A reporter called me yesterday and said I was wrong in declaring there’s a movement of progressive Jews who are criticizing Zionism. He asked for my evidence. I started with Jewish Voice for Peace, which runs muzzlewatch and rallied in the cold to support Jimmy Carter at Brandeis. He said, “But they’re kind Read More
I think I was too harsh on Noam Chomsky yesterday. Oh well, I said it. Anyway, here’s Peter Voskamp, editor of the Block Island Times, offering a better picture of the great man:
I saw him a few years ago in Austin and he was up there for whatLast night Noam Chomsky was to give a lecture at the Miller Theater at Columbia University in N.Y. The Miller Theater was sold out 2 weeks back for the event, $5 a head. Probably 500 people. The outside walls of the theater were plastered with posters calling Chomsky un-American. When I came in a tall Read More
The New York Times’ stunning piece last week about the American Jewish Committee’s effort to smear leftwing Jewish critics of Israel as antisemites did what 1000 blogs, 100 human rights reports, even 10 pieces by Tony Judt, could never do: It embarrassed the Jewish leadership, by exposing the retrograde methods it has resorted Read More
Even as it disappointed on the field, the Super Bowl supplied racial drama. The historical celebration, that a black coach was finally coaching a Super Bowl team—and not just one, but both coaches, both teams—was all over the airwaves. Even ads brought it up. Hooray.
Time to get on my hobbyhorse. I gather that on Read More
I’m all for impeaching George Bush for staggering incompetence and intransigence (let the lawyers figure out the language), but if I get my wish that means that 3/4 of our recent 2-term presidents will have been impeached, or close: Nixon, Clinton, and Bush. Only Reagan goes unscathed, and maybe he shouldn’t have. (Iran-Contra). All four Read More
My people came to this country in the ten years either side of 1900. They were afraid of the pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, they came from Poland, Bukovina, Bialystok, to Brooklyn and the Lower East Side.
Some day someone should make a Schindler’s List-like movie of the guy who helped bring us Read More
Last night, NBC Nightly News reported Ari Fleischer’s testimony from the Scooter Libby trial, in which the former press guy said he had sought immunity from prosecution because he had done the very thing that Libby is accused of doing: disclosed the fact that Bush enemy Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA—Fleischer said, to Read More
Now that everyone except Dick Cheney agrees that Iraq has dissolved into civil war, I grabbed a couple of neocons’ (and neolibs’) books off my shelf last night to see how they treated the issue of Sunnis and Shi’ites killing one another, back when these brains were pushing for the U.S. to invade Iraq.
Here Read More
Doni Remba, a peace activist, disputes my claim that the progressive voice in Jewish life has been marginalized by the neocons. He has some evidence: he says he’s getting traction in the Jewish press for his view that there has to be a progressive lobby, to push for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. His post Read More
