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For a story in today's Observer about how the rise of a Benjamin Netanyahu government in Israel is affecting Middle East dialogue in America, I spoke with Tony Judt, a noted academic and historian and a provocative critic of some of Israel's ... READ MORE»
Will the rise of an Israeli government led by an opponent of the peace process make it more politically acceptable in America to criticize Israel? Abraham Foxman says... READ MORE»
Yesterday, Alpha Media Group--the name for the investors backed by Quadrangle Capital Partners who bought Maxim, Blender and Stuff from Dennis Publishing yesterday for more than $240 million--announced plans to fold Stuff, the shopping-centered T&A men's magazine, and resurrect it as a regular section in its lad mag, Maxim. Maxim and Blender will be the chief beneficiaries of the new owners' money and time from now on, with plans to increase the rate-base for Blender,... READ MORE»
The deepening political crisis surrounding Iraq has generated fears in the Jewish community that Americans are going to blame Jews for the failure—because so many Jewish leaders supported the invasion of a country that had many times attacked Israel, but never attacked the United States. Detailing that support was of course a theme of Walt & Mearsheimer's paper, to which The Forward responded with an editorial, "In Dark Times, Blame the Jews." This... READ MORE»
I've just gotten a copy of a 79-page paper called "Setting the Record Straight: A Response to Critics of 'The Israel Lobby'" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. The scholars began circulating the rebuttal privately in December but have not published it on-line, I gather, because they are working on a book about the lobby and are trying to keep some of their powder dry till publication. Nonetheless, the paper is getting around.... READ MORE»
Last night at Columbia's school of international affairs, Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector, and former Marine, opened a speech about Iran bracingly, by speaking not of Iran but about the "elephant in the room": Israel. He said that Israel is our close ally; and if Iran actually intends to develop nuclear weapons, not nuclear power (as the Iranian Ambassador had said, in the speech preceding Ritter's), and if Iran fails to repudiate... READ MORE»
The latest New Republic has an emotional attack on Tony Judt, John Mearsheimer, and Stephen Walt by Leon Wieseltier. Wieseltier says that W-M are antisemites who don't understand how policy is formulated and Tony Judt is trading in antisemitic legends. He gets very angry. All this stems from the Walt Mearsheimer paper and Judt's defense of their ideas at Cooper Union. A few points: —The piece underscores the fact that the media failed to cover... READ MORE»
A smart friend tells me that despite the excited crowds gathered outside Cooper Union 3 weeks back, and the great excitement in the hall, there has been hardly a drop of ink spilled on the Israel lobby debate sponsored by the London Review of Books. The Forward covered it, the Observer covered it, so did the N.Y. Sun in passing. But as for the mainstream, zilch, on one of the most fascinating and... READ MORE»
I got home quite late from the Israel lobby debate and am on deadline for print, so I won't get around to a full report till later, but thought it best to file a few impressions while the world is still making up its mind... The debate was diffuse. It had few dramatic moments. There were six debaters with five different points of view, and the three men positing the existence of the lobby... READ MORE»
Tonight's the big debate. I haven't been so excited since Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer and Susan Sontag squared off over feminism. As a pipsqueak, I was on the wrong side then (Mailer's), now I'm on the right one. One cool thing about this event is you can play the West End in London or the Arena Stage in Washington forever, but nothing really matters till you come to New York. That's the... READ MORE»
Even as the Washington Post continues its effort to blackball Walt and Mearsheimer as antisemites, how interesting that their ideas gain wider and wider circulation. Later this month the giant issue they raised, the Israel lobby, will be the subject of a debate, sponsored by the London Review of Books, in the great hall at Cooper Union in New York on Sept. 28. Something else about this debate is the roster. On one... READ MORE»
I've heard from several journalist-friends who were appalled by Dana Milbank's smear of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer in Tuesday's Washington Post, in which he likened the scholars to Nazis. So: the mud has splashed back on to Milbank. That said, two "points" Milbank made deserve further rebuttal. 1. Milbank says he overheard Walt saying after his talk at the Council on American-Islamic Relations that if you take a position against Israel, your business... READ MORE»
Dana Milbank thinks that it important that John Mearsheimer mispronounced a congressman's name, or two of them. Mearsheimer says we need a "freewheeling" debate about the role of the Israel lobby in our policy. Freewheeling means mispronouncing a politician's name, freewheeling means shooting from the hip sometimes. Freewheeling means a real American debate, at a time when our national interest is mired in fantasies about the Middle East. Freewheeling means, People actually saying... READ MORE»
