The Israel Lobby Doesn’t Control the Media

CJR.ORG — September 27, 2007
What more could there possibly be to say about “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” the controversial new book-length version of John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt’s provocative thesis about pro-Israel forces in America? We’ve heard both the cries of anti-Semitism, and the sighs of those defending the two [...]

Hostage to History

FORWARD — September 19, 2007
Terror in Black September: The First Eyewitness Account of the Infamous 1970 Hijackings
By David Raab
Palgrave Macmillan, 288 pages, $24.95.
The Palestinian fedayeen who hijacked David Raab’s plane on September 6, 1970, surely thought they had hit the jackpot. Seventeen-year-old, baby-faced Raab was still so excited from his summer vacation in Israel that [...]

Parsing Patraeus

CJR.ORG — September 12, 2007
Among the big headlines General David Petraeus’s testimony before Congress has produced is the news that 30,000 troops will be coming home before next summer. Characterized by the general as a “very substantial withdrawal,” it’s one of the only indications that he and the president are ultimately trying to wind down [...]

Steven Erlanger Forgets He’s a Journalist

Steven Erlanger, The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief reports this morning on the difficulties journalists have encountered trying to cover the now Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Reporters trying to broadcast or write about the protests by the opposing Fatah party have been arrested or simply beaten by the Hamas police force. This has inevitably led, [...]

Master Narrative

CJR.ORG — September 6, 2007
It was the least-breaking of breaking news that I can remember in some time. Precisely at 8:32 p.m. I went on the Internet and discovered, screaming across the top of The New York Times homepage: “BREAKING NEWS: Fred Thompson Declares His Candidacy for President.”
Didn’t see that one coming.
Yes, last night Thompson, [...]

Bremer’s Nonchalance

CJR.ORG — September 4, 2007
You really have to read it to believe it. Today, The New York Times Web site has the full text of an exchange of letters between President Bush and his Iraq envoy, J. Paul Bremer. They seem to back up Bremer’s claim that the president knew about the decision to [...]