On the Americans for Peace Now blog, the relentlessly smart Lara Friedman and attorney Danny Seidemann refute Netanyahu’s faux civil rights arguments about Jerusalem housing. To fully appreciate the post, you must have a willingness to wade through the details of arcane real estate law, but the devil, quite literally, is in those details. Here […]
Palestinians
The tortured logic of East Jerusalem’s Jewish settlers
The Web is buzzing with stories about Netanyahu’s rejection of U.S. calls to stop planned construction of housing for Jews in East Jerusalem. The NY Times’ Ethan Bronner notes that “Mr. Netanyahu issued the statement because State Department officials had raised concerns over the project with Israel’s new ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, during discussions […]
Are there passionate moderates watching Al Jazeera?
This past Thursday, I was on the Riz Kahn show on Al Jazeera English. along with Mitchell Barak, CEO of Keevoon, a polling firm. The more I do these media gigs, the more I understand the impossibility of commenting on the Middle East, American foreign policy and American Jews without offending someone. In this case, […]
Mahmoud Abbas and the African National Congress: lessons learned
What follows is Thomas Mitchell’s review of A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream by Mark Gevisser (New York, Palgrave Macmillan 2009). Its publication here should not be construed as a complete endorsement of Tom’s views. I think he is too harsh on Mahmoud Abbas for rejecting Netanyahu’s […]
Peace Now & APN: Freeze construction in the “settlement blocs,” too
Belated praise for Top Five Bogus Excuses for Opposing a Settlement Freeze, a detailed refutation of several canards by the estimable Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now and Hagit Ofran, who run’s Peace Now’s Settlements Watch progam. All five responses to these “excuses” are worth perusing, but I found one of them to be […]
Dan Fleshler, without his glasses, on Press TV…
Before the Iranian elections, I was interviewed for a show called “The Autograph” on Press TV, the Iranian English language network. It focused on me and is about 20 minutes long. You can find the link to the network archive here. Then click on “Autograph” and you’ll find the interview with Dan Fleshler. It was […]
What else Netanyahu needs to know about Obama
The following op-ed just went on-line and will be in Friday’s Haaretz. I’ve been waiting about 25 years to be able write something like this and actually believe it. Something else Netanyahu should know By Dan Flesher Even before President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech last week, there were reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and […]
Will Obama’s speech “force clarity” on Israel?
I took a break from my day job to do a quick scan of the reactions to Obama’s speech in Cairo. The most instructive one thus far comes from Daniel Gordis of the Shalem Center, whose post can be found on the NY Times blog. There has been much talk of late about Obama’ desire […]
“Tough love†for Israel will be tough on the pro-Israel peace camp
A new Zogby International poll shows that 71 percent of Obama backers think the United States should “get tough with Israel” in order to stop settlement expansion, while 26 percent of McCain supporters feel that way. 80 percent of likely Obama voters also agreed with the statement, “It’s time for the United States to get […]
Helping “our fellow Jews and our fellow humans, the Palestinians”
The daughter of some friends wrote the following on her Bat Mitzvah program. It has the ring of something a very smart, self-aware 13-year-old would write, rather than a presentation that has been sanitized and edited by grown-ups. That is why I find it moving: I am going to donate 10% of the money I […]