The Republican Party’s presidential candidates may not agree on everything, but they seem unanimous about one thing: if they were prime minister of Israel, they would not have swapped more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for the return of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who had been held captive by Hamas for five years before his return last week.
That’s curious, to say the least. Read More
In demanding that Israel retreat to its pre-1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations with the Palestinians, President Obama confirmed what many have suspected for some time: he is not a friend of Israel.
No friend, no true ally, would ask another state to put its very existence in jeopardy. But that is precisely Read More
Anything related to the Israel-Palestine conflict is sure to be controversial. That's what makes it so much fun.
And so it was with the graffiti-covered faux-bomb shelter/art installation erected in Washington Square Park on Monday afternoon.
At issue was a Sderot-style bunker of the sort used by Israelis when Palestinian militants lob missles over the border. Just Read More
Expectations could hardly be lower as the Israeli government and the Palestinians prepare for a new round of direct talks in Washington. The Obama administration says it would like to see a comprehensive peace plan put into place within a year. A lofty goal, to be sure. The Israelis and Palestinians sides may not Read More
In January, Christiane Amanpour was covering the inauguration in Washington D.C. for CNN International when she was struck with an idea for a long-form project. President Barack Obama had said in his inaugural address that he wanted a new way forward for the Islamic world, and that the United States could no longer afford Read More
Student activists are easy targets. They're young, smug and inflamed with the fervor of unassailable beliefs. So when dozens of students staged a three-day demonstration—they referred to it unironically as "The Occupation"—at the university's student center last week, not only did their actions rivet the media, but they prompted gleeful bloggers to reward them with Read More
Student activists are easy targets. They're young, smug and inflamed with the fervor of unassailable beliefs. So when dozens of students staged a three-day demonstration-they referred to it unironically as "The Occupation"-at the university's student center last week, not only did their actions rivet the media, but they prompted gleeful bloggers to reward them with Read More
Barack Obama is like any candidate for president in that he’s opted for the politically expedient at the expense of a higher principle – most notably when he thumbed his nose at the same public financing system that he’d long championed. Not surprisingly, his supporters shrugged that one off and echoed their candidate’s rationalizations. Better Read More
The other day at Brandeis, Alan Dershowitz, responding to Jimmy Carter, took a shot at NYU's Tony Judt because of Judt's famous call (in the New York Review of Books) to give up on the idea of a Jewish state. "Tony Judt is in favor of the complete dissolution of the state of Israel... the Read More
Brooklyn College's Corey Robin has a fascinating piece in the latest LRB about Hannah Arendt, treating three objections that Arendt, who was sympathetic to Zionism, formed in the '40s to certain currents of Zionist ideology. Now that Israel has elevated to cabinet level a racist who supports expulsion of Arabs, Arendt's prescient critique Read More
The Times mentioned Jimmy Carter twice in yesterday's paper. On the sports age, he was described as "soft-spoken, cautious, reserved, conformist, reliable" (a piece on blood types). But the other article was in Arts, and labelled him a raving lunatic. This was part of the Times' continuing series to give space to (Jewish) Read More
Leon Wieseltier expresses the Israel-lobby position by saying, Sure, hold an international conference to fix Iraq, but don't bring Palestine into it. It's the same line Kenneth Pollack gave us 4 years ago when he issued his manifesto for disaster (the invasion of Iraq) and said there must be no linkage between reforming Islam and Read More
I caught Ali Abunimah, the Palestinian/American activist and author of a new book calling for a single Arab and Jewish state in Palestine, at Columbia the other night. Abunimah made a few interesting points: 1. Having been to Northern Ireland, Abunimah reports that the two sides hate each other "deeply" but live with each Read More
The idea that there are two narratives about Israel/Palestine in this country, and never the twain shall meet, was reinforced last week by the Times' two-parter on the special relationship of Israel and the U.S., titled "Anatomy of an Alliance." The first part dismissed the claim of an "Israel lobby," arguing in essence that there Read More
Today the Times at last quotes Steve Walt fairly, in an article by Steve Erlanger and David Sanger about why Israel and the U.S. are joined in a war on terror from Gaza to Baghdad, and maybe on to Tehran. Though, rest assured, the Times is careful to dismiss Walt and Mearsheimer's paper Read More
