th, 2007Apologies for the recent lack of blogging activity. Too many work and family obligations, not enough hours in the day. Last week, there was a dyspeptic attack on Americans for Peace Now by my friend Philip Weiss on his blog, MondoWeiss. (Check it out at http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/11/foreign-affairs.html). It deserves a belated response. In taking on a […]
AIPAC is an agent of…AIPAC
Friday, October 26th, 2007Mearsheimer and Walt write that AIPAC is a “de facto agent of the Israeli government.” In various parts of their book, they provide examples of the “Israel lobby’s” ability to promote Israel’s agenda in the halls of power. But they do not seem to grasp a far more interesting, subtle point about AIPAC: it answers […]
“Jewish Neocons Are Dead Wrong, Not Disloyal” –My piece in the Huffington Post
Tuesday, October 9th, 2007Please check out my new screed in Huffington Post, in which I find myself objecting to one (just one, I promise) of the accusations that are commonly hurled at Doug Feith and his fellow preemptive war fetishists. I spent a long time trying to figure out how to say what needed to be said, which […]
Mearsheimer, Walt and what didn’t really happen at Camp David
Friday, September 14th, 2007There is a sentence towards the end of Walt and Mearsheimer’s new book that undercuts some of what they have tried to accomplish with their critique of the “Israel Lobby.†Having rejected the binational, single-state solution as well as Israel’s permanent occupation, they assert: “The United States will have to put significant pressure on Israel […]
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