Even if the Ramat Shlomo announcement and its aftermath is a salutary reminder of the old Yiddish proverb about not spitting in the well you drink from, that should not be the only lesson we draw from this week’s events.
Continue reading ‘Meanwhile, in Ramallah…’
Archive for the 'USA' Category
This is a guest post by Kenneth Bandler of AJC.
The propensity of some Israeli political leaders to speak publicly or take action before thinking clearly of the consequences hit a new low this week during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit.
If Israelis were looking for reassurance that the United States is genuinely the Jewish state’s number one ally, the vice president couldn’t have been clearer. “The bond between the U.S. and Israel has been and will remain unshakable,” declared Biden. “Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel.” But, alas, there is a significant gap, on settlements, and it was an Israeli Cabinet Minister who decided to remind all with international media focused on every step of Biden’s visit.
After a week in which the Israeli government displayed its exquisite sense of timing, Vice-President Biden delivered a major speech at Tel Aviv University today. For those who don’t have time to watch the video, here are the bullet points.
“Jimmy Carter is asking the Jewish community for forgiveness — and insists it’s not simply because his grandson has decided to launch a political career with a run for the Georgia state Senate.” More on JTA.
“It is with disgust and dismay that I find my name listed as a signer of ‘Boycott Apartheid Israel: Open Letter from US Trade Unionists.’ I demand that my name be removed immediately! Prior to seeing the letter on the Palestine Chronicle website, I had never seen such a letter or engaged in discussions about its content. I find it disrespectful that someone would attach my name to a document and circulate such a document without contact with me, or consent from me.” Leading Black trade unionist Clayola Brown discovers the fetid depths to which the boycotters will sink; more on TULIP.
(Via Gene)
This is a crosspost by Mark Gardner of the CST blog.
On 4th December, the Guardian published an immediate and complete apology for a letter that had appeared upon its letters page the previous day. CST covered the story, here and here. (The letter, upon close scrutiny, advocated Holocaust Denial. A ‘Google’ search of the author showed that whilst he was not well known, he did have ‘previous’ in this regard.)
Continue reading ‘Financial Times Perpetuates “Jewish Power” Myth’
Over a year ago, I wrote about an entry on Zionism for an encyclopedia published under a well-known, trusted imprint: the “Encyclopedia of Race and Racism,” which carries the names of both Macmillan Reference USA (now owned by the Michigan-based Gale, Cengage Learning company) and the Macmillan Social Science Library. At the time, there was quite a storm and the publishers resolved to do something about it. Sadly, their compromise formula makes a bad situation worse, as I explain in this op-ed for the Jerusalem Post.
Below is a statement from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) opposing the proposed academic boycott of Israel at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Our friends and colleagues at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim will soon be voting on whether to initiate a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Faculty members in Norway have already spoken out eloquently and on point about the reasons to defeat this proposal. Because the decision has the potential to have an impact on debates at academic institutions in many other countries, we would like to join our many Norwegian counterparts who oppose the action.
Continue reading ‘US Professors Oppose NTNU Boycott Campaign’
This is a crosspost by Adam Holland.
Disgraced former Congressman Jim Traficant was recently freed from federal prison after serving seven years of hard time for corruption and tax evasion. He surprised many people who haven’t followed his case by claiming in subsequent interviews that he had been framed by the “Israel lobby”.
Continue reading ‘Disgraced Ex-Congressman to Testify for Demjanjuk’
When cultural historians look back at this week’s J-Street conference in Washington, DC, they will observe that many of the participants invested its proceedings with an almost mystical significance: a Woodstock moment for Jewish politics in America which poked a finger into the flabby bellies of the establishment organizations by declaring, “change has come, move aside.”
This is a guest post by Petra Marquardt-Bigman.
Some of the most interesting material on the controversy about J-Street that has developed in the run-up to the organization’s currently ongoing conference was provided by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who recently published an interview with J-Street’s executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami.
Continue reading ‘How to Make Life Easy for J-Street’s Detractors’
On the op-ed page of the South Carolina newspaper The Times and Democrat, two Republican officials are defending Senator Jim DeMint’s opposition to Congressional earmarking - the process whereby politicians can allocate funding to approved projects with very little oversight. Such allocations are famously dismissed by detractors as “pork” because they serve interests that are, most of the time, parochial and rather murky.
This is a guest post by ganselmi.
The time for “analyzing” and “reassessing” the situation in Iran is over. The Obama Administration should speak up on behalf of the millions of embattled Iranians confronting the Islamic Republic to demand fairness and the rule of law.
“But as for those sections of the Cairo speech which turned a gimlet eye on the American past, Obama did no more than speak the truth, or tread where others have to lesser fanfare. Condoleeza Rice first compared the situation in Palestine to the American civil rights movement, and Gershom Gorenberg’s recent cover story in The Weekly Standard implicitly did as well by asking why it was that there was no Palestinian Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. Had Obama really wanted to placate Iran, he would not have repudiated Holocaust denial or quoted from the Torah.”
Michael Weiss casts a critical eye upon conservative readings of Obama’s Cairo speech, in the new - and rather splendid-looking - online magazine Tablet.
This is a cross-post by Mark Gardner from the new - and hugely welcome - blog of the Community Security Trust in the UK. While you’re there, see also Dave Rich’s inaugural post. “This blog will try to shed some light on the nature of contemporary antisemitism, but also on the good work being done to combat it,” he says.
An article in today’s Independent by the paper’s Washington correspondent, David Usborne, contains a stunning example of the conflation of Jews with Israel.
