Repeat Offender

NEXTBOOK — November 26, 2008
Was there ever a more favorable time to be an American in Germany? I wasn’t here during the Berlin airlift as the sky filled with small parachuted packages of raisins floating down from U.S. bomber planes. So maybe then. But the symbolic weight of Obama’s win seemed to redeem us all [...]

Will of Iron, Heart of Stone

FORWARD — August 21, 2008
Golda
By Elinor Burkett
HarperCollins, 496 pages, $27.95.
My moment of eye-openng disillusion with Golda Meir came early on in Elinor Burkett’s new biography of the female premier, titled simply “Golda.” The year was 1950, and Golda Meyerson, as she was then known, was nearing 60 and had just returned from her stint as [...]

A Mention in Village Voice Blog

Ward Harkavy referred to my 2005 article on the Israeli media in a July 24, 2008 blog post:
Haaretz is a lefty paper, but it is one of three major dailies in Israel. As Gal Beckerman noted in his fascinating inside look at Israeli journalism in the May 2005 Columbia Journalism Review:
Haaretz’s news and editorial pages [...]

The Unpeaceful Rest of Mohammed Al-Dura

CJR.ORG — October 3, 2007
No single event was responsible for igniting the Second Intifada, which began seven years ago and effectively killed off the “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians. Or, rather, there are specific causes for why violence erupted in the occupied Palestinian territories and in the cafes and markets of Tel Aviv [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

Six Days, 40 Years of Controversy

FORWARD — June 1, 2007
The weeks following the Six Day War found Israelis not sure if they were awake or dreaming. Everyone spoke of miracles, of the supernatural forces that had guided the Jewish army to such overwhelming victory. The names of the generals — Rabin, Hod, Sharon, Peled — resounded like the names of [...]

One Man’s Persistent Empathy

FORWARD — April 20, 2007
Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life
By Sari Nusseibeh, with Anthony David
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 560 pages, $27.50.
One day, at the end of 1987, Sari Nusseibeh was walking out of a lecture hall at Birzeit University, just having taught his students John Locke’s concepts of liberalism and tolerance, when he was [...]

A Historian-Soldier Bridges His Identities

FORWARD — February 2, 2007
Sitting on a stage in a mahogany-paneled study of the townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that contains the venerable Council on Foreign Relations, Michael Oren, the historian, was getting frustrated with the questions the standing room-only audience was lobbing at him. He had come to talk about his new book, [...]

Talking Cure?

FORWARD — October 27, 2006
Prisoners: A Muslim & a Jew Across the Middle East Divide
By Jeffrey Goldberg
Knopf, 320 pages, $25.
The irreducible element at the end of every Israeli-Arab argument is always psychology. Looking at a map, any two reasonable partners could easily delineate the borders. Even the impasses over refugees and settlements, even Jerusalem, seem [...]