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 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 Read More
Why is it that the most important advances in American understanding of the Middle East can only appear in papers that spell neighbor “neighbour”? Lately it was Tony Judt in the London Review of Books. Before that the LRB gave us Walt and Mearsheimer. And now it’s the Financial Times, publishing the great Henry 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 Read More
The historic piece on the Israel lobby in the London Review of Books in March continues to reverberate. The latest LRB contains a dispute between the paper’s authors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, and the former executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow.
The dispute was perhaps inevitable. The original article quoted Read More
The freeing of Jill Carroll (a joyful moment, need I add) is a reminder that there is no democracy in Iraq. Democracy depends on free speech and a vigorous press—what kind of democracy is it where reporters are afraid to take a step outside their rooms? Not much of a democracy at all. What does Read More
I want to complain more about the job conditions. The worst thing about blogging is that it sets up this interior surveillance. We all complain about the increases in surveillance in our exterior lives, or we should complain—all the cameras and cops in public spaces. Well blogging is the interior equivalent. There is no such Read More
