Jerome Slater, author of an important paper on the American press’s failures to tell us just how bad life is in Palestine (in stark comparison to the Israeli press’s achievement in the same area), has offered me another critique of…
I saw “Charlie Wilson’s War” last night. B+. It was too one-note for me. But any Hollywood film that tries to deal with foreign policy gets kudos here. Also, I was pleased to see that the film touches on my…
Here is something else about Ruth Wisse. You can see that she is going to be hosted at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center this spring as part of a program from the Jewish Forward, a generally progressive newspaper. Does…
Neoconservative Bill Kristol is still at it. In the latest First Things, a journal about religion, he praises the writings of Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse–who has elsewhere called for young American Jews to serve as a kind of intellectual “army”…
The latest American Jewish Committee survey on Jewish opinion said that Jews are good liberals: overwhelmingly against the Iraq war, and mostly for a Palestinian state. Yes but by nearly 2-to-1 against the division of Jerusalem! I’ve already noted James…
Jimmy Carter lost his presidency in 1979 (I think that was the year), when he was shocked that the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan. He had trusted them. Shocked. Americans didn’t want a naive president. They turned to Ronald Reagan. I…
I’m pretty new to Christmas, but it seems to me that multiculturalism is transforming the religious holiday into a generic American holiday not that different from Thanksgiving. My gentile in-laws tell me that this is an old trend. Still I…
Celebrity has its uses. Two Palestinian villages have now called on Susan Sarandon to repudiate diamond-magnate Lev Leviev. So the settlements issue is creeping into the American debate. And today already the Israeli/Palestinian talks have broken down over the expansion…
My wife and I were driving out to get Indian takeout for the Christmas party we were hosting when we passed the hunble house of one of our favorite friends, this very lowkey guy who does web design for a…