One of the best lines in Jacob Heilbrunn’s book on the neocons, They Knew They Were Right, is that having been excluded by the old WASP establishment, young Jewish rightwing intellectuals of the 50s-70s burned with outsider resentment. And in…
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Monthly Archives: January 2008
Even for a Liberal American Jewish Journalist, the Occupation Is a Family Matter
A few months back at a party in New York, I met the wife of a prominent liberal journalist and mentioned that I had lately been in Hebron, in Palestine. This woman said that she had close relatives in the…
Hosni Begat Gamal. Saddam Begat Qusay. And Norman Begat John
One of the best things in Jacob Heilbrunn’s new book, They Knew They Were Right, is his analysis of the children of the neocons. Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz had struggled to attain prominence. They had varied careers, generally on…
‘Commentary’ Distances Itself From Podhoretz (Norman)
You have to do Kremlinology with the neocons. Study the pictures, see who’s missing. Well, the latest Commentary I got has as its lead coverline, “Stopping Iran: Why the Case for Military Action Still Stands,” by one Norman Podhoretz. If…
What Obama Bragged About in Kansas, Men Were Once Lynched For
Yesterday in El Dorado, Kansas, Barack Obama told of his white lineage, and how his maternal grandparents had met and fallen in love (did people fall in love back then, or just hook up?) in Kansas. His mother was born…
My Country Needs Jewish Liberals to Expose Neocons as a Jewish ‘Special Interest’
I’ve long argued here that American Jewry won’t be healed, and neither will American leadership, till we come to terms with the neocons as an expression of a hawkish Jewish interest in the Middle East, and a powerful expression at…
We Can Talk About Religion in the Republican Party. But Not Among Democrats
The talk on MS-NBC tonight was all about the religious right. Is the religious right over as a dominant force? Are Huckabee and Romney splitting the religious right vote? Has the Republican Party matured past the social issues to accept…
The Clinton We Never Knew. Well Actually Some of Us Did
John Harris of Politico has a nice column on Bill Clinton’s shrill, tempery performance saying this was the Bill Clinton who reporters saw every day back in the 90s, who Washington establishment types came to dislike. The only problem is…
Another Zionist Nightmare–Backing Outpost Settlers, Israeli Soldiers Bare Moon Palestinian Shepherd
On January 11, an Ohio volunteer for the interventionist group Christian Peacemaker Teams visited grazing lands of a Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills where settlers from an illegal “outpost” settlement called Havot Maon had stopped Palestinians from grazing…
Will Obama’s ‘Jewish Problem’ Allow Media to Talk about Israel Lobby?
OK, maybe Walt and Mearsheimer were the first guys over the barbed wire, and they left their bodies there. No one’s allowed to touch their ideas now. They were bad and wrong. Worse: controversial. OK. Well, comes now Barack Obama…
Obama vs. Clinton: Code for Anti-Israel Lobby vs. Pro?
Haaretz is teasing an exclusive interview with Obama in which he says that his opponents are trying to undermine his support in the Jewish community. I’m for a Jewish state, he says, and not for the right of return “in…
Why Wasn’t a Joint Jewish-Arab Protest of Gaza Siege in My Newspaper?
The universalist impulse in Jewish and Arab life continues to be shut out of our press in favor of the parochial. You wouldn’t know it, but on Saturday, over 1000 Israelis–Israeli Jews and Palestinians–led a convoy of cars from Tel…
Jews Argue About Holocaust’s Role in Fueling Neocons–at the Nixon Center, No Less
C-Span just aired a panel at the Nixon Center about Jacob Heilbrunn’s book on the neocons: They Knew They Were Right. For me it was significant for the raw argument about Jewish identity that arose between Heilbrunn and respondent Dov…
The Madman Was a Realist (Saddam Feared Al-Qaeda and Iran)
On “60 Minutes” tonight, George Piro, the Arabic-speaking FBI agent who questioned Saddam Hussein for 7 months after his capture, said that Saddam craved Weapons of Mass Destruction because they gave him assurance that Iran would not invade Iraq. Also,…
The ‘Times’ Takes a Healthy Lesson From the Blogosphere
I loved the Times editorial Friday that endorsed McCain and slagged Giuliani: The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power…….
How Many Years Before U.S. Policy Toward Palestinians Shifts?
My friend Dan Swanson wrote a book about South Africa called Freedom Rising. It came out in the mid-80s, and ten years later, apartheid ended in South Africa, in good part because of U.S. sanctions, which leftists and blacks here…
Conflation Again: Lieberman Says Israel Is the ‘Strongest Roots’ of U.S. Foreign Policy
Remember when everyone used to worry about inflation? Now the problem is conflation. The Miami Herald reports that, campaigning for the Jewish vote for John McCain in Florida, Joe Lieberman has linked hawkish U.S. activities in the Middle East with…
‘The Israel Lobby’ Has Become an Outsider Narrative. Unhealthy
The Israel Lobby has entered the political discourse in a big way. The problem is that it is completely ignored as a factor in the mainstream media, and completely glommed by the outsider media. Here is Paul Craig Roberts, a…
Was I Wrong to Vote for Nader?
At least three Democratic associates of mine, one of them my mother, regularly give me withering lectures on the fact that I voted for Nader in ’00. I just got that lecture now. These people hold me responsible for George…
Those MIT Students in West Bank
In my capacity as Arabist and flak, I want journalists to know that two MIT students are in Ramallah, Palestine, this week to promote MIT to young Arabs, in Gaza by teleconference on Saturday morning, and to West Bank students…
Big Change in Media: Arabs Are Suddenly Human Beings. Israel Is Becoming South Africa
Three straws in the wind: –Last night on National Public Radio’s “Marketplace”, Kai Ryssdal did a wonderful interview with Palestinian economist Youssef Dauod about prices in Rafah, in which Dauod was allowed to say that the Israelis had created a…
I’m Wrong About ‘Nakba.’ The Spelling, Anyway
Dan Sisken of Mideast Brief has corrected my spelling of the Arabic word “nakba,” referring to the disaster of ’48. I spelled it “naqba.” I think it’s important to try to use accurate transliterations of Arabic. It should be “Nakba”…
What Does ‘Pushback’ Mean? An Email from Dersh
Some time back I reported that Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Colin Powell, said at the Middle East Institute (responding to Jim Lobe actually) that Walt and Mearsheimer’s paper contained the “blinding flash of the obvious,”…
Israeli Press Shames Settlement Czar Leviev (Will American Press Shame Sarandon?)
The boast by settlement czar and diamond dealer Lev Leviev that he gave money to Oxfam, which Oxfam says is not true– “To the best of our knowledge Mr. Leviev has not been a donor to Oxfam or any of…
An Antisemitic Joke From My Youth, and What It Says About the Elite
Another thing historian Ilan Pappe said is that the “elites” of the world have made a mess of Israel/Palestine. He meant the American elite too, the political establishment, the Israel lobby. I went for a walk today and got thinking…