The illustrious patriots over at the Commentary blog have, predictably, taken me to task for defending Peter Beinart’s fine book about the crisis in Israel. They have done so in a predictably specious way. So I’d like to make my position, and theirs, perfectly clear: the argument against West Bank settlements is not merely a demographic [...]
Mideast
The neoconservative assault on Peter Beinart’s fine book, The Crisis of Zionism, continues. It has taken many forms–ad hominem attacks usually and now, mocking his sales figures. Indeed, it has taken many forms but one: there still is no coherent response to Beinart’s argument that the West Bank settlement policy is a long-term demographic threat to [...]
Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled against the Netanyahu government and order an unsanctioned Israeli settler outpost on the West Bank to be shut down by August. Netanyahu had wanted the outpost to remain open for business in perpetuity–or close to perpetuity, 2015, by which time the government would have argued the permanence of the settlement. [...]
Had he been speaking Hebrew in a dramatic TV broadcast back home, parts of Benjamin Netanyahu’s fire-and-brimstone speech Tuesday night might have been mistaken for the words of an Israeli prime minister about to launch a fateful war. He painted Iran’s nuclear program as an apocalyptic extermination threat redolent of the Nazi Holocaust, stressed Israel’s [...]
Most political analysts in Washington believe that war with Iran is unlikely, especially before the November U.S. elections. Politically it would be hard for President Obama to engage in another Middle Eastern war given the war weariness of the U.S. electorate, let alone the question of being able to afford it at a time when [...]
In an exclusive interview with TIME’s Fareed Zakaria, President Obama opens up on Iran, Afghanistan, China and the challenges the U.S. faces in navigating a rapidly changing world. A full transcript of their conversation follows
Given the lingering hangover effects of Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrogant visit upon his American supporters–bitterness (toward Obama), smugness, delusion–the recent testimony of just-retired Mossad Chief Meir Dagan has provided a needed corrective. Like most recent Mossad chiefs, Dagan is a realist. He sees the big, long-term picture. And he excoriates both Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud [...]
Greg Sargent has an interesting post about Jewish Democratic money sticking with Obama, despite the concerted efforts of Bibi Netanyahu and the Republican party to distort his position on the Israel-Palestine peace negotiations. Obama is not in favor of a simple return to the 1967 borders; he is in favor of new, defensible–an important code [...]
There are continuing ruffles and trifles about whether President Obama said anything at all different about the borders of a Palestinian state. Much of it is either meta-talmudic picky (Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post) or poisonously disingenuous (the ever-bilious Charles Krauthammer). Kessler’s gripe is that Obama is the first President to use the “1967 [...]
